A week's worth of Mail Art and other stuff

 Our miniature Maple tree has lost it's leaves but they haven't gone far. We found them in piles and gathered them up. They are so lovely even when curled up and dry. So organic!

 This is the last of the color series for now.

After that, I decided to alter 3 cards that had the same image. A boring lake scene.

 I think it's interesting how a single added piece makes a difference.









I used quotes about nature, for these cards. 











For this next group, I used only 3 (or 4) pieces. MInimal. A person, a shape in black, a moth/butterfly.  So much can be said with so little, right?

 Do you know who this woman is?

 Do you know who this man is?

For two days this week, we couldn't park on our street. It was quite nice, actually, but then we have parking spaces behind our house. Then the work began and oh was it LOUD!! First a huge machine dug up the old street, LOUDLY. Then another machine textured the next layer. Then another machine laid down tar. Oh the noise and odor! However, we have a slick new black surfaced street. All that's left is for the stripe making machine to put a yellow stripe down the middle. It will be a quieter experience.

Mail Art, of course, and more

 I discovered this photo that I'd taken with my cell phone, forgot I'd taken it. A tee shirt at a shop in Duck. We do heart Duck. It's basically a dot on the map of the Outer Banks, but has nice places to stroll & look in little shops & now a really nice board walk along the Sound.

#117

#118

I'm playing with bits of old colored paper again. It's difficult to work with them because any adhesive that spreads onto them doesn't clean up well. Ugh! I dislike messy glue-ing. 







I'm finding good quotes about color to write on the backs and post to Facebook with these. Today is day 120. Have no idea what I'll do today. Maybe I'll keep going with color bits through the weekend and start a new series on Monday. 245 days to go!

I drove through the park on my way home from Spanish class on Wednesday and had to stop and get out of my car to appreciate this tall tree. It was still full of wonderfully yellow leaves. They looked so bright against the blue sky.

An Orange day, Mail Art included.

 This fits with my "orange" theme today. It's my #79 Mail Art. I've written on the back something about Betty liking to watch the boats at sunset. ha ha ha

 This is the second card I made today. What fun, having so many vintage postcards is so fun. This one is something about Marlo not realizing how chilly the water was before she decided to get into it.

 Our "shelf" on the pole is ready for Dias de los muertes or Halloween. Cute, right? I put the skull and bones pin in it this afternoon.

 I took a walk around the block to see the shelf and the trees and deposit a bunch of my mail art into the mail box on the next block. There weren't many clouds. Here's a small puffy one. The trees are so pretty now.

 These two orange ones are so gorgeous. The one in the back is quite tall. In between is a tree that is leafless already, or dead! The orange is KNOCK-OUT beautiful on this sunny day.

 Standing under an orange leafed tree. How fabulous. It just makes me feel in awe. The sky so blue, the leaves so orange. Is it like this where you live?

 The post box is in front of Retreat Hospital, which is across 2 streets from my house. They have the small grounds around it covered in these flowers. I stopped to take this photo after dropping the Mail Art in the box.

 When I returned home, Groucho was waiting for me, so I sat down on the bench. She hopped up and sat next to me wanting to be petted. She has some orange mixed in with gray.

My back garden is looking better and better, more ORANGE please! And my new hydrangea plant is doing quite well, also.

Mail Art and so much more

#71

#71a

 Friday, I worked on some watercolors again. I'm feeling a bit less wimpy about them, but still, so pastel-y.  I like this one a lot more because I was able to get that purple ridge line, and then get that sort of reflection thing on water.

#72

#73

#74

This one is a big bolder, color wise, but still not quite there. I did a bit of pencil work and added dots. When I feel like the results aren't strong enough, I add dots. In this case, the dots are all the same color but change based on the background. Oh my, an Albers experience!





Saturday, I decided to tear up some postcards before we went off to the big Folk Festival. I found a good quote about landscape painting and put that up with the image on my Facebook page.









Then in Sunday, I decided to do the same - tear of old postcards. This one dealt with water, and I found a nice water quote to go with it. Oh there are those ubiquitous dots! In this case, I used them as connectors.








Today, more torn vintage postcards. In this one, the cards are like paintings and I wanted to make some visual connection between the lake and the road. I'm not sure how successful that was, but I like the way this looks.

 On Saturday and Sunday it was so hot at the Folk Festival. HOT! We couldn't stand being in the sun for long. Only listened to Roseanne Cash for 15 or 20 minutes before heading for shade. That hot! But Monday morning, while walking over to the dentist's office, I saw that over night, the leaves where turning autumn colors and falling to the ground! Wow! Overnight!

 I spotted this gorgeous tree a couple streets over this afternoon. Gorgeous, right? Autumn is arriving!

 And of course, autumn means apples in abundance. I got a half of a bushel and started to make apple sauce. I think apple butter is next.

Here's last weeks abundance from the farmers' market. It was the last week of my CSA, but this week I got some beautiful string beans and some beets there.

Beginning of the week!

The temperatures are springlike, but the leaves have turned colors. I'm especially fond of the yellow leaves A gray day makes the leaves brighter.

 On Saturday, I went on a Tiny Town spree. I found these cool fashion models from the 60s. They were perfect for the series.

 I called this series "The 1960's fashion models liked to visit Tiny Town" or something like that.

 This is such a 60s look.

 The idea of one of the model's walking across the town tickled me.

 Someone suggested that I use Paul Klee images for Tiny Town and it turned out that I did have an old book to take apart. These are Sunday's play with Tiny Town.

I'm especially fond of how the tight rope walked turned out. I had to piece the sky as the image wasn't long enough.

Me with the 3D glasses from VMFAs Mummy exhibit

Our mini-maple tree turning red.

I

Oh My it's almost Friday!!

 These first two pieces of mail art were done earlier this week. I wove strips from an old map of London, Ontario, Canada, that my friend Alexis sent me. I'd started weaving maps back in 2002 and hadn't done it for awhile.  They needed a dark background to make them the focus.

 The butterfly stickers, also, came from Alexis. They're quite old as they aren't self-adhesive. They have to be moistened! Old school stickers. I tied things together with some Washi tape. Yes, the tape unites, not divides. That's my visual take on it.

 In these next two woven map pieces, I decided to create a line by sewing. In the first, I used a pale blue thread then went to black thread. Definitely, the black works better, appearing to be a pencil line.

 Don't you love this tea bag wrapper? I got a box of Live Forever tea for my birthday and just opened the box. I like these wrapprers a lot. I'll use them in collages some time soon.

 Here's my honey standing under a tree that had fallen behind a neighbor's house on the next block. There are two cars under it. It pulled down the electricity lines (for those of you in other countries, our electric lines are above ground.) There appears to be some quibbling about who takes care of what and our neighbors have been without power way long.

Here are the leaves from the huge tree that came down in Paradise Park. The one with the seed cluster that I showed previously. I still don't know what the tree is but someone out there might be able to identify it from the leaf structure. By the way, that tree is still down across someone's back garden. It's not been cut up or pulled out of the way yet. It appears that the storm is still causing trouble for people.   Any ideas about the tree?

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?