The last act of my Guerilla Street Art project is starting right this second! This week, we’re finally exploring the fifth act of this project which is the envelope letters arc. So, the idea is that I’m going to make different types of letters, and by “different” I meant themes. I’ll give myself 2 days and in those 2 days I will structure a themed letter and they will have themed stuff inside, but the requirements is that I got to have a themed letter (handwritten or typed), a themed zine, 2 polaroid drawings (which I will call as “photos”), 3 drawn stickers, 2 quote letterings, and one or more unique items in each envelope. And they will all use different colors and sizes of envelopes for theme purposes, and to top it off, I’ll seal each envelopes with different types of seal (like normal double-sided tape, wax seal, decorative washi tapes, etc.).
Saturday, the 19th
The first day, is when I started preparing and planning for the first envelope. Since this is the first one I’d like to make my first ever idea for the envelope themes, which is a top secret spy club, where I would use a huge brown envelope and wrote “TOP SECRET!” in big block letters in the front of the envelope. And so, I typed and printed a letter about the receiver’s acceptance to The Secret Spy Academy (TSSA), that goes like this;
“Dear future spy, Congratulations and welcome to the 14th generation of The Secret Spy Academy! We are happy to inform you that you have been accepted to The Secret Spy Academy (TSSA). We have been observing your brilliant, secretive way of receiving information that you need and we feel that you are perfect candidate to join the 14th generation of The Secret Spy Academy with 9 fellow freshmen. In TSSA, we give the best spy training and education for those who are willing to be professional spy agents in the future. The spy program at TSSA is one of the arguably most wanted at the country. Spy agencies all around the world have recruited agents from our academy, and have said it to be the best spies they have had. Our program offers after-school spy training for 3 days every week and also spy training on summer and winter breaks. Not only do we make excellent spy agents, we connect young, brilliant minds into a place where they could explore the world freely while being their true selves. We feel that you suit the picture of these young and brilliant minds, and just with slight coaching from TSSA, you could achieve your goals in no time. It is in our good fortune that you decided to apply to The Secret Spy Academy in your own free will, we looked forward to welcoming you to the club. The years you will spend with us will be the most memorable of all.”
Next, I prepared the zine for the secret spy club, which is about the club’s program. I drew TSSA logo for the front page of the zine, and wrote “The secret spy academy program” in big block letters. The first page is a little talk about TSSA and its vision and mission. The second page is the “Semester” program, which is a program that trains spies following the period of a school semester, so the spy trainee will train every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday at the nearby TSSA training center. The third page holds the information for the “Summer” program, which is when the spy trainee will train everyday in summer break. The same goes for the “Winter” program, which is explained in the fourth page. There’s also some notable alumni of TSSA featured in the fifth page. And, the last page shared the spy agencies that are partnered with TSSA, to provide easy employment after the spy trainees graduated out of TSSA programs. In the back cover, I wrote a short summary for what’s inside the zine.
Sunday, the 20th
I designed the three stickers for the spy envelopes, which is the spy academy’s logo, a magnifying glass, and the academy’s slogan which is “Be the best spy~.” And I drew the photos for the polaroid, which is TSSA headquarters and last year’s spy alumni. And the quote letterings are the slogan, like I mentioned earlier, and “The Secret Spy Academy” in stylized lettering as the second lettering card. And last but not least, the unique item I picked for this envelope is a keychain. I had this snap-in keychains, and so I drew the spy club’s logo and the generation number and turn it into a keychain. I organized the items into the envelope and sealed it with a double sided tape.
Monday, the 21st
I shared the top secret spy club envelope today, the place I hid it in is this small alley near the cafeteria, and also near the lower classes. I started preparing for the next envelope, with the theme “suicidal emo.” Don’t comment, yet. Because I do have some good ideas for this, like a suicide note as a letter and others. At first I wanted to use black envelopes to really accentuates the emo and suicidal personality, but what I found at the nearest stationery store is a blood red envelope, which is close enough, so I bought it. And the ‘suicide note’ I came up with goes a little something like this;
”Mother, father. Please forgive the sin that I'm about to commit. I'm just a flawed child, with limited abilities. Yet, I had too big an expectation of this world. It had disappointed me in ways you cannot imagine. Some things in it are still beautiful. But it's not worth receiving all the hurt. I wanted to end this, once and for all. Please don't come searching for me, because I won't be anywhere you could search for. By the time you read this, I would already be decaying somewhere far away. It will be too late, mother. And nothing you could say would ever stop me from doing this, father. So don't say anything. Just keep some of my belongings for me. Please. And Goodbye.”
Suicide notes are a little bit abstract, from what I researched. So I wrote this fully without any structure, just feelings. I wrote this using the most leaked gel pen I had, and I made my hands tremble the whole time so it looked like the writer is someone who was about to commit something deadly... Lastly, I made the zine for this envelope with the title “Everything sucks! And here’s the proof.” The zine contains 6 points of why ‘everything sucks’, which is judgement, jealousy, joyless, jaded, jeopardy, and joust.
Tuesday, the 22nd
I drew the 3 stickers for the emo envelope, which is a classic skull, styled fantasy dagger, and a little iPod that’s playing a My Chemical Romance song called “I Don’t Love You.” For the polaroid pictures, I drew a knife collection, and Mari (from ‘Omori” video game) hanging in a tree, for those who get the reference. I quote a lyric from a Fall Out Boy song for the first quote lettering, and a Pierce The Veil song for the second quote lettering. And lastly, the unique item for the emo envelope is a personally burned CD with a couple of songs from the emo era that I’d picked out, and here's the tracklist;
- Welcome To The Black Parade -My Chemical Romance
- A Match Into Water -Pierce The Veil
- Pretty In Punk -Fall Out Boy
- Do It Now Remember It Later -Sleeping With Sirens
- Sending Postcards From A Plane Crash (Wish You Were Here) -Fall Out Boy
- I Write Sins Not Tragedies -Panic! At The Disco
- Boulevard Of Broken Dreams -Green Day
- Dear Maria, Count Me In -All Time Low
- Ocean Avenue -Yellowcard
- Decode -Paramore
- Numb -Linkin Park
- Pink Triangle -Weezer
- Clush -Isles & Glaciers
- Wonderless -Pierce The Veil
After I finished making all the items, I organized them to all fit in the envelope (and mind you, they barely fits) and sealed the envelope with red wine wax seal.
Wednesday, the 23rd
I hid the suicidal emo envelope in this depressing corner near the cafeteria. And started working on the last envelope of the week with the theme ‘Cottagecore Pen Pal’. I used a small kraft envelope about the size of A5, and I prepared a brown crafting rope to wrap it around the envelope to seal it later after all the items are inside. The sender of the letter is Dorothea, which is you’ve seen my OC Webzine you’d know it’s one of my original character from the school Astrella Girls Academy High (or A.G.A. High), and so Dorothea was just writing for her pen pal and writing about her life, like what pen pals usually do, the actual letter goes like this;
“Dear friend, I'm so happy to have finally found a pen pal to write for! It's been such a life-long dream of mine, and I hope you're just as excited about this as I am, because we can share so much from this pen pal program. I'm so glad when I first heard the news of this pen pal program opening at my school, even though at first I was expecting the pen pal will be from another country, but neighboring schools are fine too, I think they started this program mainly to socialize with other school's students but I'm glad they did anyway, because I got to write for you! Okay, first of all, I'm Dorothea, you can call me Dorothy, like the character from The Wizard of Oz, and I'm in my junior year of high school at A.G.A. High. What school are you from? I'd like you to answer that in your letter! Anyways, I hope you like the trinkets I've included in this envelope, especially because they're all part of the things I've collected from nature in the past few years. I have a gardening hobby, check out Spencer, my favorite sunflower! I put a photo of him in the envelope, what do you think of it? He's the most awesome sunflower I'd grown! Speaking of hobbies, what are yours? Please let me know in the reply letter! Let's talk about school next, I have 2 amazing best friends at school, and I'm in the gardening club and in the sewing division of the art club. I think that'll be all for now, let's keep it short for my first pen pal letter, I'm still new to this whole thing anyways, so...I'll wait for your reply letter! Goodbye:)
With gratitude, Dorothea.”
I wrote that in the bubbliest handwriting I could do, which turned out well in the end and it looked nothing like my normal handwriting so I’m safe from anyone suspecting me. After that, I made the zine for the envelope, and it’s a “Dorothea’s Flower Log” that contains things like the name of the flower in English, the scientific name, what family are they from, and a fun fact about each flowers. The 12 flowers I picked for the log are hydrangeas, brugmansias, gloriosa lilies, marigolds, primroses, poppies, calla lilies, verbenas, wisterias, cosmoses, azaleas, and carnations.
Thursday, the 24th
I designed the stickers for the Cottagecore Pen Pal envelope, which is a zinnia flower, Spencer (Dorothea’s sunflower), and tulips. The 2 illustration I drew for the polaroid is a cozy cottage library, and a ‘picture’ of Spencer, the sunflower. “April showers bring May flowers” is the quote for the first lettering card, and for the 2nd I used the quote “Let it rain.” And lastly, the unique item I put in this envelope is a bag of various dried flowers, plants, and seeds. And after all the items are ready, I stuff them into the kraft envelope and sealed the first seal with flowery washi tapes, and wrap around the brown crafting rope and tied it into a little bow in the upper left corner in front of the letter. And the final touch is to put a seal wax in one of the point in which the brown rope intertwined in the back of the letter.
Friday, the 25th
I hid the Cottagecore Pen Pal envelope in a flowery bush near the school field.
That’s the full documentation of the first week of envelope arc, and it’s definitely one of the most intense act in my Guerilla Street Art project because I’m currently planning for the envelope I’ll share next week as I’m writing this, but this is definitely my favorite Guerilla Art project because it had so much personal touch and crafting in it. I don’t know, I think I will do this again soon, but instead of putting random envelopes in school places, I’d do a real public place like the city library or a nearby park bench. So, that’ll be all for this week’s post, see you next week for the 2nd week of Envelope arc! Lane, out.
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