Some of our DIY collaborations for the wedding included the following:

Save-The-Date flat cards and envelopes designed by Billy and me on Adobe Fireworks/Illustrator and printed on Gocco. The return address was printed on the envelope flap and the barn illustration on the card was repeated on the upper left corner of the envelope. Cardstock and envelopes supply from Paper Source. Fellow crafty-lawyer-bride Jess at Fig and Plum recounts the pros and cons, do’s and don’ts of committing to Gocco craft for one’s wedding here at her blog.

Out-of-Town bags for our travelling guests. However, since all but a few were out-of-towners, we made extras for the locals as well! The bags had a wedding logo co-opted from the Made-In- China novelty item, Fortune Teller Miracle Fish. In place of “Fortune Teller” and “Miracle Fish”, Billy re-designed it with our names and wedding date on Illustrator. The logos were done using inkjet iron-in transfer paper. In each bag, we included a few helpful items (tissue, sunscreen, water), local goodies (cookies from Cowboy Cookie N’ Grub of San Luis Obispo) and a zine called “Debbie & Billy’s Guide To The Coast”.

Fan-style wedding programs. This had been a conundrum for me years ago when a friend asked me how to make these for her wedding. I had a grommet punch that I kept for fabric uses that would fix an eyelet or grommet in place, but I didn’t know how to create the mechanics of movable paper that was bound by a metal eyelet. Flash forward a few years, a landslide of scrapbooking enthusiasm, stores and tools are now readily accessible. I was looking into the products at Eyelet Outlet, and learned that the trick to making paper held by an eyelet move is to also use an eyelet washer. The scrapbooking world also revealed more efficient ways to affix eyelets beyond eyelet setters and hammers, like the Crop-A-Dile I used to bind the leaves to form the fan. The scrapbooking world has a thing for aquatic reptiles, it seems, because another tool I used to create the fan programs was a corner rounder made by the company Paper Gator.

Our wedding was held at an apple farm. To go with the country orchard theme, instead of numbered table cards, the guests’ names were printed on reproductions of vintage fruit crate labels and each table was assigned a fruit crate label instead of a number. While often no longer copyrighted, it seems (from my brief internet research) that fruit crate labels are highly collectible and borrowing (ahem) the images are hard to come by. Luckily, we found a Dover publication that contained a whole book of full-color crate labels and–biggest score of all–came with a CD of the crate labels as TIFF files! We resized them to uniformly fit on a square card and, at the reception, they were waiting on a clothesline and small clothespins for the guests.

We wanted to share in our word-loving and game-playing and decorated the wedding cake with Scrabble tiles that spelled out “Debbie Loves Billy”. Turns out there are only two B’s in each game set, so we had to borrow from two sets!

Finally, guest favors included a CD in a chipboard sleeve printed on Gocco and packages of red Swedish Fish, both containing the Fortune Teller Miracle Fish novelty.

We’re not sure just what’s next, whether another zine, silkscreen t-shirts or more Gocco prints, but we’re excited that it will be something we do together.

P3: The Postcard Poetry Project with Debbie Yee and Bushra Rehman

A Literary and Visual Exchange between Kearny Street Workshop and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (NYC)

Mondays, Feb 2 – Mar 23, 7-9pm

One night in San Francisco, outside of Kearny Street Workshop, two artists mourned the loss of letter writing as an art form. The discussion moved to postcards, the most naked of epistles, on whose limited surface words are shared with the understanding that they will be read not only by the intended, but perhaps by every hand the postcard passes through. For this reason, the artwork is often coded, an image that only the intended can decipher.

Inspired by Kundiman*, these two artists decided to create P-Cubed, The Postcard Poetry Project: A Literary and Visual Exchange between Kearny Street Workshop and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, two of the oldest Asian American arts organizations in the country. In P-Cubed, writers and artists in San Francisco and New York City will have the chance to create original works of postcard art and poetry and then exchange them with pen pals on the opposite coast. Students will explore various literary, art and print techniques with the goal of producing eight or more postcard poems during the course. The workshop will culminate in a public reading on both coasts and a publication consisting of the poet-artists’ portfolio of work.

This program is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

* Kundiman is an organization devoted to Asian American poetry.

Debbie Yee is a trusts and estates attorney, poet, avid supporter of the nonprofit literary and arts community, arts enthusiast and crafts explorer. In 2007 she was a selected Kundiman fellow and member of the 4th annual Intergenerational Writers Lab. Debbie’s poems appear or are forthcoming in anthologies and literary reviews, including Bateau, 32 Poems, MiPOesias, Barn Owl Review and Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women. She is working on a manuscript for a first book. She is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall. A native of Sacramento, California, she now calls San Francisco home. Debbie will teach the class in San Francisco.

Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure, but it would explain a few things. Bushra is a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems. Now, she performs her work regularly around the country and was recently invited to represent NYC at the House of World Cultures Festival in Berlin. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, an anthology that is taught in women’s studies and ethnic studies classes around the country. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, and she’s been featured in The New York Times, India Currents, NY Newsday, on BBC Radio 4, KPFA, and the Brain Lehrer Show. She was recently a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts where she finally finished the novel she’s been working on for the last seven years. Bushra will lead the class in New York.

Registration fee is $225. To register by check, please send check or money order to: Kearny Street Workshop, 180 Capp Street #5, San Francisco, CA 94110. Please include your full name and contact info. Or go to Kearny Street Workshop to register online.

Before: After:

So, basically I feel really very prepared for some upcoming chapbook construction challenges, and am meandering (in a more directed way) into growing { bee + spool } press. Additional I-want-thats still include a saddle stapler.

In chapbook news, I’ve made some great swaps with Logan Ryan Smith and Transmission Press, Juliet Cook and Blood Pudding Press, and Jen Tynes and horse less press with my DIY chap. I’ve just received Hossannah’s small chap Lorem Ipsum printed on bright white cardstock and clipped at the corner with a silver binder clip filled with poetry and patent illustrations. I’m looking forward to the read. Upcoming, a chap trade with Michaela A. Gabriel in Austria, whose chapbook The Secret Meanings of Greek Letters was published by dancing girl press.

Interested in a chapbook swap? Email me (replace the (at)). Alternatively, order mine here and know that the proceeds of the sale will be donated to Asian American Women Artists Association, a non-profit organization here in San Francisco.

After months of mulling it over, conceiving of it and mostly just not getting around to it, I charged forward last weekend by visiting SCRAP, hoping to find some different papers or envelopes at rock-bottom, re-use prices. The warehouse had several reams of textured cover stock in a beige-type color. Not sexy, but I thought it’d contrast well with the ream of turquoise copy paper I got at Staples a few months back for the purposes of chapbook-making and paper projects in general.

Fast forward one weekend later. I layed out and edited the interior of the booklet on Adobe Pagemaker on Saturday night, went to OfficeMax for double-sided copying Sunday morning. (Tip: OfficeMax offered color paper at the self-service copiers for the same price as regular white copy paper, but I did not partake as I’d already brought my turquoise paper). Sunday afternoon I created the Gocco-ready cover image, then flashed the screen with these Gocco bulbs pictured here as glistening still-life in the Sunday afternoon light.

The covers were printed on the Gocco using brown and pearlescent aqua inks.  Sunday night, albeit with an interlude at The Fillmore (Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks), I completed binding, with brown linen thread, an edition of 40 baby chapbooks for contributors, postcard writers and Kundiman-related folk. Other helpful project materials included a Stella.

The product specs for this little chappy, “Postcard Poems by Kundiman poets” ({bee + spool} press 2008): Dimensions 4.25″ (w) x 5.5″ (h). 16 pages.  Edition of 40.

]]> http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/gocco-joy-a-mini-chapbook-bound-and-finished/feed/ 1 http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/03/death-vice-or-culinary-tool-i-wander-what-it-is/ http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/03/death-vice-or-culinary-tool-i-wander-what-it-is/#comments Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:14:41 +0000 Debbie http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/03/09/death-vice-or-culinary-tool-i-wander-what-it-is/

Besides being a sometime writing instructor for KSW, local food writer Thy Tran has one of the most information-rich websites and blogs on a singular topic (in her case, food) around–Wandering Spoon. Her website includes a What’s This? gallery of odd-shaped objects d’ cuisine beyond the melamine juicer of our moms’ kitchens. It’s fantastic. Check it out.

Thy will be in New Orleans in June on a panel at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society speaking on the topic of “how restaurant and food businesses recovered in San Francisco post-1906.”

Precipitating Event #1: Attending the Professional Survival Weekend for MFA grads and candidates (of which I am neither) hosted by the Mills College English Department the weekend of November 10-11 in Oakland. Listening to poets and publishing industry insiders, especially Brent Cunningham of Small Press Distribution and author of Bird & Forest talk about poets and poetry as a community–where poets write poetry, publish it (their own and others) and read other poets; and Craig Perez of Achiote Press talk about having a print run of 200 or so, and disseminating them via online sales, readings, word-of-mouth and also for trade of other chapbooks in order to come across and read new work.

Precipitating Event #2: Coming across Brian Kim Stefans’ wonderful letterpress chapbook, The Window Ordered to be Made, a photo of it found on flickr (see my November 15th post on Needles and Pens, the local zine and things handmade store):

Precipitating Event #3: Poet Barbara Jane Bermeo (nee Reyes) writes in her blog this, in re a reading she attended given by Amiri Baraka: “Again, that very important message of not waiting around for someone to discover you. You must create your own opportunities, which include going DIY.” And a link on her blogroll to DIY Publishing, a blog whose subject matter is self-explanatory.

Precipitating Event #4: Having a conversation with Kearny Street Workshop’s artistic director, Sam Chanse, about using my Gocco press to do a run of 120 covers for the to-be-published chapbook for Truong Tran’s politics and poetics workshop and ready for presentation and sale at our December 7th reading.

Resulting Thought #1: And then reminding myself that during my unemployment months earlier this year, I warmed up the craft muscles and pulled out the box of Gocco supplies from the garage to print, among other things, chapbook covers for a chap of poems and art:

Resulting Thought #2: And how I pretty much abandoned the project after I started working again and how I still have a healthy stack of these and thinking, hell, these are pretty neat-o.

So, this is a call for a chapbook trade, a copy of mine for your DIY publication (or purchase–$5 gets you the chapbook and the money will go to Asian American Women Artists Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization). Email me; let’s trade!

Found: Brian Kim Stefan’s exquisitely prepared chapbook, with letterpress covers and handbound saddle-stitch binding, The Window Ordered to be Made, published in an edition of three hundred copies by A Rest Press in New York City. I’d never read his work, and likely would’ve become a fan of his poetry if it were corner-stapled on dirty newsprint, but, oh, what a lovely experience to hold this book arts specimen in my hand. 2 copies left at Needles and Pens. $6.50. A bargain.

Found: The Fart Party by Julia Wertz. A collection of comics from this former San Francisco resident. She’s funny! I didn’t think comics or zines would fully resonate with me at this stage of my life, but her work has really splashed some metaphorical invigorating saline solution into my dulled eyes.

Vital Statistics:
Needles and Pens
Where: 3253 16th St., San Francisco
Store/Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 12pm-7pm
Phone: (415) 255-1534

The DIY was mostly in the choosing of a designery paper and then the transporting myself to a copy shop.  Lamination (the key feature in an alternative desk blotter–or, more accurately, a desk protector–that will last for awhile) was outsourced to OfficeMax’s copy center, called ImPress, on Geary x Arguello (San Francisco). 

1. Select a graphic, pretty sheet of giftwrap.  Sheets are usually sized around 20″ x 24″-27″ at Paper Source.  Cost per sheet $2.25 and up.
2. Go to a multiple-service copy place like OfficeMax, Kinko’s, etc.  Ask the shop to laminate the sheet of giftwrap you have selected.  Cost of a lamination job at OfficeMax was $2.00 per foot.  ($6.00 to laminate my 20″ x 27″ sheet selection.)

• Total Effort: minimal
• Total Cost: $8.25 + tax
• Total Glee and Well-being Elicited from my cute-loving, bill-paying, desk-sitting mom (as anticipated): loads

This will make a very nice, simple, yet designery additional gift for my lucky-goldfish-loving mom for Mother’s Day on Sunday, May 13.  Also a really easy and simple way to up the designed or crafty elements of the home office.  Consider smaller-sized sheets for wipe-em-clean placemats at the kitchen table too!

Not so complicated, thanks in no small part to Adobe Photoshop (the edition that is packed with digi cameras, not even the pro-version), Wordpress (blog templates) and Dreamhost (webhost) one-click installs.