Creative Sprint and a couple new mail art collages

 These images were on my desk, just like this, so I put them on a blank and glued them down. I like the odd juxtaposition.

 I'm enjoying making compositions with hand, butterflies and moths. Maybe it's cause Spring has sprung in this part of the globe.

 In a few days, Creative Sprint will start. It's 30 days of prompts that will put you in great creative shape.
It's free! Sign up at
Creativesprint.com

It'll be fun. There are no grades, no competition, no judgement, just a bunch of us making stuff daily and then posting it, or not, to a variety of platforms like our blogs, or instagram, or whatever.

 Here's what our tree looked like last week. This week, it's all green leafy. My honey had a lot of sweeping up to do in the back yard/garden.

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!

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?

Mail Art, Little Free Library, and more

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#99

 I made this Mail Art to send to someone who sent me a lovely piece of Mail Art back in March and I've been sooo remiss in responding to people. I feel awful about it. Slowly I'm getting mail out. Oh everyone who sent me Mail Art, please know that I loved getting it.




I made this altered card using a postcard that we got at our most recent visit to the National Postal Museum on my birthday last week. I added the colorful old postage stamps to it. It's going to my niece and nephew in Wisconsin. They'll get a kick out of getting real mail.

#100

I've been having fun punching out circles from old Art magazines. I'm preparing for a workshop that I'm going to do in two weeks, and I'm going to offer up a tin full of these circles as part of the project. More on this after it happens.



My workshop last week went really well. It was on Artist Trading Cards. Super fun to share. The participants were all teachers, grades kinder through end of high school, all different subject areas. 

#101

So these two cards are the start of some fun for me, as I plan to make use of the circles, also.  I like circles a lot, and these are so planetary, and minimal.

 I'd seen this Little Free Library a few weeks ago when driving by the Richmond Ambulance Authority building. How cute, I thought, and today, with a book to deposit, I stopped there on the way home from playing with my grand-girl.






This is beautifully crafted and painted to look exactly like the ambulances.  It had a nice amount of books in it, not crowded like some of the other smaller LFLs. I hope that more people pay attention to it.

Do you have any LFLs in your neighborhood?

 My niece and her husband joined us to celebrate the American Independence day, 4th of July. She brought head bands for all of us to wear. Here she is modeling one. Cute, aren't they?

 Bizoo waits on my bedside table every morning waiting for me to wake up. He taps my head sometimes, and other times just sits patiently. The treats are in the top drawer!!
He knows it, as does our grand-girl, who likes giving the cat treats. We did, however, find her munching on a few herself, yesterday.

I just had to share these flowers with you. They were among the bunches at Amy's farmers' market stand last week. Gorgeous, like a painting, yes?

OOh, long time no see!

 The dogwood trees are in bloom, except for mine. It's a hybrid of some kind and we put it in last year and so far no blooms. I can't wait to see what it'll look like once it does have some, in who knows how many years. It's kind of sad looking now. This lovely bloom is on the tree in N & J's front yard.

 We're so happy spring is here. I love all the little flowers that are popping up.

 What are these? Are they primrose? They're in my back garden but I have no idea what they are. I do like them, however.

 Passover was a busy week for us. M arrived from the north and C and L arrived from the west.

 We had a terrific time, with lots of cooking and eating involved. We even "invented" a dessert using chocolate covered matzah. We came up with Matzahmisu, get it? Like Tiramisu! The recipe is HERE on my recipe blog.

We were so sad when everyone left to return home. It was such fun!

 The annual Monument Avenue Easter Parade was perfect this year. The weather was sunny but not too hot. People dressed up or not, and strolled up one side and down the other of Monument Avenue. I caught this mother-daughter duo from behind. They were so colorful and the little girl was so cute with her very tall Easter chapeau.

There were food and beverage tents, crafts, and hats for sale, and games for the kids.

 At each end of the parade there was live music.

The crowd was estimated at 25,000 people!  And it felt like that at times.

Dogs, rabbits, and even a pig, wore bonnets. Not sure any of them like it, but it was cute to see. There was a person dressed as a bunny giving out candy and posing for photos. It was a happy looking bunny so the children weren't freaked out.

Someone set up this darling bunny tea party on their tiny front lawn.
Across the street, a couple of children set up a lemonade and cupcake stand and were doing a brisk business.

A lovely start to spring. Yay!

THURSDAY Time for catching up

 My older sister sent me a couple packages of books and included some other goodies, including an old pattern. Since I'll never make myself a tee-shirt, I am going to use the pattern in collages.

 Random text always adds a bit of intrigue for me. An incomplete story, a bit of conversation overheard in passing, the start of a dialogue, all of that and more.

I received a lovely collaged Mail Art piece from someone but they forgot to put a return address on it. To make up for that, the artist sent me a color copy of the original collage with her address - how could I resist re-cycling the copy.

Anyone guess where this figure came from? It's a famous painting.

Here's another figure from that famous painting.  I found an old, 1956, National Geographic Magazine. That made me happy as I had new things to cut out for collages. I'm getting bored with my scraps and needed new material. Does that happen to you? 

A couple of days ago, after the snow had melted, I spotted this tiny plant in my front garden. 

The sun is out today, though chilly.
Tomorrow, spring is predicted. How nice.

Sunday - Mail Art and more

 I really enjoy having coffee at the cafe at VMFA. It's mostly quiet there.

 I was looking down at my back garden, from our bedroom window. Looks like a dolls garden, with tiny furniture.

 The Azalea planted along the side of our house have bloomed. They look great this year.

365.2 #259

365.3 #109

These two card on cardboard substrate are done with just 3 bits. Some tear off of an old French receipt, a scrap from a paper sample book, and a punched out circle.








I really do find minimal compositions satisfying. You've read this before so this is not news to you, about my preferences.

365.2 #260

I'm going to get a kitten. Finally, the house has felt bereft of a pet since our dog died 2.5 year ago. We used to have cats, as well as dogs, so this isn't new for us, but it's been awhile.


I'm feeling very cat mood now. Our friend took in a stray cat, which happened to be pregnant. 5 kittens were born - and after awhile, hearing about them from our friends, talking about them with M, who's
been

365.3 #110

 encouraging me to do this, I decided to put my name on one of the kitties. "The calmest one," I told my friend.

I've chosen to name it "Neblina." It'll come to live with us after May 9th.

You'll see plenty of photos of it on this blog.

So what do you think the cats are saying?

365.2 #261

365.3 #111

#261 is going to Seville, Spain for a Mail Art call for blue mail art.











#111 is going to Sicily, Italy, for a Mail Art request for an exhibit and book in honor of Gerardo Sangiorgio, who was a poet and humanitarian. He resisted the Nazis in Italy, spent years in a prison camp, was freed and returned to Sicily. This is what I can make out with my poor knowledge of the Italian language. In any case, I'm pleased to honor him with this collage.

Lots of Mail Art to update!

 This one and the flowered one below contain some random text. I keep a small box with cut-out text from an old book. I think it was a romance novel that I found in someone's to-be-trashed box. I felt nothing bad about cutting it up!

 These two with paintings in them were prompted by my getting ready for my 2nd Slow Art Day. Looking at art, slowly.

For these next two pieces of Mail Art, I just looked into one of my scrap box and picked up pieces that were on top of each other. Really, it just happened that they looked like this and I liked the way they looked so I glued them down that way.

Simple, minimal, and for me, they just simply work.