To wrap up construction of this project, I printed some instructions for the kit and applied them to the inside flap of the kit using a Xyron machine.
When I initially laid out the measurements for this project I started with the assumption that the paper inside of the kit was going to be 3″ x 5″. After putting the mock-up together I decided that I’d include a pen with the kit — after all what kind of an emergency kit would it be without a pen? To fit one into the kit, I extended the measurements of the outer shell by about 1/2″. The change provided some space for the pen on the side of the kit but because of the pen’s length I also had some extra space at the bottom of the kit.
I toyed around with fabricating a small paint palette out of polymer clay and while it fit into the kit nicely, the tolerances were too tight allowing only a couple of colors on the palette. I decided to fill the gap on the bottom of the kit with some Foamcore to provide structure for the kit but I still wanted to include a watercolor palette.
If you’ve ever ordered anything from Daniel Smith, you know that they frequently enclose a watercolor sample with your order. It’s usually their featured triad or new colors and they sample them out buy placing dots of the paint onto a card of watercolor paper. I decided to take a page from their playbook and make some micropalette for the kit that way. It’s not an ideal palette for color mixing, but hey… it’s for emergencies only.
Back in January of 2008, I was sitting around shooting the breeze with Tracy Moore and he confided to me that he hadn’t documented some event because he didn’t have a journal with him at the time. It was one of the most shocking revelations I had ever heard; anyone who has known Tracy any length of time knows that he always has a journal with him. For a while, I though he actually might have had a secret pocket sewn into his underwear to store them in. I remember making a joke — something about needing an emergency journaling kit, I even drew it out in one of my journals later that day.
As I was thinking about what other things I might like to make to trade at JournalFest this year, I thought that a few of these kits might be fun and different. I started as I normally do by using a sheet of plain bond paper to work out the measurements. Once that was done, I used Adobe Illustrator to draw the design I wanted and scaled the to the measurements I’d worked out. I printed the design out on a sheet of French Paper Company’s Pop-Tone card stock. These kits will eventually be filled with some paper so when I calculated the initial measurements, I made sure that they’d be about 3/8″ deep for the paper to fit into. I used a Scor-it board to score the card stock so that when it’s folded, it will be able to house the sheets of paper that will go inside. If you study the image below carefully, you should be able to just make out the scoring.
The next step was to trim out the areas that wouldn’t be part of the case once it was folded and after some experimentation with a couple of prototypes, it seemed like rounded corners would be a good ideal as well.
With the trimming completed, the next step was simply to fold each case on the scored lines to set the creases into the right position.
The case will be kept closed with a string and some paper buttons, similar to the ones you find on inter-office envelopes. After fabricating the buttons from some scrap I attached them using some standard grommets which pretty much wrapped up the exterior for this project.
Stay tuned. I’ll post part 2 as soon as I figure out exactly what I’m going to put inside.
One of my favorite art forms over the past several years has been mail art so I’ve had mixed emotions about the news of the past several weeks. Like anyone else I’ve had the negative experiences with the USPS and customer service. You know the story, thirty people in one with one clerk at the counter who moves like the old man character Tim Conway made up for the Carol Burnett show.
This week though, I got a surprise. I had ordered some Field Notes and although the online tracking they provide showed the package had been delivered, it was no where in sight. I called my post office and Eddie answered on the first ring, I told him about my missing package, gave him the tracking number. He told me he’d talk to the carrier and get back to me by the end of the day, I thanked him but didn’t count on hearing back. I was surprised then when a couple of hours later, Eddie called me back and told me he had talked to the carrier, who found that the package had been misplaced in the mailbox below mine and that it was now in my box waiting for me. This was great customer service and the experience made me feel worst about the future of the USPS.
Not much explanation needed… I’ve been casing in the book blocks I made and they’re just about done. These are the first four that have been completed.
