Thursday, June 16, 2011

Etsy color celebration #1, 2011

Mmm...pink. "Honeysuckle" to be exact.  Pantone, the leading authority on color, has selected this shade as their featured color of 2011:

"A Color for All Seasons. Courageous. Confident. Vital. A brave new color, for a brave new world. Let the bold spirit of Honeysuckle infuse you, lift you and carry you through the year. It’s a color for every day – with nothing 'everyday' about it."  

This is the 2011 Pantone Color of the Year, as explored through (mostly) vintage Etsy items.  Vibrant, fresh, and summery, I thought it was a perfect time to feature this wonderful hue.  Enjoy!



Wednesday, June 8, 2011

I *heart* postal art...

Do you like to doodle, stamp, and/or otherwise embellish seemingly pointless items?  Why not mail?  Let’s join the movement to revive the tradition of sending and receiving mail by making it beautiful, interesting, or just downright expressive.  Let’s make mail meaningful again!!

What’s all this, then?  you ask…

So I picked up a book on Monday night, Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler.  Check it out!  Richly illustrated and wonderfully written, this book is like chocolate for the soul.  It also includes an envelope pattern and pages of book, zine, and website resources to help develop your postal artistic voice, especially mail art newbies like myself.  While I just got it and haven’t been able to go cover to cover yet, I LOVE what I have read and have already almost finished my first envelopic (yep, I made it up) masterpiece out of a vintage French D-Day map.  (I'll post photos when I'm done...) 

So…send ME something, and I’ll mail you something in return.  Let’s keep the theme:  vintage.  That shouldn’t be difficult.  Between all the vintage maps, postage stamps, ticket stubs, receipts, invoices, notes, photos and other old ephemera floating around, coupled with the vintage-themed rubber stamps that are all the rage right now, this will be fun!  Leave me a comment or email me at: bsparrowvintage [AT] gmail.com and we’ll exchange mailing info!

If you have anything you’d like to share or suggest on the topic, please include this, too!

P.S.  Jennie and Carolee also have an awesome blog.  Check it out!

Here's some inspiration...
Love the calligraphy...*sigh*
From: http://www.raggededgepress.com/pages/mail_art.htm



Have fun!!