mail love!!

the other day i went down to washington to mail a few packages, and while i was there, i signed up for a post office box.

i had a mailbox with a private company until the end of 2010, and i'll still be using them for UPS, which won't ship to boxes, but getting a box directly with USPS is actually way cheaper (i always thought it was more, for some reason!), and the mailpeople are much more pleasant to deal with. and i'll be able to get magazine subscriptions and i won't receive them 3 weeks late!! plus, i'll be able to ship AND receive at the same location! the private company discontinued their shipping service about a year ago, which meant that i had to go there to pick up, and then to the PO to mail stuff. two places to drive to, two lineups to stand in, etc...

AND, i feel confident that USPS won't disappear or close or do something else as generally annoying, so now i have an address that i can use on zines, etc, and can post publicly. yay!!

so!

wanna send me a letter, card, etc? i love mail, and i try to respond within a reasonable time frame (though i should point out the word "try"! if i'm feeling crummy, i won't respond asap, cause who wants to receive a crummy themed letter anyway?)




amy dame
PO Box 516
Point Roberts, WA 98281-0516




PLEASE NOTE:
if you're sending something more than a letter, like a swap package or something, it MUST have an invoice to show it's value. even if it's a gift, i still need proof of value to bring it into Canada. if you're not sure what that entails, please ask. few things suck more than being hassled by border guards! thanks!!

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate, and Happy Day-That-Every-Freaking*-Thing-Is-Closed to the rest of you!

Wishing you a year full of creativity, love, inspiration and truth.







(if you'd like to see the rest of the vintage christmas postage stamps and christmas seal stamps that i've scanned and posted, they're in the ephemera folder on my flickr account)



*did you appreciate my attempt to make this post pg, for the sake of the season? ;)

whew... lots of WIPS and little things!

lately i've been feeling like i'm having a hard time getting stuff accomplished. i'm flittering back and forth between projects, with not enough energy to finish all of them entirely. the past few weeks have been very busy, and though i don't often talk about it here (i completely missed blogging against disabelism day this year!), healthwise it's been a rough few months. i said last week that i was feeling discombobulated, and i think that's a very good word for me lately!

but there are some really exciting things happening! one i think is supposed to be hush-hush, and i'm cool with that in a don't-count-your-chickens-before-they're-hatched kind of way. i don't want to jinx anything!

the other two i can totally tell you about, but i'm going to save them for separate posts, just cause they're THAT cool, and cause i have lots of pictures to go along with them!


however, i do have lots of little odds and ends to show you and catch you up on!


i've been sending lots of letters, fun little ones.


like these accordion style playing card letters...




funky letters typed out on vintage ledger pages


letters with random sewing added as detail






and letters with fun envelopes, like these ones - they're security envelopes turned inside out and glued back together again.



i made myself a fancy hairclip to wear to a friend's grad, and altered a dress to go along with it.


i love the ruffle i added when i shortened it! (cause i'm really really short...)

i'm making myself a workbench for my drill press

(and not to be all conceited or anything, but the pictures i took of myself sawing turned out pretty damn hot... there are more in this folder!)

i'm totally appreciating the little movie clips that friends have made, while mentally planning one myself (i'll probably never get around to it!!)
an awesome one about trans "allies" that aren't really allies
(and totally check out bearabouttown's other amazing videos about stuff like access, ableism, and "women's spaces"


and an awesome one about personal space, consent, and the right to say no and be heard


i've been working on zine stuff and a baby quilt, making myself a few skirts (LOVING my ruffle foot lately!!), housesitting for my parents and trying to sort fabric while i was there, making curtains for my living room, and i'm working on an embroidery project which will never end, and planning so many more....



that sounds like a lot, doesn't it? it's really just because i haven't updated in so long, it sounds like a lot when you smush them all together into one post! plus, a bunch of them are still WIPs - one day i'll finish something.

the most incredible mail day

i received a fabulous package on monday, and it made me so happy. i ordered some zines from the ephemeral mailbox museum and it was such a lovely package.

i wrote up a huge description of it the other day, and then it got eaten by my vicious computer (in reality, more a comedy of errors in which the cat sat on my keyboard at the exact moment that the draft auto-saved), and it's taken me a few days to recreate it.


when i opened the envelope (which was decorated with lots of neat images and stickers!), this is what was inside. some cards, a very cool little b&w pin, a little skully hair clip, a super sweet letter, a copy of the mini-zine go by bus and the fabulous leopard print package, tied up with string. the cards are ads for www.parcellpress.com and for ms.films; DIY guide to film & video, another project that niku does. go by bus is an art zine, all colour copied collages with bits of writing mixed in. it's super lovely, and even has a teensy picture of clara bow in it (an awesome surprise!).


i opened up the leopard print package to find more packages inside! there was a the zine "pneumatic catalog", which is lovely i'm willing to forgive the american spelling of catalogue, and two cellophane envelopes holding more goodies. pneumatic catalog is an art zine made by a group called the scrappy zine co-op in austin, tx. it's all colour copies of 25 original pieces by 10 artists and zinesters and it has a tiny photo album tucked into a library style envelope inside the front cover. the photo album is titled "my family album" and is full of images from vintage yearbooks, etc. so gorgeous.


inside one of the cellophane envelopes was the zibe "last known address", which was written for an art zine swap. it's a zine about niku's move to austin, other moves she's made, houses she's lived in, and what moving and the various houses have meant to her. it's full of typewritten thoughts, hand drawn doodles, rubber stamped images, collaged bits and found images. paperclipped (with cool stripey clip) to the back cover are a few sheets of paper with stamped images on them, and tucked inside is a cute little envelope made of an old map. inside the envelope are little art stamps that either say "last known address" or have neat little images on them. the zine also comes with a seperate min zine which niku wrote about a trip to austin that she made before she actually moved there.


the last cellophane envelope held the art zine "postal curiousities and delights", which is a gorgeous zine in which niku talks about the important of mail in her life. it's typed on an antique typewriter and is full of collages, stamped images, old postal stamps and more goodies. it's a really amazing zine, especially considering the amount of work that goes into assembling each copy! the envelope was also full of little bits of ephemera from niku's collection, some of which i used the day after receiving them, i couldn't resist!

all in all it was an incredible package, and i think my aforementioned i've-never-met-you-but-you-seem-super-cool crafty crush has developed into adoration!

(please note that bits of the descriptions came from the etsy shop!)



in other crafty mail news, i sent out a bunch of packages earlier this week, and most have been received, so now i just have to get around to posting everything i made! i've also been receiving lots of goodies! halloween postcards from the postcard swap i'm in on craftster, and halloween ATCs from the halloween atc swap i'm organizing on craftster. i've envisioned an awesome way to display all the halloween atcs, i'll be sure to post it if it actually happens!