The Girl

In front of a scene.

 I can't remember what artist painted this girl, or the era it was painted in, I can't give credit, which bothers me, but I like her a lot and had fun trying her out with different backgrounds.

I'm still having trouble, after all this time, with my ChromeBook and still regretting my decision to be frugal, and NOT get the Apple laptop. Oh well. The struggle to get images up continues.

A travel scene.

In Mexico!

Some color.

Brighter color is nice.

This deep color is nice, too.

What do you think? Should I keep going with this girl?

The possibilities are endless, to state the obvious.

Let me know what you think?

Patterns

I started playing around with the Layout App on my phone for the first time on a flight home from somewhere, maybe Mexico. I was totally taken by the possibilites of making patterns. Collages in a different way, cut and paste in a different way.








Since that first times, I've played around with lots of my images to see how I can change them so that you can either see
what I was working with clearly, or the
original image is so changed you have no
idea what it was.

I've been finding this to be very meditative.

And I was especially happy to see them changed by being enlarged, printed, and hung up along a street in Kathmandu, during the most recent MicroGalleries event.

Sometimes, I think I'd like to create fabrics using these patterns, or wall paper.

What do you think? Other uses for them?

What was I doing for the last month and a half?!

Here it is, 2016 already and I'm just realizing that I haven't posted any new Mail Art in a long time. So here goes, I'm playing catch-up!

2015 - #137

2015 - #138

 I have no idea what happened to 139 through 144! I made them, I sent them, but what do they look like?  Oh well.

2015 - #145

2015-#146

2015 - #147

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!

A new year!

#1

 Happy New Year!

The holiday season has come and gone and my wrists no longer ache from production knitting, and a new year has begun.

I decided to grab some pieces out of the tin of colored paper. My grand and I have been making circles so I have a lot of paper with holes punched out of them. Layering them makes for a lively piece of Mail Art, I think. 

#2

 Working with this old colored paper is fun but frustrating in that I have to keep it really clean as it marks easily and if glue gets on it, it doesn't clean up nicely. Oh, am I a bit too precise here. It's ONLY Mail Art! And I noticed, when we saw the Matisse Cut Out show that he wasn't precise or neat. And his work is so amazing!

 Our trip to New York City was really good. We saw that Matisse Cut Out show at MoMA, and M took us to the Noguchi Museum in L.I.C. after we went to PS1 in Queens. Really liked both of those museums. My first time for the Noguchi.

The weather was okay, not very cold, though rainy the first couple of days. But who cares when shoes are bright!

This is a view out a bathroom window in PS1. I was on a quest for boring photos for the Boring group that I'm part of. It turned out to be not so boring to me.  Since I've been looking for things to photograph that are boring, I've had a very interesting time. Go figure.

And FYI, summary of my Mail Art 2014 - I made and sent 256 numbered cards. I send a few un-numbered but can't remember how many so maybe I'll round up to 260. I'm pleased with that considering I'm NOT doing a 365 project.

Now, on to my resolution - getting rid of stuff daily, even it only one item. I was proud of myself, I threw away my old date stamp that didn't go beyond 2014 when I got my new one that started with 2015. I did think momentarily of the possibility of the old one being a sought after vintage item in the future. But tossed it anyway. YAY, me! Good start to 2015.

Did you make a resolution? or two?

Now where were we? What's going on in my neighborhood?

 At the end of October, while the weather was still warm, we took the grand-girl for a walk to the museum. She pulled "pull-dog" to but fro she needed a lift in her stroller. The pull toy is a Keith Herring wolf sent to me by a friend in Germany a couple years ago. The grand really likes it a lot. She's wearing her favorite spider socks in her starry shoes, by the way.

The weather has changed dramatically due to the Polar something and we are not liking it. We don't have proper clothing for these temps, or shoes.

We're staying indoors this morning, not just because of the cold but because we are hemmed into our neighborhood by the annual Richmond Marathon!! I can walk a block or two in any direction and see people running.

My African Violets are in bloom. Lovely to see them in this chilly weather. A reminder of spring.

I received a box of yarn from my niece M for my birthday. I've been making finger-less mitts and caps out of it. Nice colors! I've been production knitting. I have a dozen pair in my favorite little gift shop NEST, and am participating in a one day pop-up shop mid-December. My wrists will need a rest after this.

 I received this leaf from NSW, Australia. It's an alteration of one of the cards in my Installation last month at the Nowra River Festival. So far, only this card has been returned to me.  We're planning another installation there in May with triple the number of postcards.

These are the cards that I made for Banana recognition day, which is this coming Monday. I'm not sure it's a real "holiday" but my buddies in the IUOMA celebrate by sending cards. This is my second year of participating.

It's fun to have a theme, right?


So this is what's going on these days since we last met up.


Oh and we can't end without a photo of our cat, Bizoo, right?

Mailing out circles- Conversatioins!

#201

#202

#198

#199

#200

Mail Art, and more

365.2 #311

365.2 #312

365.3 #161

 I'm giving myself a break from finding just the right little person or little object to fit into a space.

Working with circles is more soothing plus I have lots of them cut out.

365.3 #162

I like using not only the circles but what remains when they are punched out.












There are such different spatial relationships and "meanings" that are evoked by these.










For instance, this one makes me think of a party, of fun, of joyful playfulness. Even though the color blue is often associated with sadness, this one is not at all sad for me.

Though, at the moment, I'm feeling sad for what is going on in Istanbul, hoping our friends are okay.

My younger sister sent this to me. I'd done this drawing of myself back in 1969 and sent it to her. She thought I'd enjoy seeing it again and I do. Julie suggested that I scan it and put it into Tiny Town. Perhaps I'll do that for my very last one.

My honey looked at this and said - "Oh, you were very fashionable then."   Hmmm, guess I'm not so these days.

My older sister sent me a quantity of laces, trims, and appliques (and other stuff) that she was clearing out.  I sold a few things at a vintage shop for her,  now am putting them on Etsy, in my FritziMim shop.

Check them out. If you know anyone interested in making things with vintage, unused, cool stuff, send them my way.

 Here is Bizoo in a shopping bag! I wondered where he'd gotten himself to, and somehow the bag had righted itself after he ran into it. So cute! He was playing with both an aluminum foil ball and a piece of crumpled paper.

And here is our cutie, Zinn. Happy girl in her summery dress. She's nearly 3 months old.

Spring & Mail Art

#255

#256

#105

#106

As I was pulling my car out of my alley way, I stopped to take a photo of this tree with my 'phone. I hardly captures the beauty of this tree which is laden with pink blossoms. What a treat, spring, with the trees coming into bloom, things popping up in the garden over night, amazing. I came up the front steps tonight and looked at the front garden and there were the Solomon Seals, which had just poked up a couple days ago, not very tall, and lots of them. A real treat!


I had to add a circle, I just had to. I'd been missing them. In 2 of these pieces of mail art, I used some very pale colors, with not much contrast.








I used some brighter strips in the second set of two pieces of Mail Art. I'm not fond of bright colors. I have to force myself to use them.









I think this will really make sense to the recipient because they'll feel the different surfaces of this card, which can barely be seen.