Cigar Box Doll Bed & Postage Stamp Quilt

Love this from "Just Something I Made."  Click on Cathe's name at the bottom of the post for her blog.

Cigar Box Doll Bed and Postage Stamp Quilt

Thursday, February 24, 2011

The other day as I sat there looking at my stash of vintage cigar boxes, and my other stash of vintage postage stamps* I couldn’t help but think how they would work so nice together. Eventually, with my old box, stamps, printable cotton fabric sheets, and some digitally scanned images, I created my own fun piece of folk art- a charming little doll bed.
I began with the box, trimming away the lid. Digging into my box of vintage game pieces, I found the perfect bed legs and attached them to the bottom of the box. I trimmed off a bit of the box lid and attached the large section to one end of the box as a headboard. I used E6000 adhesive for both the headboard and legs.I gathered a load of colorful stamps, laid them out in a grid and scanned them. Here are the digital images made from the stamps, feel free to use them for your projects (just please don’t sell the images- they’re supposed to be free.) Click on each to snag their slightly larger images.I printed the red stamps and the multi-colored stamps to printable cotton sheets. I sewed the two pieces fronts facing in, leaving an unsewn section open to turn the piece right-side out. Once turned, I pressed the piece at the seams, stitched closed the hole, then stitched between each row of stamps vertically and horizontally.
Here is my tiny two-sided postage stamp doll quilt.
I created a pillow from a vintage envelope image I shared HERE and addressed to Little Miss Dolly. I printed the front and back envelope images to fabric and stitched them together complete with flap and stuffed with fill.I printed a handwritten letter image that I shared HERE to the dimensions of my cigar box and used it as the top of a little mattress sewn and stuffed with fiber fill.I tucked the mattress into the cigar box and made up the bed with the quilt and pillow.If you create a similar project, you may need to do a bit of sizing of your images in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or other image editing software to get them to the dimensions needed to fit your own cigar box or for other projects. Be sure to let me know if you make something with the stamps, I’d love to see it.*A very special thank you to JSIM reader, Tracey Ireland, that sent me all the beautiful stamps used in this project (and also in THIS fun project a while back!)

Mail as Art

 While Mum and I were out running some errands last week downtown, we stopped at the new Chandler City Hall building, which is just gorgeous.  They have moved the Vision Gallery into the building and the current exhibit is, "Full Deck:  A Short History of Skate Art."  There is amazing art, all on skateboards!  Of course I really loved the one covered in postage stamps!

 

 I also spotted these small canvas pieces, with a postage/Southwestern theme:

 I looked around my house to see what artful things (besides books) that I have with a 

postal theme, and I see this shopping bag with faux postage stamps:

 And these goodies are a paperweight featuring Big Ben in London, a magnet 

with a Japanese postal box, and a tea tin of a British postal box:

(Sorry the photo came out sideways)

My favorite is this often-used zippered pouch that holds mail art supplies when I travel 

(click for details):

I would love to have this little bag (click for details):

 

What kind of postal art or goods do you have at home?

Be My Valentine

Hello lovelies!  wanted to share some pretty Valentine images with you.  Here's our 

February pinup calendar girl (Gil Elvgren), momentarily taken off our wall to scan.

 

 

 Everybody is familiar with these conversational candy hearts.  

But have you seen them in Spanish?   

Dulce - sweet/candy, Hola - hello, Beso -- kiss, Te Amo -- I love you  

I didn't realize I had so many vintage valentines ~ here are a few of my favorites:

 

 The backs of the vintage Valentines are always interesting.  You can tell they are vintage just by the old-fashioned names:  Ned, Fred, Esther, Thelma, Leo, Roy, and Shirley.

 Pink cupcakes are definitely perfect for your Valentine:

Mail Art Here

 I've been traveling a lot for work this year, usually gone five days a week, so it's fun to get home to a big pile of mail.  I received long-awaited letters from Julie and Ann-Catrin.  Julie always sends me postal goodness, and this time she included vintage Italian postcards.  I love.  She also sent me a zine about postal mail in France, which I was delighted to get since I am never able to get in on one of the coveted RSVP mailings from the Letter Writer's Alliance, and this was one of the items from one of the mailings.  Thanks, Julie!

Ann-Catrin always decorates her envies and I think she is really ready for Spring since it's a long winter in Finland.  Her envelope has the flowers on it.

 

Ann-Catrin sent me some wintery pictures from Finland and Sweden, and sent me two LOVELY postcards:

I was de-light-ed to see Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth, in my mailbox!  The lovely Ilona (The Missive Maven) sent her to me.

 Although I'm not participating in the MailArt365, I've been pretty busy creating:

  

The stamp collage postcards are very popular with postcrossers!  I've sent the two blue cards on the right already.  One to a Lithuanian postcrosser and one to Postcard Jim.  This next postcard is made entirely of stamps of Queen Elizabeth from the U.K., Canada and Hong Kong.  I would have to say it's a personal favorite.

 

I made these envelopes from old record album covers -- Barbra Streisand, a "mail" themed record album and Future Farmers of America (FFA), which is a school organization dedicated to teaching and developing farming/ranching skills.  The "Good Luck" cat envelopes were made from flyers from the annual Japanese Matsuri Festival in downtown Phoenix.

 I made some collage envelopes:

 And some outgoing mailart to California (the movie ticket stub is "The King's Speech"):

To Idaho (The movie ticket stub is "Red" and one of my gambling vouchers from Las Vegas!):

 

 I sent a large envelope of ephemera to Mary, to help keep her Mailart365 project going.  This was a large 9" by 11" envelope -- definitely the largest one I've done: