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.

Calendar Carton

This new year I am keeping a different kind of calendar. I have wanted to do it since I first saw the beautiful one on DesignSponge. There are more details on the website but essentially you cut index cards in half and use a date stamp to mark each day of the year on the individual cards. In the tutorial they used postcards to divide the months but my dividers are blank. I will be creating the designs for each month divider and posting them on the blog. What I love about this concept is that you can grab the cards with the dates you need whenever you are going away. This makes it portable. It's shape also allows you to glue in fun things or write interesting notes. Its a really cute concept.

Projects for 2015

I have a very busy schedule for creating art pieces. This has to due with 1) my AP art class and submitting to college board and 2) creating a portfolio to apply to art school. That said, I have my own personal artistic pursuits. Besides blogging once a week (2014 was a weak year for this blog), here is a basic outline of the projects I'd like to see come to fruition for myself in 2015:

1)  Hello Planet Earth - Etsy Store

I'm revamping my Etsy store to, like, actually sell products. Its called 'Hello Planet Earth' and it will feature hand bound journals, book jewelry, and prints. Later this year I hope to launch some other products including the HPE mini paper studio series.

2) February Watercolor Studies

During the month of February I'd like to become comfortable with watercolor. I bought myself a lovely watercolor set and small watercolor paper notebook that I'd like to fill. It will feature my favorite objects I've collected over the years and hopefully culminate in enough decent paintings to create a calendar or some other print set.

3) May Design Explorations

Continuing the month project concept, I have this odd cliff-shaped doodle that I want to explore further. Using food, yarn, typography, plants, etc. I will attempt to create this shape every single day until I have a set of images expressing this abstract design through different mediums.

Painting A Day Adventures

Here are some photos from class time working on our very first oil paintings. Inspired by the painting-a-day movement, we had to create 3 small 6x6 in paintings based on one to two object still-lifes.

   

Creative US History Projects

In my US II class I've had the opportunity for a few creative projects. These are always a lot of fun for me. Most traditional teachers tend to avoid the artsy projects but those are what I enjoy best. Here are a couple from the past few weeks. The first project is a social media account for a historical figure. I chose to create an instagram account for financial mogul J.P. Morgan. I found an amazing insta template that someone had posted on adobe and was able to make it in photoshop in a matter of minutes. The second project is for Teddy Roosevelt's birthday. I made a brownie pan, covered it in fudge, and arranged butterscotch, milk, and white chocolate chips on top to look like his head.

CIT Summer at Buck's Rock

This summer I worked at Buck's Rock creative and performing arts camp. My great grandfather was apprenticed to a book binder in Latvia, and I was apprenticing in a bindery in rural Connecticut. Pretty fun coincidence. I made a cargo collective to showcase the projects I made on my own time. [Update: all these pieces now appear under the section 'Summer 2014']

It was a really great, productive summer. I made a lot of projects that I'm proud of. I learned a lot of new stitches (as evident in the sampler set). From adapted coptic to button hole I taught kids at least a dozen different techniques. I also almost hurt myself in the wood shop but ended up with some decent comfort around power tools. In the printmaking studio I made lino cuts, etchings, and silkscreens so I think I covered the basics. It was a lot of fun. 

I met some new and fantastic people such as the Printing and Silkscreen CITs, Sophia and Emily. And got closer with some old favorites like Basia who took the photos of my summer work, and Ashley, also a PASS CIT. Clearly I spent a lot of time in that shop. Everyone was incredibly talented and fun to collaborate with. I think a did 5 different exchanges which is ridiculous. It was a lovely time even with all the bugs and heat and art kid drama. 

AP Studio Art, Year One

I just completed one of the most emotionally draining classes I have ever taken - AP Art I. Below are photographs of the projects I created over the course of the year, in the order they were made, with a few of my favorite sketches at the end. 

Negative Space Sculpture - vine charcoal and white charcoal pencil: we created paper sculptures and had to make as accurate drawings of them as we could. I must have spent hours each night driving myself crazy adjusting each little mark on the page.  

3 Objects with Cast Shadow - polychromos: these clementines (or tomatoes???) were a proud moment for me because my initial layout sketches matched the final piece. Looking back on it now, the piece isn't particularly interesting but it was the first time I got a compliment from my teacher.

Contour with Color - pen, acrylic, colored pencil: so originally this was a completely different drawing but I ended up scrapping it and I'm so glad. I'm not sure I quite like the eyes but the color contour itself is pretty decent. 

3-Day Figure Drawing Study - charcoal: my first legitimate figure study, interestingly the other drawings by classmates made the model look much heavier. I keep wondering if I perceived her as skinnier, if it was the angle I was drawing her from, or if others thought she was heavier. The mind is strange. 

Section of a Collection - polychromos: the shadows here took forever to get right but this is my favorite project. There's a certain whimsy to it that I'm really proud of and that I feel actually reflects my personality. 

Charcoal Reduction Still Life - charcoal: I'm not a fan of the objects I was drawing but I like the style I did it in, kind of painterly I guess. It was definitely a good lesson in the power of stripes.

Self Portrait - charcoal: alright so I've had to do a self portrait pretty much every year of high school. And I can't take it anymore. Overall though, I like the way it came out, but someone pointed out to me that the eyes are kind of strange and now I can't unsee it!

Creative Chair - oil pastel: I made this last minute so it frustrates me a lot but I like the chair itself. Clearly, though, I need to spend a lot more time on my pastel skills.

Creative Staircase - polychromos: so I do love the staircase, I went to my friend's house and drew her majestic stairs and I love them. Not sure I love my choice in Cleopatra.

Portrait with Pattern - mixed media: I really allowed myself to break the rules and I'm glad that I did because this ended up the best and most highly praised project of the year. Emma was a beautiful model and I can confidently say I did her justice and I don't even have much experience with colored pencil.

Textured Still Life/Genetically Modified Animal - pen: we could choose to do either project but not entirely satisfied with my goats, I drew the still life as well. It's easy to see the shadows were challenging but it forced me to get more comfortable with pen than I thought I was.

Watercolor Fabric - watercolor: the hardest part of this project was the large space. It was a huge piece of paper and covering it was very challenging. Watercolor is a bit scary at first but I think I avoided over-doing it.

AP Art I was the hardest class I took in terms of pushing myself. In being criticized I actually gained a bit of confidence. Here's hoping AP Art II is a bit more fun than stressful.