elsewhen and away: Art Mail 15

The Happy New Year packages continued, with this one from Louise (who is now back in Manila)!

Funky mirror compact, thermal house socks, a Tokyo Disney postcard, a letter, and...

This warm fuzzy cat cape, which I wore literally every day until it was no longer cold. At first I was like, aw, haha, that's cute and silly and smol and very Japanese.. But then I was like, oh man, this is the softest thing I've ever worn o_o

And it even happened to perfectly match my nails when I got it.

This is what destiny looks like.

"Wauw!"

Thank you, I love it!

Bought the Sulky Moon pin from Fukuroguro, a.k.a. Rose, a friend and classmate of Jharrod's from Tokyo I only hung out with a couple of times but really got along with, who has since been back in Melbourne doing this adorable design work. She included the patch, postcard, and stickers for free! The postcard lives on our wall now, together with others from Indonesia, Thailand, Guam, both Koreas, South Africa, Djibouti, and more. Thank you!

My BlackLab shirt from Cargo Records UK also came. Sweet! The illustration is by one of the two members. Hopefully I'll have a chance to see them live one day.

This surprise package came from Zac, too! They just kept rolling it, it was great. He found a piece of paper in my favourite colour to write a letter on (largely about Neal Stephenson and Cixin Liu's work, yas), included a postcard from California, and even crocheted a little scarf for me! The pearler bead Golducks below were made by him, too, and I knew he did 8-bit and subway map wall art, but I didn't know he could crochet. Approved.

It's awesome that he sent another copy of The Three Body Problem, without even realising that we had both read the trilogy in Tokyo. Hah! We were really sad about getting rid of so many books when we moved though (which we both saw coming, but Hannes just kept buying them new because he could afford it), and are really happy to have this one back. It fits in perfectly on our sci-fi shelf.

Yet another artist purchase I made with wild abandon because I was so stoked about having real human money again for a few months: this incredibly soft sweater from Faunwood, who, like tons of other people, I've been following and loving on Instagram. I had been in the market for a new sweater or two all winter, constantly thinking about how old and thrown-together my work outfits were, but this is what I ended up with. Whatever lol. I love it.

Here's me wearing it going through an adventure park thingy with wolves on the other side of that fence - that post is coming right up!

Now for the oversized collage cards that were originally going to be valentines, but that I didn't want to be late and also arriving right after the Christmas packages, which were also late - because in December I got paid that real human amount of money late - so they ended up being happy-our-first-anniversary/reference-to-the-wedding, Easter, and springtime-in-general packages, which were still

wait for it

l a t e

Digging through cute paper scraps, mostly from Tokyo, to work on this one for Rejon. A photo calendar by Lars and Solvig's dad and a destroyed vintage children's book by a Japanese illustrator I had found at a thrift store years ago were also involved.

Ta-da!

I'm really happy with how this one came out.

The back where the little letter chunks are is totally out of control too, very much like the collages I was doing and mailing out in Japan. Yay!

This one is NiQui's in progress. It got even bigger as I just kept on finding more stuff to include.

It ended up being a tea house!

Ah, man.. how nice were those weekend outings to Kawagoe?

They involved plenty of wagashi (Japanese sweets) and quaintness; this piece of a Taiwan-Japan train travel stamp rally brochure actually fits right into this motif!

♥(´；ω；`)♥

Also in there are a paper shopping tote that ended up here all the way from Tokyo on account of moving and not having many containers, a store flyer from Bingoya, where I bought traditional Japanese toys for my cousin's daughter when she was born, used wrapping paper, a recycled tissue box, and a few reference images like this, from the Freyja Dean life drawing lesson Rejon and I went to.

The back was a Germany calendar page, and of course, another letter.

I kind of can't believe it actually made it to her safely, because I MacGyvered a pretty crummy, extra big envelope together out of three normal ones, and completely ran out of bubble wrap and cardboard. So yay again!

Here's Angelique's, a darker one that I had trouble finding enough material for, and that I turned into a circle after deciding the upside-down heart was way too small.

This is: two of those homemade calendar pages, two show fliers from Tokyo and one independent cinema one from here, the backing a gift card I got for Christmas two years ago came on, and, wait for it: The Creation of Adam snippet there? It's from a box of Italian cherry tomatoes I bought a while back because it was a weirdly attractive (and non-plastic) container lol

And on the back side? More wrecked thrift store children's book pieces and another reference image from the drawing class (that's actually a copy of one of Freyja's own drawings), a Hamburg Burlesque flyer, a Reebok gift certificate from when we joined our gym, Daiso letter paper, and more.

I like how it turned out!

In this one I also included a short art magazine article, a film ad, a postcard, and a few stickers.

And finally, each one of these had one of these wedding photos in it, in matching onion blossom frames. Fun fact, this motif has become very Baltic-Scandinavian looking, but was originally stolen from reproduction Ming vases when they came into vogue centuries ago.

This is what I meant by "happy-our-first-anniversary, etc." when describing why I sent these when I did. Not that I need a specific reason, but when the Valentine's Day ship had sailed, I thought, oh, I'm already planning on sending something on the anniversary of the 'wedding' in August anyway, why not send the first part around our actual wedding date? But, you know. You remember

l a t e

And now for the May birthdays. I thought my friend Darren was turning 30 this year but he's only 29! Pfft. Whatever, I didn't really need an excuse to splurge on this special limited vintage-style Björk tee that I wanted for myself on the one hand, but definitely don't need on the other.

One of my Smithsonian Museum Chinese ink painting art cards all the way from Phoenix and 2004

And cute vegan sweets from Twelve Monkeys, the all-vegan mini supermarket here!

Look at this great packaging design!

Urgh, I love it! I'm also pretty sure the plastic around the rich brownie truffles themselves isn't actually plastic - it biodegrades or is somehow otherwise eco-friendly.

Of course, I grabbed him some left stickers from there, too, because they have a bunch of neat stuff like that in addition to groceries. I hope he likes it!

The other May birthday is, of course, my mom, who was born on Mother's Day, but whose birthday doesn't fall on it every year (since Mother's Day is always a Sunday). The blue butterfly card I gave to Hannes' mom for her birthday, and the floral one I sent to my grandma. They were handmade by women in need in Bangladesh, Egypt, and Vietnam; I got them from Ten Thousand Villages. They're a well-established company that works with NGO's and all kinds of other organisations around the world, but unfortunately, they only ship to the U.S.

Real pressed flowers close-up

Hand-cut and -painted papyrus closeup

Info closeup

Envelope doodle close-up

The adorable painted card I got at a quaint little Rostock gallery in a medieval church cloister complex on Andrea's birthday :B

Okay, and here's the oversized collage card pieces I chose for her. All light blue, pretty houses and the sea, a view of Rostock from that homemade calendar, various women (including Egon Schiele's wife, who was probably not having a great time tbh) and a girl. Some of these magazine page pieces also date back to the early 2000's, like those Smithsonian greeting cards.

Side A

and Side B, pre-letter :)

Last but not least, the artmail item with which I'm the happiest, the third simultaneous project I had going in March - painting this simple wooden decoration I got at the 1 euro shop.