Mail Art Monday! and more.

 Beautiful lettuces were available at the farmers' market on Saturday. I loaded up on them. I put them into "green" bags so they'll stay fresh for our holiday fest.
This is the market I went to at St. Stephen's church. It's quite convenient and will become an indoor market in winter. Yay. Fresh, local, seasonal veggies, and eggs.

I have to share my Japanese Maple tree with you. It's so brilliant, I mean like for real ELECTRIC brilliant. Isn't it beautiful?














I'm getting back into my pens, cleaning them up - I've mentioned this earlier, and now I've indulged myself with 2 new pens. Quite inexpensive ones but they write nicely. The larger one is a Lamy Nexx and the smaller one is a Pilot Petit with green ink in it for the moment. I do like using fountain pens but they do require maintenance!

#325

 Using reproduction Victorian scraps on vintage postcards is quite fun. It's kind of like Tiny Town someone suggested. Perhaps these kids are on their way there. What do you think?

#326

I like the incongruity of the kittens playing with a bowl of gold fish amongst the cacti, and the girl and her kitten having a picnic on the lawn.

#327

#328

 Here I'm using a new postcard of an old painting paired with a REAL vintage Victorian scrap. An odd series of kittens dressed up, and in this instance, holding a toy bear. My honey got the in a flea market in Paris, I think.

#329

Here the kitten is wearing clogs and a fez. So odd, so odd. He's strolling across a vintage landscape postcard.
I have more of these, so you'll be seeing them again.

Catching up on Mail Art midweek, and a bit more.

#320

#321

#322

 I'm happy that I took the time, one evening to just sit still and cut out some of the Victorian scrap repros that I have. This makes it so easy to just find the right vintage postcard to set them into.  I'm happy with this lot of four, how the figures fit nicely into the view.







I posted #322 on Facebook and someone looked up the original image, found the postcard on eBay! Oh my, it's got a bit of value but I think it's been made more valuable by my making it into Mail Art.

#323

What do you think? Should I spend time researching which of my vintage postcards might have value? Like $3.29 usd, then scan both sides and post and then mail if I get a sale, spend the postage and time, and then the % to eBay?
What do you think?

#324

 I like the way the color on the Victorian scraps works so nicely with the color on the old postcards. Oh I'm feeling so positive about these. They remind me of my Tiny Town days. 









This card is so clunky to me. I was in a rush. I had the Victorian scrap and the piece of paper with the hole on my table top and just went with it. Clunky. I added some text, which sort of helps. Some days are just like this. Clunky. Have you had Clunky days?




On a cheery non-clunky note - here are the babies. Zinn was 8 months old 2 days ago and N. did a photo shoot of her in his studio. It's about time she got to play with the tools of the trade!  And there's Bizoo, sleeping on the sewing table, near my gift from Erni.

Bizoo

Zinn 

A Shameless Plug!

Body of Evidence

A Shameless Plug: My honey is celebrating the first anniversary of the creation of his Body of Evidence  Book Art. 

This is quite exciting and because of this, he's offering 10 of them for sale now in advance of the holiday season. They are amazing, I must tell you this. Really, they are, and I wish you could all see them in person. Check them out at his new site. The link is HERE.  And

SHARE with others whom you think might enjoy seeing this art work.

You can see more of his amazing work on his Facebook Fan page, and his website.

Shameless plug ended.

when I open my eyes in them morning, Bizoo is standing guard.

Mail Art, Slow Art, Postcards & Pens

#319

 I just did a little experiment and it worked. I couldn't use our scanner in my usual way as C was at his computer. I put this piece of Mail Art on the scanner then did some poking around on my computer and figured out how to scan wirelessly!! Woo hoo! No more waiting to scan. I'm "high-fiving" myself for this discovery.

Here's a heads up to everyone around the world.
Slow Art Day 2014 will happen on Saturday, April 12th. Check the website here to see if there is something happening in your city and then register to attend. It's so fun and it's relaxing. I'll be hosting at VMFA again, and looking forward to it. I already have people signed up. Yay, early birds.

Spurred on by seeing many of PostMuse's pens, I cleaned up some fountain pens that I have and did some testing to see which of my pens are still good. Here are some of my pens and pencils. Do you recognize any? There's a Japanese brush pen, some inexpensive Waterman pens, my favorite Muji fine point (.38) pen, and a  mechanical drawing pencil (one of several.) My new favorite, however, is not in the photo. It's a Lamy Safari, pink, fine nib fountain pen, with purple ink in it.


I had a super fun treat this morning. I was one of three judges at the Old Dominion Postcard Club exhibit and sale held today and tomorrow at John Tyler community college in Chester, VA.

Here are two of the display boards that were to be juried.  Boards had themes like Views, Greetings, Topical, etc. It's so interesting to see what people collect and treasure.

Here's the display corner and a portion of the many vendors with their cards. Check out the Facebook page of the organization here.

As a thank-you, the judges received a wonderful book - a history of motels along U.S. Highway 1 through our area - via Postcards. 
If you have any interest in postcards, mail, history, or learing about a fun hobby, check out your area for a postcard show. They're all over the world.

Mail Art, a question, and some other stuff

Bizoo

Z

 Bizoo was in C's studio lying on some tissue paper. This was acceptable as he wasn't tip-toeing over the art work, supplies or tools that are everywhere.

Z's cute face captured on a recent walk with her Pa & C. The hat was made by Great-Aunt Phyllis. Happily she likes hats since it's been really chilly here.

#315

This is a view of the wall in the studio in Paris, showing all of the altered Mona Lisa cards that I made back in the winter of 2012. I still have these cards. What to do with them? Hmmm. I was going to scan and post, then mail out, but do you think I should try to find a little venue to display them first?
I need some input on this.

The little Victorian children are on an OLD French postcard showing Mont St-Michel. They love the miniature sheep!

#316

This was made after I returned from Washington DC and my visit to the National Postal Museum. That's an old Metro card, a photo of Owney, the postal dog, and some other images related to the P.O.

#317

This is a memory piece using some paper from one of my grade books and some torn bits of art work. I discarded two grade books that I had from 2002 & 2003. I looked at all the students names to see how many I remembered and hoped that they were all doing well. Then shred shred shred, gone!

#318

Some more Victorian scraps. I cut up a bunch while watching TV one night. We usually don't watch much but have a couple of series we follow. I can't just watch TV.

#310

And here's a cat that reminds me of Bizoo, waiting on a vintage postcard bridge.

And some related to vintage postcards news: I'm one of three jurors at the Od Dominion Postcard Club show tomorrow. Bad part, I have to be at the venue at 0830, and it's not close-by. More on this next post.

National Postal Museum, Mail Art, and more

 On Sunday, I took the train up to Washington, DC, a lovely 2.5 hour ride during which I got to visit with some friends heading to NYC.

I was going there to meet up with some Mail friends. One I'd met before but not the other two. This was very exciting to me. I'd "known" these people for many years through correspondence.

One is PostMuse, the other is Missive Maven, and the other is my friend Juli.

We met at Union Station, had lunch, then headed over to the National Postal Museum. The new Stamp gallery is AMAZING! We were, of course, like kids in a candy shop!

PostMuse had all of her fabulous pens with her and Juli got to try out quite a few and I came away thinking that I needed to increase my collection of pens. Neither Missive Maven or I carry our pens with us. I'm always afraid that I'll lose one of my favorites. Do you have a favorite pen? Do you carry it with you?

We got to take home stamps from a whole bunch that were on a table just waiting for us to play with, as you can see above. We were even provided with cool envelopes to take them home in.

There were lots of postcards for us to take home as souvenirs and we did! Like I need more postcards, right? Here's what I took home. You'll see these in the coming days, altered, as Mail Art.

Later in the day, Melissa of Craftgasm met up with us. I'd met in her NYC several years ago at a huge craft fair. She now has a shop: ANALOG, stop in if you're nearby. It's full of vintage goodies and mail related items. 

#311

Now to Mail Art -  I've decided to add Victorian scraps to commercial postcards again. I love that a new narrative is created with the addition of one item.

#312

#313

#314

This card was created while at the National Postal Museum using stamps provided there. I was at Mecca, as Juli noted when posting on fb.

Here's Bizoo interrupting my work the other day. He now covers my entire keyboard. I should put up a comparison photo from a few months ago. This cat is HUGE!

  I was quite delighted to come up on this bicycle and it's sweet shadow.



What more can I say about my trip to D.C. except that is was like a wonderful dream, to get to spend time face-to-face with people I've corresponded with for years. I felt like I was with old friends, and I was. 

Celebration! Mail Art and More.

 When we celebrate events, we offer congratulations that we've been able to reach that particular time in our lives. I celebrate a lot - besides the usual things that people celebrate.

I celebrate being able to make things and share with others, I celebrate having babies in my life, I celebrate being alive!

#308

#307

#309

In Mail Art this week, I celebrate the life of my friend, who is no longer around. I inherited her photos and recently, while going through papers, found photos of her as a baby and small child.







I celebrate her life. She was a poet and a visual artist. 











She is missed.

Here's Bizoo, who came into our lifes unexpectedly last spring. His mother was rescued by a friend and she did a good job raising the litter. Bizoo is friendly and clever. Too clever at times. And big!





And, of course, our baby girl! Zinn has taken to making this face when having her lunch. Her mum thought is was so cute and fun that she took lots of photos of her like this. Mwah! Big kiss for you! She is cause for celebration, that's for sure.

#310

More catch up, before the time changes....

 My neighbor decided that a Halloween party was in order. I don't like to do costumes, so I dressed as WARM because it was very cold the night of the party. Beetle Juice is played by my honey in a costume created by our son a few years ago. It was quite effective

#303

More Victoriana, some French and some Italian text on cardboard from a cereal box.

#304

I treated myself to some new Washi tape. Here I use it merely as a design element and not in any narrative context. 

#305

NEW, this card, however used OLD elements. The paper scraps are from an old book.

#30

Minimal - a circle, some old paper, and four random words.

This is another nail polish color that I like to wear in the fall. I've been very careful about polishing my nails. It's like a meditation, waiting for polish to dry. I have to be quiet, not move about, be patient.