While waiting for the shower this morning, I found myself (once again) looking at airmail stuff online. What is it about those little red and blue lines that’s so romantic? They just transform any piece of paper they’re on.
Searching around, it seems that no one sells a stamp to make those marks on paper, strangely enough. Good news for my wallet and my creativity: I decided to make my own.
I had a Speedball rubber stamp carving block, so I just cut a length one centimetre deep off one side of that, then made marks every 5 millimetres on one side, then staggered the ruler for the other side and made 5 millimetre marks to fall in-between the other ones. Then I carved out the space between the marks.
The first thing I realised was that the resulting lines were too close together, so I removed every second one. I tested it out, and it made a decent-looking envelope, though a little shabby, because the freehand carving made the lines a bit wobbly.
So I had a second go at it. This time I didn’t use the carving tool, but just shoved my X-Acto knife straight down into the pink rubber between the marks as if I were cutting a piece of cake. Then I used it to plane out the spaces in-between, and I got a much cleaner edge.
Yay! Now I can make my own air mail paraphernalia.