Snip & Scooch

About once a month or so, a local AUCTION company mails a flyer advertising an upcoming auction. Snip out the letter "C", move it to the front of the line, then scooch the "AU" over and the anagram now reads "CAUTION." Attach it to an envelope flap. Break out the markers and a new envelope is born. TA DA!

Tag Heart Tutorial

Here's a little tutorial I featured on my art blog a couple of years ago. I'm running it again in case anyone wants to include one in a Valentine.

Step 1
For this project you will need two tags and scissors. A pencil and ruler are optional, necessary only if you want perfect measurements. I cut these two tags from magazine pages using my Sizzix, but you could trace your tags and cut them by hand if you like.Notice I have chosen one patterned paper and one that is mostly solid in color.


Step 2
Overlap the tags as shown. Use a pencil to place a mark as shown.

Or, if you don't like marking and measuring, you can skip this step.





Step 3
Use the ruler to lightly draw a line marking how deep your cuts need to be.
Or not. If you skipped the last step, you can skip this one too.



Step 4
Draw lines from the bottom edge of the tag up to the line you drew in Step 3. You need to do this on only one of the tags. First, draw the center line of the tag. Then, draw the center lines of those two halves. (You will draw three lines which divide the tag into four parts.)

Align the two tags, one atop the other. Cut on the three lines just drawn.
Or, if you didn't draw the lines, just cut freehand.



Step 5
Weave the strips of the two tags together using a simple over-under-over-under technique.



Step 6

TA DA!

Your woven tag heart is now ready to glue into your next project.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Please leave your comments below. And, be sure to send me a link to your own woven hearts!

Today's Found Stationery Is Brought To You By...

Last night's supper! Chili beans make a tasty, hearty main dish for a cold winter's eve. And the labels from the cans are a nice change of pace from the magazine pages I usually find. One of the envelopes from today's blog posts contains these labels. Wonder whether it's yours?

Outgoing February 5th

Perhaps I should retitle this as Outgoing February 5th - MAYBE. It's only 8 AM and we already have about 5 inches of new snow. It's really putting it down out there. I'm not sure the mail carrier will make his rounds today, and even if he does....I'm not sure I'll walk to the mailbox!

All Dressed Up -- But Nowhere To Go

I was all excited. I found out about the Penpal Party and sent an email to sign up for Round 3. Then I started working on a page I intended to include in my letter to the penpal I got matched with.

Finally I got an email with Penpal Party in the title. I was hoping it would include the address and maybe some other info about my new penpal partner. Instead, the email read,

Hello friends!

You wrote to inquire about a round 3 of Penpal Party. Unfortunately the project has been shelved for the time being -- at least in its current form.

I am so disappointed. See, I even had my party hat on. Dang, just my luck.

Bianca's Giveaway

To celebrate her 100th follower, Bianca Jagoe at Goodnight Little Spoon is having a giveaway. She is including some of her awesome handmade envelopes, acrylic stamps, stationery and assorted other goodies. Check it out!

Found Stationery

I often use "found stationery" to write my letters. Letter #21 is one of those. I just finished it, using magazine pages as my stationery du jour. The letter begins on the reverse side of the page shown above. The other side is a mostly white page and those are the ones I use most often. Sometimes I do the opposite and write on dark pages with a white pen.

Find yourself some stationery today and if you don't have anyone else to write to, you could WRITE TO ME! Address at top in the righthand sidebar.

Mail Art Sticker and Stencil Courtesy of Triple A

Saving stickers that come in my junk mail is second nature for me, but sometimes they languish in a keeper pile for months. This sticker from Triple A auto club is one of those. I happened across it yesterday and was determined to use it and started looking at it. I kept staring at it trying to think of an A-A-A acronym to make it work. Then I saw it. I grabbed my Cutter Bee scissors and snipped out the cross bars of the first two A's to make the M A logo you see above. Mail Art! (You could snip the 2nd and 3rd crossbars instead to make A M for Air Mail.)
I peeled the sticker off and stuck it to an envelope. Voila!

As I was gathering up the scraps to throw away, I noticed I had a pretty fair stencil
left from the sticker backing, so I saved it too. Below, you can see the stencil and the logo I made using it. How cool is that!

World Revolutions

When I get new followers to my blog, I always click on their profiles to see if they have blogs of their own. So this World Revolutions card goes to a new follower whose main focus seems to be mail art.
The base for the card is one of those magazine subscription reply cards. The collaged paper bits came from an educational videos catalog. So, this is another of my eco-friendly cards.
I hope she likes it.

Outgoing: Numbers 11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18

Whoa, today's the 17th. And I have Letter Number 18 written. How did that happen? I'm actually ahead. For about 5 whole hours anyway.

These will go out tomorrow. Make that Tuesday. No mail tomorrow for MLK Day.

Do you see your name, your town, or maybe your zip code peeking through?