Mail Art and Mother's Day.

 Back to my old "tricks" with Mail Art collages. I found some left over scraps from a previous series and used them to create two new pieces. They remind me of landscapes.

The random letters spell nothing but with the addition of a question mark and en exclamation, wow, they sure do seem to be telling us something.

 I think this one is a particularly strong landscape. Alien, with so many suns in a black sky. What do you think? Evokes landscape, right?

 I made cards out of the photo that I posted on Facebook of my little arrangement on my porch rail. People thought these were small, like salt and pepper shakers, but the cactus is a large cookie jar in reality.

People gave me nice captions for them.
So I made up the postcard and sent them out to people with their caption on the reverse.

 I made lots of cards, so here are a couple that I added text to, making my own conversations.

These strike me as quite amusing. I have more cards to work with so you might see more examples of my silliness.
If you'd like to receive on in YOUR mail box, let me know.

 A friend asked me if I'd like some old stamps and of course I said, yes. BUT I got something even better than stamps, though I did get quite a few of those. What I got lots of were first day covers! I don't know if they have monetary value, but for me what a treasure trove for Mail Art. Here's one envelope that I changed up a bit to send out to someone. I popped a card saying "Creativity is a Practice" into the envelope so it wouldn't go empty.

Today was the American holiday called Mother's Day. It's been all changed up from the original idea of it, made so commercial. I never required that my kids celebrate me on this day. I felt pretty much honored on a regular basis year round, but it's nice day to be out and about. Every year for a long time, I've sent my kids cards on Mother's Day - if not for them, I wouldn't be one. But now we have a little grandgirl, and I like celebrating this new life and our DIL. We walked to Carytown where Z went to her favorite restaurant for her usual, a mini-baguette. She walked lots, amazing how fast she goes. We were exhausted but she still had energy.

So back to the First Day Covers: do you know anything about them, did you ever collect any? What did you do with them?

Mother's Day

This salt and pepper shaker set belonged to my mother. I played with it as a child. When my parents house suffered damage in the 1994 Northridge, CA,  earthquake, I was visiting them. During clean up, I found these undamaged and told Mom that I was taking them home with me. I'm happy to have them, they remind me of my Mother.

 The modern holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother in America. She then began a campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday in the United States. Although she was successful in 1914, she was already disappointed with its commercialization by the 1920s. Jarvis' holiday was adopted by other countries and it's now celebrated all over the world. She specifically wanted it spelled as a singular possessive noun so that each family could celebrate their own mother. 

Mother's Day, Mail art sent and received and more

 Beautiful Sunday, perfect for a drive to our friend's pottery open house. This is the annual Mother's day trek that N and I make.

 Our friends have a beautiful garden and we love taking photos of their flowers as soon as we arrive.

 The scent of their roses is wonderful.

 They've got tons of these Irises.

 This dove is #159 and I used some of the paper tape, my first try out. Liked it, more to come with tape! This little fellow is flying off in today's mail though he was created yesterday.

 Today's mail art is going to "Make a Spectacle of Yourself" the mail art call I did for Carytown Optical. There's still time to send in your entry.

 This is a piece of mail art that I received on Saturday, from Dean in France. It's part of a cardboard box, with a painting on the reverse. It's amazing to me that this made it all the way to me in the USA from France, as it's sort of a flappy, loose item. Amazing. Meanwhile, my little package sent to the U.K. never made it. It's so interesting to see what gets around.

This is a lovely sight in my neighborhood. The mounted police. I heard them before I saw them. We had a brief chat as they passed by and then I thought, oh I have my camera with me, and by the time I got it out, we get the back end. So it goes. I love the sound, clip clop clip clop, so old timey.