Review: WSPS Tiny Mail DIY Kit

I'm not sure I've ever written on this blog about how much I adore Lea Redmond. She is one of my all time favorite artist inspirations. She creates and sells lovely curios on her website, Leafcutter Designs. What appeals to me so much about her work is its simplicity and sweetness. Her art is intended to make people smile and appreciate the little things. For instance, she sold small containers of cocktail umbrellas with instructions to hand them out to people on rainy days. It's both clever and silly and absolutely adorable. It's the kind of art that I hope to make.

Lea Redmond, among her many projects, is the genius behind the World's Smallest Postal Service (WSPS). Ordering a letter from her costs less than 10 dollars and is totally worth it. The WSPS prints a tiny version of your letter and sends it, with a magnifying glass to a friend. Today's review is about the DIY tiny mail activity kit. A couple years back I ordered what I guess could be called the beta version of this kit. I loved it so much that I went ahead and spent the extra money on the deluxe version of Lea's new full-size kit. It cost me 50 dollars. Quite pricey, I'll be honest, but I don't mind supporting artists I love. As you can see, I sort of combined in the leftovers from the first version.

The deluxe kit contains: boxes to make tiny packages, wrapping supplies, ink pads and stamps with postal phrases, tiny stamps and postal stamps, tiny envelopes, tiny paper (some lined), a magnifying glass, an extremely thin pen, large clear envelopes to send the small letters in the real mail, and a little paper mailbox. The contents in more detail is available on the website.

The kit also includes little sticker 'wax seal' stamps to close the envelopes but I never find that the envelopes stay shut. Having actual wax adds an extra special touch so I bough some and made a tiny seal stamp out of fimo clay. It looks like this and the envelopes do stay closed:

I can also use some of the contents for projects besides tiny mail. I created small hand bound books to mimic Lea's tiny packages. The stamps are useful to me for things like that. In the end, spending the money was very much worth my while and I get to make friends smile with tiny letters all the time.