Viva Snail Mail!

This one goes out to Dari of Papi’s Mami and her bad ass, roller derby self.

Beautiful, hand printed cards from Tall Cow.com. Check them out.

These notecards are beautiful! The cards themselves are the size of actual polaroid 600’s and the images are gorgeous. 

20 different photos in a box set, curated by Jenifer Altman and published by Chronicle Books. 

3 more weeks til Valentine’s Day, people. Last year I took part in two valentine making charity events. The first was hosted by Fred Flare.com. People made homemade valentines, which were sold on Fred Flare’s website and the proceeds went to Elder Craftsmen, an organization that assists senior citizens in making handmade crafts. Here are some of the submissions. Mine’s the one with the 2 boys in love on a bicycle. 

 

 

At Etsy Labs in Brooklyn, my friend Andrea Rosen and I made valentines that were included with Meals on Wheels deliveries on Valentine’s Day. Andrea is one of my favorite people to make valentines with because she is not only fun to be with, she’s the fastest crafter in the Northeast. Watching her blaze through a pile of paper is a sight to behold. Here’s us doing what we love with scissors and glue. 

 

 

Make a handmade valentine for someone who maybe least expects one.

Spread the love.

Well readers, its been a busy time here at Viva Snail Mail. Please excuse the infrequency of my blog posts- I have a new baby and she is the cutest parasite ever. While she sleeps I want to write about my favorite holiday- Valentine’s Day. I love it because I get to make homemade valentines and mail them to the people that I love. Not just my husband but my grandparents and my friends get homemade love testimonials via the post. But this simple pleasure requires some time so here’s your tip. Start now! Valentine’s Day is a month away. 

Over the years I have hosted valentine making parties at my house. Sometimes we have had combination superbowl/valentine making parties, since I have zero interest in football but love to cut paper hearts. Here’s me with the aftermath of one of these parties, sometime in the mid 1990’s.  Don’t let this photo dissuade you. You can be tidier than this if need be. I like to really spread out the collage materials for optimal sharing with my guests. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So break out the glue stick and scissors. Start collecting colored paper from the recycling bin. Find your paper hearts. Order some stamps from usps.com. If you scan and email me your homemade valentines I will post them on the blog. Send them to melissa@vivasnailmail.com. Viva Valentines!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My love of snail mail has been influenced by many people but the reverence for postcards comes most directly from my stepfather, Biskit, who turns 56 today, and is the second from the right in the photo above. 

Viva Snail Mail: Biskit, how and when did your love of postcards start?

Biskit: My friend Doug Zwick, before going to college went out to work on a cattle feedlot owned by his uncle in Oklahoma. He would send us back great classic postcards. The first I remember was “Saddling up Big Jack”, a cowboy riding a jackrabbit. And then a “jackalope” card.  We then got into the most mundane we could find as well, Pennsylvania Highway Interchanges and the like. Our group of friends, the Pastafarians, used postcards like a sort of precursor to email to stay in touch, with postcards being short poems as opposed to the prose of letters. I lived in rundown houses at college and would just pin the cards to the walls of my house. Anyone that came in my house would admire them and would of course send me postcards from their travels, whether far away or right nearby.  We also got into making cards from found objects, etc.

 

VSM: Did you and your friends see your postcard exchanges as a nod to any art movements or were you making it up as you went along?

 

Biskit: Short answer is no. We were not self-consciously giving a nod to anything, we just thought the cards were funny/interesting. We were both mocking the cards and genuinely appreciating them and then artists and great-grandmothers joined into sending us postcards.

 

We were definitely influenced right then by the Beat Generation poets we were reading and that not only influenced our writing on the cards, but in a way the visuals on the cards are poetry too. 

 

Those early exchanges in the 1970’s continued for many years, pretty much until email came along. That’s when Biskit’s postcard commitment dropped off a bit. He still had a huge postcard collection however, and so, due to my inquiries about the origins of his postcard love, Biskit was inspired to re-ignite the flow of postcards amongst his vast network of friends, the Pastafarians. He sent out an email, asking whoever wanted to take part in the Summer of Postcard Love to send him their mailing address. He then sent this mailing list to everyone interested. About 40 people participated and as a result, my husband and son and I received 67 postcards this past summer. 

 

This idea could be easily adapted by you and your friends. 

 

 

 

Here are some highlights from the Summer of Postcard Love:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chocolate chip production at Hershey Foods Corporation from Abe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homemade card for my son from his aunt Allison. 

 

 

 

 

Viva Snail Mail: I love this card. What inspired you to design it?

Jamie: When I decided I wanted to make greeting cards—which I’ll come to later—I decided I’d needed some photo references so I wandered the town taking pictures. After going through the shots I stopped on the payphone and mailbox and started thinking about how much more obsolete they have become since the advent of cell phones, email, texting, online bill pay, etc. While they both work as clever ideas, the mailbox in particular has a sentimental quality to it. 

As I tried to think of the greeting I wondered if we’d get to/have gotten to a time when younger generations hardly use mail or mailboxes. As they’d have no sentimental attachment to it and, let’s face it, fewer and fewer needs that require its use, they could go a long while never stepping up to a mailbox. Would their be a day when its use and purpose is unrecognizable? This thinking led to the “What is this thing?” line, as a comment on that possibility.

VSM: Why do you make greeting cards?

Jamie: Designing greeting cards solves 2 issues for me. 

First, I’m a print designer by trade and I love print, love design you can hold in your hand. It may never disappear completely but there’s a definite shift. Designers typically do as much or more online and interactive design as print design. Faced with this shift in my work, I see designing greeting cards as a way to hold onto my true design passion. I find I’m seeking that a lot. 

Second, like a lot of things these days there’s very little romance, style or grace left to corresponding with each other. Digital correspondence is mostly devoid of heart and soul. That’s not to say I don’t use it, I do. But when it comes to a real expression of anything, emails, texts and instant messages lack pretty much everything. They even confuse some things. I think the greeting card remains one of the best ways to correspond in an every day fashion. I wanted to be a part of that.

VSM: Besides sending out products from your etsy shop, what’s the most recent paper mail that you have you sent and received?

Jamie: As a card designer I tend to send out a lot of cards. When I do something new I like to send it out to a friend or family member. It feels more genuine as a designer, if I use my own designs from time to time. 

I think the last piece of mail I sent out – that wasn’t a bill – was a card-o-rama for my mom as her birthday falls close to Mother’s Day.

The last piece I received was a wedding invitation from my friend in London. She’s having an authentic country wedding. The invitation was engraved, black wedding script on a white card. No ribbons, no foil, no iconography, just a proper English invitation. 

VSM: Thanks Jamie. Viva Snail Mail!

Jamie’s work can be seen at:

http://jamielatendresse.com/

www.jamielatendresse.etsy.com

 

To kick off Viva Snail Mail’s profiles of cardmakers, I thought I would pick Albertine Press, a design and letterpress print shop from my hometown of Somerville, Massachusetts. I asked Albertine boss, Shelley Barandes, a few questions. 

The best paper I’ve received is a package of letterpress prints, part of a print exchange I participated in. It was such a delightful treat to open it up and discover all of the creative prints that each of the other studios produced.

VSM: Thanks Shelley. Your work is lovely. Viva Snail Mail!