My Mail Art

This is my first and only attempt at mail art done for an exchange at the end of 2007. My partner's theme was either Snowmen or Christmas (I forget which). I believe I used 14 ct light blue aida because I thought it would hold up better and I wanted the fabric to be a little stiff and hardy.

The snowmen design I used are from a Sanman Originals freebie called "Kiss for Baby" which I adapted. It can be found here: http://www.sanmanoriginals.com/free.html

I love their designs and I could not resist adding some blackwork snow flakes in blue metallic DMC and the holly border in green over dyed plus some seed beads for the berries. I found lovely Christmas fabric with gold on a deep navy in a quilt shop which I loved. The entire stitched piece is lined with the fabric. I picked up the snow flake buttons at Michaels and just could not find any snowmen carrot noses which I liked. I made my own from orange felt & was pretty pleased with how they looked compared to the alternatives.

I found the green leaf straight pins at JoAnne's and boy do I love those. I have not been able to find them again so I wish I had picked up more than one package. I used stiff hunter and navy felt to form sleeves on each side which gave the whole piece some substance. Once I stitched those piece in place, the actual envelope took shape. The whole piece folded is the width of a legal envelope but it is a little taller. I blanket stitched 2 felt hearts into a scissors keep and attached to one side. I love the look of piping so I used Glissen Gloss Cordessa around all the edges. I hand finished everything and no glue was used anywhere. I placed some little goodies inside and closed with the cord loop on the snow flake button.

I then basted secure with white thread (to be removed once received) and for good measure I placed in a ziplock. The post office hand stamped and placed back in the ziplock. It arrived safely into it's new home. I do have to admit that this piece took a bite of time to put together but it was enjoyable. I was told that my piece is not traditional mail art and that sort of pleased me. I actually never know what I am going to come up with until I'm done.






Thank you for looking and commenting on my work. I love sharing my ideas and I have been so inspired by my stitching friends and their blogs. Thanks to my friend Patty for her photo editing skills, she's the best! Some of my stitching pals are interested in mail art so I thought they might like to see what I came up with when I tried it. I really enjoyed it and will probably do another piece one of these days.