What's been going on?

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 Here are some recent pieces of mail art, including one that I added pieces to related to music. I sent it to a Mail Art call exhibit in Columbia - theme city of music.

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Besides, making my own Mail Art, I've been busy scanning mail coming in for the bicycle themed exhibit.  This is in conjunction with the UCI World Races which will happen very soon here in Richmond, VA, USA. Exciting!

Oh I have to get busy posting and making signs and lists of participants for display at the venue.

 We took a few days away from the city. My DIL found a lovely Airbnb for us to stay in at Duck, NC, on the Outer Banks (OBX)

It was a great location, short walk to the ocean, and to the sound.

It was wonderful to hear the sounds of the waves, again. Two of the days, the no swimming flag was up, as the ocean was wild! We were sad to say good bye but are already thinking of our next stay there.

A new month! When did this happen?

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 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

Busy days, and Mail Art, of course.

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 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?

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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!

So many days have gone by....

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 Why have I been gone so long?
So many things have been going on and all good!

For one thing, we went off to the beach for an entire week, renting a beach house with family and friends. It was delightful. We could see, and hear, the Atlantic ocean from the house, a short walk along a wooden path took us up over the dune onto the beach. The beach was very lovely, with hardly anyone on it as it's early in the season.
The weather was perfect.

Our grand-girl had a great time in her gigantic sand box.
 We can't wait to do this again.

A couple of the cards above were made at the beach with scraps of paper cut from the beach brochure.

 We saw the sunrise on the ocean and the sunset on the sound. How perfect.

The water was too cold to do more than walk along the edges.

 We saw lots of dolphins leaping and lots of pelicans flying, often they were in a line low over the dune. Both the dolphins and pelicans were closer than I'd ever seen before. How perfect.

One day, there were several bicycles parked on the board walk to the beach, behind our house.

I took this photo and used it on my new bicycle blog, for entries to my Mail Art call. See it HERE and do send me something.

This has been something keeping me busy. Also, while at the beach, I set up a blog to archive the artists coloring book that my honey produced. You can see it HERE.

Really? A month?

I can't believe that nearly a month has past since my last post! Incredible! I don't think this has happened in all the years I've been doing this.
Well, what's up! We went on a beach holiday on the 14th of September for a week. That was lovely.

 I left origami birds for the Fold the Flock project in Corolla.

photo credit: N.Scalin

We stayed in a lovely beach "cottage" that our DIL found through the internet. I wanted to stay there forever!

 The beach was beautiful and quite sparsely populated this time of year.

Our grand-girl loved the ocean and the sand. One gigantic sand box to play in, right!

Lagging behind - a confession.

 I'm going to confess once more that I'm lagging behind in responding to people who've sent me wonderful Mail Art.

I'm too embarrassed to even post a photo of the two piles on my work table. Eventually, I'll catch up - won't I?

Meanwhile, I continue to MAKE Mail Art. My process is once again, taking bits of scraps out of one of my tins and seeing how I can compose them. 3 pieces of paper. Yes. Satisfying.

 Our garden is looking good. The plants are growing back now that we've had lots of rain and sun. Our formerly shady back area has been exposed to sun by our tree being cut back a lot.

The cement duck, one of a pair, looks quite content in the foliage.

Here's the motto again - don't forget this as you move ahead in your own practice.

And don't forget, this is the motto for The Alternative Speakers Bureau.

If you're a reader in the Richmond, VA area, here's an opportunity (click on this) to participate in a creativity experience. It'll help you get unstuck.

Flashback Tuesday - the Atlantic Ocean, N.C. USA

More catching up.

 I love being by the ocean. I love the sound of the waves, the smell of the sea, the lines in the sand and the BIG sky. It's so peaceful and so immense, all of it.

 Last Saturday, I participated in a craft sale. Keithley of Bad Girl Art, invited 9 of us to participate at her home. It was such fun and quite successful. I sold more than half of the mitts that I brought with me. The two tiny hats in the photos are by my sister, who makes them out of cotton for babies. I haven't put anything back in my Etsy shop yet, as sales are brisk in face to face.

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More old rubber stamps. Kittens watching the rain clouds go by.

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I'd forgotten all about this beautiful "peace" stamp. I think I'll make a bunch more of these to send out for the New Year.

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Does this one look like ocean waves with moon and stars in the sky?

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Here's a sampling of some of my old cancellation stamps all in a clump. The card was askew on the scanner but I didn't fix it. Sort of more active looking this way.

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The triangle stamp is one that I never used as it was just too triangular and solid. However, it made a nice mountain background for this card. Don't you think so?

A bit of this and that.

I left Los Angeles last Wednesday. The day started early as I had to catch the 10h30 bus from Van Nuys airport to LAX. The lines for security were long and it's all so tiring!
The flight was full but it was a smaller aircraft than scheduled and 50 volunteers were needed to give up their seats. I wasn't volunteering, I wanted HOME! I had a window seat so was able to get a few images of the departure. I really like looking down a the landscape.

Aloft, leaving L.A.

A marina, notice the wakes of the little boats.

My flight went directly from Los Angeles to Washington DC Dulles airport. 5 hours later, we were on the east coast but my body clock didn't arrive with me. I had an hour wait before my flight to Richmond, a short 30 minute hop. By the time I arrived home it was nearly midnight.  I've been jet lagging, tired, ever since I got home. aaagh, I need to catch up!  I've sooo much to catch up on.

Mom's pink bunny

Here's the last of Mom's stuffed friends. This one sleeps on her bed. It's really big and she really likes it.

Mom's kitty

This little kitty sits outside mom's door. It used to have a plant in it but now it's empty. Mom keeps saying that she's going to do some planting but that's wishful thinking. Nice thinking, however, not happening. 

Found in my mail box

When I got home, I had some nice Mail Art waiting for me from Found-Art, letters from two correspondence friends, and a postcard from Postcrossing from China. So nice to come home to real mail. 

Gorgeous cake pan!

I'd hardly settled in, when I remembered we had to go to a birthday party and I was signed up to bring a cake. So, my trusty gorgeous pan to the rescue, whew, another smashingly interesting chocolate cake! (secret recipe: a box mix! Don't tell anyone, shhhh.)

A beachy weekend

Thanks to our niece and nephew, we had a couple of days at the beach. They rented a house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and invited us for the weekend. The sea was amazing! We went to see Hatteras Light and learn how it was moved inland a decade ago, when it was in danger of being toppled by the sea. We found lots of intact shells, lots of birds, including pelicans who were waiting next to fishermen, who gave them treats. The sunsets were beautiful. We brought out Bananagrams set with and even the little guy got into the game, in his own way.