Busy days, and Mail Art, of course.

#80

#81

#82

 The first three pieces of Mail Art here, I made using scraps left over from cutting out patterns for mailing envelopes. I really do like the randomness of them. The color, for me, suggest the 1920s design palette. What do you think?

#83

The fourth card, the sea, is for an exhibit in Argentina. The theme "Lo que el Delta ve." I didn't have a clue what the curator might want, but the Delta of the Tigre river was referred to, so - water it had to be.

I used an old photo that a friend gave to me as the substrate, then added the hand and the circle.

These are all standard postcard size.


You know that I don't often share photos of our grand-girl, but, these days, she's been busy making collages, using stickers. I took her shopping at the craft store and we came away with a lot of sticker books. I find backgrounds for her to use. Here she's putting them on card stock from a paper company sample book. I love how she layers the stickers, and has no concern  if the animals or letters are upside down or right side up. I want to copy her compositions!

 These are some flowers from a bit ago. I love the color and the design of them.

I had to share them with you.

Do you know what they are? I don't, but I like them.

I forgot that I wanted to show this to you. This was the post office in Duck, N.C. It was a real post office, in a crowded little space, that included all of the things listed on the sign out front. The postal worker was very helpful. He wanted to be sure I knew that postal rates were going up, which I did.

This isn't the official DUCK post office, as I think that's in Kitty Hawk, but this is the post office IN Duck.

Quaint!

Catching Up, Mail Art & More

#124

#125

 I've  been having fun with a circle stencil and water soluble 9B graphite.

I added a bit of color with water color pencils.

#126

#127

#128

Cards

cards

In cleaning up my studio table, I found cool stuff to cut up into substrates. With only one added piece, I get an interesting composition.










This collage is on a piece of card stock that fits into a First Cover envelope. I made this specifically to send to someone who likes Mary Cassatt.








Here's another composition using the same substrate as in #125.












More circle Mail Art.












Here's how I created the circle pieces. I worked on large sheet of water color paper, making circles with the stencil and the graphite and pencils.


I added water and when dry, I cut the paper into Mail Art sized pieces, Artist Trading Card pieces, and left overs for book markers.

No waste!




After the pieces were cut out, I sprayed them with matte fixative.

Hmm, I'm thinking I should do the spraying before I cut them up, oh yeah, that'd be better. Right?








This is a view of the 23221 Post Office the other day. I was sitting in the parking lot and noticed that the clouds were gorgeous! Notice the light on the side of the building had come on because the light was low. The wind blowing was nice to show the flag better.








Here's my studio table post clean up. I'm so happy that I spent the time to clean up and organize. on the left is a plastic box holding received mail. I'm pulling pieces from that to send responses. On my wall, are new inspiration pieces.

I'm happier in my studio now that I have more making space on the table.

How messy does your space have to get before you clean it up?

Jane's Post Office, and mail art update

#178

 So far this week, I'm making Mail Art using old paper - receipts from France dated 1902 and an old Paris map book dated from early in the last century I'm sure. Very fragile paper which I'm hoping will make it through the postal systems.

#179

 All of the quotes on the reverse of these are about travel.





SAVE A POST OFFICE- how about writing a note, or sending a postcard to help save a tiny post office. It's a simple thing to do and costs very little in time or money.  Read on -

#28

Jane owns the post office in her small town in Vermont, USA. It's at risk of being closed. You can help by sending mail there as the volume of mail handled counts for keeping a post office open.

You can send mail to: Jane Davies, PO Box 45, Rupert, VT, USA o5768
To see more about this, click HERE.
She'll send mail back to you.

#180

 I added the rubber stamp to each of these cards. They are facsimiles of old stamps, which I really like very much. I wish I had more of them.

 I've added this image because it's also a facsimile/replica of an old time-y apothecary set. Actually, it's kind of old time-y as we got some of it a long time ago, from a dear cousin, and some we purchased. So cool. We took it off the shelf to dust it, while our bathroom was being repainted. It's quite nice, and fits with the vintage of the Mail Art, don't you think?

Back home, catching up

 We went up to New York City to celebrate the launch of our kids new business and our daughter's birthday. A quick trip via the train. Well not quick cause the train ride is 6 hours long, but the stay was short.

Here's the old U.S. Post Office that is across from the train station in NYC. It's one of those wonderful old buildings. I think it's being converted into something else. I hope not condos!

 This is the building still under construction at "ground zero." We've been watching the progress. This time we are closer to it, down on the west side of Manhattan in the Tribeca area.

#46

I added 4 circles and a piece of paper with holes in it to this. To me, it now looks like figures on a boat with portholes. What's it look like to you? It's an altered postcard.

#46a

Someone sent me an Artist Trading Card and I wanted to send one back to them but not in an envelope. I made the ATC, then I attached it to the front of a postcard with Washi tape - my new one with stars on it. I like the way it turned out. The recipient can peel off the tape to get their ATC (which is in a plastic sleeve) or just leave it like it is.

#47

I decided that it was time for another collaged piece of dead technology to go out. I like that the information on this is unreadable, a mystery that will remain forever locked in this plastic thing.

Mail Art plus

 I am really enjoying the hole punched paper. The blue piece fit so nicely over some eyes that I'd cut out giving this dotty mail more of a narrative. The tiny square holes were already punched in the yellow paper. I wish I had a punch like that. Do you know where I can get one?

 This dotty card has a lot of ambiguity, I think. are the dots on top or holes punched. Only the recipient will know.

 The other day, we received a thank you for our neighbor, Adriana. We'd given her a gift certificate to buy books as she moved on from elementary school to middle school. Here's a portion of the note. She's a terrific draw-er. We love the way the eyes are looking to her left, and the sheer sleeves on the shirt.

 S. Churchill, in the U.K. is one of the Mail Artists that I exchange mail with. She's been experimenting with fusing plastic bags for her mail art. The one she sent me arrived in a plastic bag, which I found so funny and ironic. I was thinking I'd send the WE CARE bag to her to incorporate in her mail art, but maybe not. I showed this to the workshop participants yesterday and they thought it as ironic as I did. Maybe I'll keep this as is to show future workshop-ers.

My honey bought me some old stamps, uncancelled. I really like how they show scenes of the workings of the postal system. Those of us who use the postal systems all the time, mail artists, letterwriters, hope that there will always be stamps and mail and postal delivery. Please send a piece of mail using a stamp to someone, please oh please.

Mail Art & moving the mail

 This morning was Spanish meet-up. I decided to make today's mail art using a substrate cut from a box of Spanish cookies. You can just make out some words at the top, which say that the cookies are like the ones mama made, or something to that effect; because of that "La Paz" seemed like the right word and the "fragile" label fit perfectly.

This old engraving of the mail being sorted on a train reminded me of my visit to the National Postal Museum where I was able to get onto a U.S. Mail railway car. It was an updated version of this French rolling post office. How speedy this must have seemed when people first had mail delivered via the railroad.

Happy Holidays to all - whatever you celebrate this time of year, I hope it's festive and happy.

A chilly, gray day & Mail Art (#49)

 We awoke to a gray day. Freezing rain was predicted but looking out I saw no rain, then realized that the rain from the evening before had frozen on the tree branches. It made them look so pale and the light reflected off of them making them sparkle.

 In my yard, after returning from the post office this morning, I was able to capture the moment before the temperature rose above freezing. These little drops hung on a few minutes longer and then were gone.
Magical!

 This is the way the lobby looked while I waited on a very short line at the main post office. It was empty! I was sure that the day after a holiday, two days without mail delivery, it'd be packed. I was happy it wasn't, you can be sure.

 Here's what the main post office looks like from the parking lot. It's so official looking (to state the obvious.) What do you think, 1950s era architecture?  I do like the continuous verticals created by the windows and the spaces between, even if the entire thing not very attractive. 

Today's mail art for MailArt365 came about because I wanted to use the big veggies and the little girl, who was waiting patiently in one of my tins. I almost put too many pieces on this and stopped myself just in time. Whew. What do you think? Not too busy, right?