Book of Days 2012

Besides letter writing and mail art, my next favorite activity is art journaling.  Here is the front cover of my 2012 Book of Days.  I'm following along with our fearless leader, Effy Wild.  Here's a link to her Book of Days site.  The basic program is totally free.  There is also a Facebook group to join if you like.

She provides two or three videos per week where you can watch her create pages in her own art journal.  Very helpful for those like me who have a huge gap between the idea of my page as it exists inside my mind and what I actually translate onto on the paper.

I won't be posting the journal pages here, but if you are interested you can follow me on Pinterest.  It amazes me that I have 60 followers already on Pinterest, but I've never pinned anything to a single board!  Who are these people?

Security Envelope Trees

If you know me at all, you know I love to use security envelopes in my mail art.  See my post Never Buy Another Envelope. Imagine my delight to find this Christmas card in my mailbox.  It comes from Marguerite Keen of Piccadilly Post.  Check out her blog post Trees Galore! to see the much larger piece she made and donated to a museum fundraiser.

So Marguerite, thanks so much for the card and for all the other mail art you've sent during 2011.  All the best to you and all my other blog readers in the new year.

Not Your Run-of-the-Mill Post Office

Can you imagine checking your P.O. box here?  Or sending off your mail art and Postcrossing cards here? I received this card through Postcrossing.  It's from China and shows the General Post Office of Shanghai.  WOW.

Team Ginger Sure Can Run!

    

     Good thing I had a heads up from Pen Thief and LWA to keep a lookout for the Gingerbread Man because that he sure is making the rounds. 

     I spotted him at a 5K Run to benefit St. Jude's Children's Hospital.  But he wasn't alone this time.  He had teamed up with two of his cousins.  Just as I approached them, the race started and Team Ginger was out of the blocks in a hurry.  I heard the GB Man laugh and shout, "Run, run, as fast as you can.  You can't catch me.  I'm the Gingerbread Man."

     He was right.  I didn't catch him or either of his cousins.  But then, I probably couldn't catch them even if it was Februrary and they were drenched in molasses.

     This postcard sighting is off to Mrs. Schindler's Kindergarten Class at Nottingham Country Elementary of KATY, TX.  Hey, there, Limner...do you know this school, this kindergarten class, Mrs. Schindler?  If not, they must be close.

An Equation For Fun

Hmmm, that picture doesn't show up as well as I'd hoped.  So here they are one at a time.

Get your favorite pair of scissors.

Then gather your junk mail, you know, all those credit card offers, subscription renewal requests, and catalogs.  Next, snip out your address from a few.  Wasn't that nice of them to send you free address labels?  But, they're sort of plain.

So while you have those holiday catalogs and store ads from the Sunday paper handy, clip a few Christmas images.

Bring on the glue stick!

Adhere your address labels to the appropriate spots and you have holiday return labels for all your seasonal mail.  Aren't they cute!

Just the Way It Is

Yesterday's outgoing mail included these four envelopes all made from Hardees' bags.  The only time a bag from any fast food joint gets chucked around here is when food stains the bag.  Fries are usually the culprit.

Just Letting 'Er Rip

One day a couple of weeks ago I blew the dust out of my Photoshop program figuratively and out of my laptop literally and started making some address labels for my Postcrossing cards.  One of the prototype prelims morphed into the envelope you see above.  It's now on its way to a new correspondent in Canada.

This post is dedicated to Limner who had begun to fret a bit about my slackness online, but now she's over it.  She's catching fish faster than JC can throw 'em in the sack and trying out new recipes in her head and generally having a grand ole time.  I'm glad.

More Gecko Goodies

Ahhh, the Gecko. I just love this little guy. Thanks go out to Speck for sending me a nice selection of Gecko images for my project. I'm particularly fond of the one with the pencil and numbers. Must be the math geek in me sneaking out!

Two of My Favorite Words -- MAIL and ART

Just as I was getting used to loading my photos in reverse order so they would appear in the correct order, Blogger ups and fixes it in the new interface. 'Bout time. This post concerns my love of and never-ending search for two words: MAIL and ART. I prefer to cut them out of junk mail and magazines, but sometimes they are difficult to find. Then I have to resort to alternative measures. This first photo shows hand-drawn letters I clipped out of an ad for a man's shirt in the L.L.Bean catalog. I like to glue these words onto my letters, just in case there's any doubt. Sometimes my ART is brought into question.

One thing I know for sure is that it's a heck of a lot harder to find the word "MAIL" than it is to find the word "ART". That is, if one discounts the word on all those Business Reply Mail cards and envelopes. I use them sometimes and you can see a few in the photo above, but they are not a good size. All the rest I had to piece together ransom note style.

The word "ART" is much easier to spot. It hides in words like Kmart Smart, in magazine titles such as Smart Money. Even Martha Stewart helps the cause with art hiding in both her first and last names. And we all know how ubiquitous Martha is.

Then, check out all these instances of the word. I found all of them in a single school supply catalog.

Finally, with all this talk about mail art, I thought it only fitting to include a piece. This one adds to my MailArt 365 count. I'm woefully behind.

Mail from Michigan

Today I received my first letter from Kate and Sara Howarth, the sisters behind the 365 letters project. The letter traveled in style in one lovely handmade envelope. They included the Lake Huron postcard where they vacation every Labor Day weekend. Awesome mail, girls. Also, it's good to hear you are enjoying your snail mail hobby. Isn't it fun!