Like a dream - February in Mexico

A Perfect cactus!

View from the terrace

Terrace view

 We had a wonderful two week vacation in San Miguel de Allende.
 Pasamos dos maravillosas semanas en San Miguel de Allende.

on the terrace

Mail Art on Cactus

 Here are a few photos of the house we rented and some of the Mail Art that I made. I wanted to take that cactus home with me.

La casa que alquilamos fue perfecta para nosotros. Luminoso con luz y una pequeña piscina/alberca climatizada con energía solar para relajarse.

Mail art on cactus

Mail art on cactus

Mail Art, a blatant promo, and something else.

 Yet, another Cactus and Lily card. After I took this photo of the card, I "cancelled" the stamps with a rubber stamp. It looks better with that addition, but this is good, too.

 I made this collage to send to a friend, not that she needs a reminder to enjoy!

 Here's the cactus with a new "friend." Lily has gone the way of cut flowers. What would be a good caption for this scene! ha ha ha

 Bizoo keeps watch while I sleep. I opened my eyes to him the other day - I grabbed my phone and caught this. "Treats, I want treats!" I can read his mind!

BLATANT PROMO -
So the daily practice of making a skull every day for a year, set my son on a path that grew into something he didn't expect. Part way through he got a book deal - which became his first book SKULLS.   Since this book captured less than half of the project it was a dream of Noah's to have a book with the entire year's worth of skulls. Now, that's going to be a reality.
A new SKULLS book has been developed and it's on kickstarter now. It's going to be so good. If you like skulls (and we all should since we all have one) or know someone who does, then -
Be a supporter HERE.  

A bit of a break, now Mail Art & More....

 I made another of my Cactus and Lily series.

I have lots more of these cards, so I'd better get busy coming up with "poetry" for them.

I was inspired by seeing some collages made with old papers. I made a few like this the previous week, too. Very satisfyin.

 I have a very old, very falling apart, plan of Paris. The paper just about crumbles as I touch it. The colors are so nice.

 I made this specifically for Jo Maeder, the author of a book that I read recently - When I Married My Mother. It was a lovely memoir. I decided to send her a collage using one of my friend's baby photos. Other people photos, what to do with them? Make collages, of course.

Here's a lovely surprise. Many of my long time readers might remember The Shelf! Well, here's another one that appeared on a pole at the end of the block down from our house. It's very neatly constructed which leads me to thinking that it was made by the dad of the little boy living a few houses away.

I put a couple of things in it.

The original shelf is up again, after a brief period of being away. It's better than ever, and more sturdily attached to it's pole. You can see it in my archives searching under "shelf" or "elflog."

A couple of Friday's ago, we stopped in at the tango dance at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. I took lots of photos of feet that night.

Besides the regular dancers, a couple of professionals from Argentina did a demonstration of fancy dancing. It was quite fun and I'm thinking maybe we could try to dance Tango.

Do you dance? What do you do, ballroom Tango, Salsa?

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?

#171 & 172, and more

 Here are a couple more of my altered postcards. Tape and words really change things up.

 I'm not as pleased with the composition of this one. I think another strip of tape might have been needed but I decided to stop myself.

 Yesterday, I walked to the mechanic's to pick up my car.  I guess I should walk more, as it helped my back feel better. 
Here's something I saw on my walk. I'm always surprised to see cactus here. This one is lovely.

My son and Ndil's friend Carra came over yesterday  and strung our tree with lights. It's so pretty. We turned on the lights when it got dark out, and "ooooh, so pretty."