Today is my boyfriend’s birthday, and I spent a few minutes earlier this week hand stamping some plain brown wrapping paper with this triangle design (which some of you may recognize as the Zelda triforce symbol). I used a small stamp I hand carved from a piece of printing linoleum, and a regular old stamp pad from the office supply store. It’s not a very complicated project, but I hope to do a DIY post here on the blog sometime soon. (UPDATE – I posted a DIY for this project here!)
I kept telling you readers that I would be sharing some of my own snail mail one of these days! Well, the day is here. I sent quite a bit of snail mail this week, a handful of postcards, a few letters, and one poorly timed parking ticket penalty (whoops!)
Supplies rundown, from left: SF MOMA postcard from the Buckminster Fuller show, envelope purchased at Urbanic Paper Boutique, Bizarre Baseball Injuries postcard from Left Field Cards, parking ticket, envelope purchased from Paper Pastries.
I also sent a small handful of Pantone Postcards!
Love the strange forms in this “Fungi” silkscreen by Leah Goren. All her work is great, and you can see more in her shop. She makes some really fantastic clothing, as well, with some of the most interesting patterns I’ve seen lately.
*Print of the Week is becoming a regular feature on Cotton & Flax, showcasing artists working in traditional printmaking (eg: silkscreen, linocut or woodcut, lithography, etching, etc.). I’ve decided to start posting these features each Friday, as an end of the week treat. If you have a suggestion for another artist to feature, I’d love to hear them!
Here’s another peek at some of the pillows I’ve been working on lately. This is one of my favorite patterns, and the one that has sold best whenever I sell my work at Renegade Craft Fair. I’m hoping to have the shop open soon, so I can add the last batch of the items from my 2011/2012 collection. Excited to move on to new patterns for the 2012/2013 collection, but I have a feeling this pattern might be one of the ones that I keep around for another year.
As you may know, Cotton & Flax is a new venture for me. I’ve been making textile goods for a while now, under my name, Erin Dollar. You could usually find pillows and tea towels in my Online shop, right alongside my fine art offerings (prints, drawings, and the like). I decided earlier this year to separate the textiles into a new business, and to start building that business from the ground up. It’s been a few months of working on the back end of things (bookkeeping, finding new suppliers for fabrics, getting my home studio better equipped), but I am finally getting back to the stuff I really LOVE: printing on fabric, and sewing.
So it was much to my surprise that in my haste to get back to making things, I made a couple silly cutting errors while making some pillows yesterday. They are still perfectly great, printed, sewn, and finished with the same care, just a little more plump than I would normally have them look. It’s strange though… I kind of prefer the outcome! Normally I sew the pillow cases a little larger, but I think I am starting to like the more full look these little pillows have.
All you artists/makers out there: have you had any happy accidents while making things lately?
Just a little roundup of some nautical snail mail supplies!
1. Whale Card by Banquet 2. Happy Birthday Matey from Egg Press 3. U.S. Merchant Marine from USPS 4. Nautical card from Paper Source 5. Beach Stamp Set by Yellow Owl Workshop
