Mail Art...also feat. My Apartment

Well, I uploaded the photos in the wrong order, and I'm too lazy to go back and change it, so I suppose the title of this post should be "My Apartment...also feat. Mail Art." Anyway, above, we have a picture of a tiny corner in my kitchen...a bowl (in my favorite color) holding bag clips from IKEA, and a Cookie Monster cereal bowl that was mine when I was little. There is also a
little ticket dispenser I found the other day that I thought was cute. Moving on....
A wall, also in my kitchen. I collect vintage kitchen linens, aprons, and toy dishes, some of which I have on a little shelf. They're cute and useless, but I like them.
THIS is the mail art I was talking about. The other day, I picked up a book at B&N called "Good Mail Day", which was this awesome feature on Mail Art, which is basically any kind of art, particularly art that uses recycled materials and old junk mail to create NEW mail, which you then send off and when someone GETS your art, they mail you some of THEIR art back, and it's kind of like a pen/art pal thing. The picture above is the backside, and the one below is the front.
Some stuff was vintage - an old science book, school supply packaging, a French science primer, and retired post office rubber stamps. I think the rest of it is just out of a magazine, some random office supplies I had lying around, and a Chinese newspaper I picked up at the market the last time I was in Austin. I was excited because that little post card took me about sixty seconds to make and I'm already working on more. It's surprising that random collage seems to be the medium that I enjoy the most. Just because you're creative doesn't mean you can paint. I can draw, but I'm awful at painting....now, I know I am even better at junk collage. Here are the steps:

1. Throw a bunch of random paper junk into a basket.
2. Find a 4.5x6 card, or make one.
3. Close your eyes and grab something out of the basket.
4. Get a glue stick and smear glue on the back (screw gel medium).
5. Stick the junk on the card.
6. Repeat until card is full or you feel relatively satisfied.
7. Take vintage (or new or whatever) rubber stamps and stamp randomly on the card
8. Draw a little bit, like a funny monster or something, on the card.
9. Place address labels and write addresses legibly.
10. Adhere postage.
11. Easy Peasy.
    

And here is my smirky face, happy that I have made art out of junk, and knowing that this means I now have a perfectly legitimate excuse to 1. keep junk, 2. go through other people's junk.

Life rules. :)