This altered artist's card, for some artist, I can't remember who, altered with a happy face and a shell, makes ME happy. 

 I've added gloves, finger-less mitts to my etsy shop. Delivery to US only. FritziMim.etsy.com

I've even had a few people stop by for contact free pick up. woo hoo. These, by the way, just sold. 

Keeping busy!

Clouds

A new month! When did this happen?

#92

#93

#94

 The sky/water series above were created by adding circles to some photographs that a friend gave me. It's rare to have an actual photo to work on these days, right?
I never have any of mine printed. I post to Instagram, or a blog, or Facebook, and that's it.

Working on top of the photos required my Pioneer brand glue stick to get a good adhesion to the surface. We'll see how they do going through the postal services.

Here's Bizoo on his favorite cushion, which I happened to be using in this chair. Soon as I got up, he went for it. So happy!




This is a sticker collage that Z made recently. I have to scrounge around on my work table to find new stickers for her. I'm giving up Cavallini stickers even! She loves doing this and I love watching her compose the composition. She likes to layer the stickers and she doesn't care about right side up or down. I want to emulate what she does. 
"J'ai mis toute ma vie à savoir dessiner comme un enfant." Pablo Picasso

Where did the days go? It's been ages since you saw me!

#63

#64

#65

#66

 Here are a series of pieces that I've done over the past few weeks.










I feel like I went back to some on my earlier pieces, simple, only three or so bits of collage material.

Of course, a circle was added to make them a series.






















This pieces was done as part of the #CreativeSprint that I'm participating in. We were to create a piece of Mail Art and send it out anonymously, which I did.

It's like the old days for me, when that's what I always did.

#67

This one was made from some paper scraps that were lying on my table. It reminds me of cut paper stuff by Matisse. Well, sort of like that.

I've been busy posting in other locations for #CreativeSprint and for posting the incoming Mail Art for the bicycle blog.
I'm getting some nice entries for that exhibit.

Mail Art, of course, and some snow news.

#25-2015

#26-2015

Snow is coming

#32

 What an assortment of Mail Art -1) altered a card that I made from a print of my Artist Coloring Book collage, 2)used some circles, 3)altered a commercial card from our trip to NOLA - landscape beautification project, 4) made a batch of "snow is coming" cards. In between, I made some other numbers of cards. It's been fun.

The snow started yesterday about 2 pm. It was fine and continuous and stuck to the ground. I took this through the window in the kitchen (see the screen?)


It kept coming, and coming, and coming, so fine and so quiet.









This morning, the bird bath shows how much snow fell in our back yard.

See how the snow rounds things out? Softens the edges.

It's sunny now, but very cold, and, oh my, it's going to get colder.

Our city shuts down, meanwhile, in Chicago, where there's lots of snow and is as cold as it is here, my friend goes out and about with her life.

Me, I'm a shut-in - who'll catch up on responding to mail and knitting and hoping there'll be mail delivery.

What's weather like where you are?

A weeks' worth of Mail Art!

#65

 What you see is 7 days of mail art. A couple days I did more than one. I created watercolors, mostly larger sheets which I then cut into one or more postcards. I added small dots to some, and to one, a figure. I posted them to my Facebook page with mindfulness quotes because they seemed to lend themselves to that kind of thought. Being mindful.

#65a

#65b

#65c

#66

#66a

#67

#67a

#69

#68

#70

This one was made last night, very late, posted to MailArt365 blog at 3 minutes to midnight. We had a very full day! Since I didn't have time to do a watercolor, I altered a postcard.

The usual and More!

#20

 Three bits of paper and random text, what fun! I'm not sure what's going on with the baby, but it's quite an expression.

#21

I'm tearing up more of the 1906 French business receipts. Here I got a bit fancier using 4 bits of paper and a circle.

#22

I'm so surprised that the letters "J.B.G" are so bold. They are under that brown piece of translucent paper. Interesting! Scraps glued to recycled cold cereal box.

 This mural is on the side of Snake Oil Records/Recording studio. It was painted by young people in an Art180 project. It's so wonderful to see how it changes up the look of a space. I hope the kids involved go by this and feel pleased with themselves.

My friend BeeBee gave me a new Hydrangea plant, and N picked it out and delivered it to me. It has HUGE flower "petals." I painted my nails with new green polish, O.P.I. Jade is the New Black to coordinate with my plant. Having green nails makes me happy (okay so lots of little things make me happy, I'll admit that.) I now have 4 different shades of green nail polish. Is that too much?
Honestly, this silliness, nail polish, keeps me from getting too sad about some other things in life. What do you do when you feel sad and want to pick yourself up?

Mail Art and water on a hot day.

 I purchased some Louise Nevelson postcards on sale, thinking they'd be fun to alter. This is my first alteration and I really like the way it turned out. I hope Louise would have liked it. We actually met her years ago when she came to give a talk to students at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn NY,  where my husband was a grad student. I attended because I could, and she was so stunning. She had on thick false eyelashes, white lace stockings, and a turban. Wow! I was in awe.

 I received a "blank" TV from Adamandia, in Chicago, with instructions to fill the screen and send it back to her. What fun! There I am on TV! A collaborative piece of Mail Art. 
Today is the day that I do the Mail Art workshop for children at BBGB. This is so exciting!

The pool was great this morning. The water was a perfect temperature. My swimming is improving, which was my goal for this summer, among other things.
Hopefully, it won't storm tomorrow and we can get to the pool again.

Mail Art

 #7 was sent to someone in the Netherlands, not named so it'll be a surprise. I love the face on this image. It's from ceramic vase, the woman was holding a bird in her hand, had on a long dress with a flower print skirt. I could only fit the top on the postcard. I love the look, so sweet, so open, sort of surprised, happy. This might be one of my favorite cards.

Card #8 is one of my color experiments. I think this one worked very well as the small blue rectangles really do seem different, even on the computer screen.  I'll do these experiment cards periodically through-out the 365 project.  I have one more card to post from home, then on to the ones that I'll be doing away from home. I may not have access to the internet so posting may wait until early next week. My own anticipation of what I'll do is exciting to me.

City and Cité

Red and blue are the colors! Here's a display for Christmas, red artificial flowers in a beautiful display. These trees were set up in a courtyard, the lights blinked blue and white along the bottom. The red seating is in the Grande Salle of Centre Pompidou, where we saw a dance concert on Wednesday night by the Bruno Beltrao group. A fast paced choreography with roots in street dancing, hip-hop. Very athletic and satisfying. Here I am, on the Pont de Tournelle, Notre Dame in the background, in a photo by Agnese Zeltina (our Latvian photographer friend.) And finally, a photo of C's socks drying on his bed, and the college (high school) students outside waiting for their bus to take them on some excursion.

Purses for Change & Three Cups of Tea

Here are a few of my new change purses, which I'm now calling Purses for Change. If you check my shop, Fritzi, you'll see that I'm donating part of each sale of these to the Three Cups of Tea foundation. If you haven't read that book, I recommend it highly. Here's a photo of Greg Mortenson and some of the children who are benefiting from the schools built by the CAI foundation.
I had a basket full of these for sale at a fundraiser (for Obama) bake sale and sold all but one of the 15! Yay. People seemed to like that they were made from fabric that was "recycled" meaning remnants, cut-offs, sample swatches, etc. would have been tossed in the landfill fabric, which made me feel good and that I'm on the right track with them. I do not want to buy any fabric, missing out on cute current images, but I want to "recycle." I'll stick to this even if sales on Etsy are slooow.