Crowdsourcing postal drawings.

Some of you were asking me questions about my postal drawing experiment and wanted to participate in this project.

The idea is to “make” drawings with the help of the postal service. By folding a piece of white paper with a carbon paper attached to it into a normalized enveloppe using origami instructions (no glue), then posting it by mail.The letter is then processed by the mail service (and its machines) which leaves marks on the paper thanks to the carbon. When the letter arrives at destination (my home), I can unfold it and, if I have any luck, see a beautiful unique abstract drawing.

So here are simple instructions to help me with this:
You will need:

a sheet of white paper (A4 or lettersized)

a sheet of carbon paper (ideally same size as the sheet of white paper, but not mandatory)

a stamp

a pen

1. Folding the enveloppe

Follow the instructions in the video below to fold the sheet of white paper (don’t fold the carbon paper yet). This design should be straight forward. There is no real measures to follow, so all your letters will be slighly different and unique.

If you are not satisfied with this design or wish to try a different one, you can find some more by following these bookmarks. Though be careful to choose a design that will be accepted by the postal service. It’s worth knowing that sending non normalized letters usually ends up in higher costs.

2. Writing the adress

Since all we want is the drawing made by the postal service, we should write down at this point anything we feel necessary on the enveloppe before adding the carbon paper. So write my address on the front (see picture below)
And add your address on the back (so at least I know who sended it)
If you still want to write stuff on the enveloppe, now is the time.

3. Adding carbon paper

Unfold the enveloppe completely. Put the carbon paper inside (carbon facing down) and gently fold everything back into an enveloppe.

4. Post it!

Add the stamp and post it!

I promise that if I get letters from you, I will send you back one too (so be sure to write down your address). I also promise to scan and post on this blog the best ones I get.

Can’t wait to see your letters in my mailbox.