My Hello Pretty City

Thank you, I’m glad you like them! The secret for flourishing is to add just enough but not to go too crazy with them. Here is my process for making an envelope.

The first thing I do is stick a stamp on the top right corner. Sometimes I stick more than one stamp, sometimes I use stickers, but the point is that I want to know exactly how much space I have. Once I stuck my stamps, I consider what the address is. Some addresses are super long (international addresses) and some rather short. It helps to have a visual of the address as well. Here I have one for Ned Flanders which is a standard American address, a name, a street, city, state and zipcode. Knowing that the address is four lines, I draw my guidelines with pencil. I always make them wavy because I can’t be bothered with a ruler. Nevertheless, I make sure there is plenty of space at the top or bottom in case of overflow.

I always start with a large name, because this is what the recipient wants to see. I don’t make it very fancy to start with, instead I make sure the whole name is written well and readable and fits well in the space that is available.

When the name is done, I add some flourishes at the beginning and ending, but making sure it is not over the top yet. I want to leave space for the rest of the envelope.

Now for the street address, this is super important because this is actually what the postman is looking for. Again, make it readable and add flourishes later.

Leave all that tantalizing empty space for now.. put in the city..

..And state. You can just use the two letter state abbreviations, but I always like writing out the whole state especially if it’s just one short word. If it’s a long hard to spell word like Masassachussettchustetts or Pennysylvavniavaninia then I’ll just use an abbreviation. Also I always make sure the zipcode is visible, it is the most important part of the envelope for the postman!

Once everything is down, then the flourishing can start. Tastefully fill in the empty space.. it’s really hard to not go overboard, but once you have that figured out, let me know..

When the ink is all dried (I hold it up to the light to see if there’s any glossy ink spots left), I erase the pencil lines. It should look like the lines are floating! Sometimes at this point I add more stuff, but usually it should be ready to go.

Button worn in 1980, representing the fact that working women in the United States earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by men at the time. Today that figure is believed to be 77 cents.

Dang. This is so right on.

Ellen Willis on Bruce Springsteen, 1974.

James Deen vibes.

"When feminism first erupted, it was for me an extremely erotic moment, ‘cause I think, for the first time, I saw the possibility of what I was really being beautiful."

—Ellen Willis

The Real, Fabulous Knick Knacks of Fictional, Fabulous Females

Deborah Buck was the proprietor of Madison Avenue Buck House antique gallery and store for 10 years. Then the financial slump sent sales plummeting, and she had to closer her once-successful venture. But while she shuttered the business, she didn’t shutter its windows, spending six months using the retail frontage for an art project documented in the new The Windows of Buck House: Fabulous Fictional Females.

The book’s photos, taken by Jaka Vinšek, show how Buck kept her windows filled with a changing array of accouterments for 22 imaginary women. She wanted to create a pantheon of swashbuckling heroines seen from behind the curtain—a collection of commemorative portraits that evoke life, like dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. She’d been inspired by a visit to the home of Georgia O’Keeffe in the New Mexican dessert. “Everything was as she had left it, and it had such a strong voice,” Buck said. “It was a sense of connection with someone I truly admired: a woman who raised the bar on what was possible, someone who took risks with her life and her mind.”

So she came up with characters like Ink Lee, a Shanghai artist; Goldy Banks a Geneva investment banker; Berty Cardinal, a Brazilian ornithologist; and Eureka Miner, a Utah prospector. Often, the displays began with a “keystone piece” in the form of one item of furniture. “From there I created a personality collage,” she said. She began to ask questions about the woman she’d created: Who is she? Where is she? What’s she doing? What is her challenge?