Padding my FULL HOUSE with anti-stress mail art

Quite some time ago I got a big heavy package from Carina Granlund. It went surface so it was slow mail, the best kind! I didn't open it for a while but before my last open studio, I opened it and lots of people who came saw how I am inspired by my european, national  and international mail art friends. 

I am beyond apologising or making excuses and besides, Carina has specificaly made this mailing 'anti-stress' by packing all the goodies below in a relax anti-stress shoe pad box. (not pictured for some reason).

The title piece: Full House is inside a match box that has been painted and scraped.  The marks, the texture and the colour are exquisite.  Trust me.  I think Carina has used gesso in places and the cold, rough feel says 'time' and memories. Full House has been bolted together so that there are parts of the book that you can't read, that are tantalisingly beyond your view. The gesso lets you look through, but not completely.  The whole book is shrouded in mystery, again making me think that memories are unreliable. The pages are thick and made of collaged paper, possibly glued onto water colour paper, or even a matt board. They are irregular, as if torn carefully. Oxymoronic.

At the bottom of the box is a photo.  It's the men of the family, in a sepia haze.

In addition to the the bolted book, Carina has made me another shrouded boekie. The Riddle is a book with wordsI don't know whether it is fact or fiction.  I am led to look into a window I can't really see, to a house that I am told is red and then asked to solve a riddle.  I have an answer  that makes me think it is all a fiction. 

I have missed making mail art but I have come to see that with the things you love, sometimes they get to the bottom of the pile.  With a mail art like this arriving, the pile needs re-ordering.  My priorities shift in the sand.  Huge thanks Carina.  I began something but didn't complete, but I will.