Mail Art, Slow Art, Postcards & Pens

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 I just did a little experiment and it worked. I couldn't use our scanner in my usual way as C was at his computer. I put this piece of Mail Art on the scanner then did some poking around on my computer and figured out how to scan wirelessly!! Woo hoo! No more waiting to scan. I'm "high-fiving" myself for this discovery.

Here's a heads up to everyone around the world.
Slow Art Day 2014 will happen on Saturday, April 12th. Check the website here to see if there is something happening in your city and then register to attend. It's so fun and it's relaxing. I'll be hosting at VMFA again, and looking forward to it. I already have people signed up. Yay, early birds.

Spurred on by seeing many of PostMuse's pens, I cleaned up some fountain pens that I have and did some testing to see which of my pens are still good. Here are some of my pens and pencils. Do you recognize any? There's a Japanese brush pen, some inexpensive Waterman pens, my favorite Muji fine point (.38) pen, and a  mechanical drawing pencil (one of several.) My new favorite, however, is not in the photo. It's a Lamy Safari, pink, fine nib fountain pen, with purple ink in it.


I had a super fun treat this morning. I was one of three judges at the Old Dominion Postcard Club exhibit and sale held today and tomorrow at John Tyler community college in Chester, VA.

Here are two of the display boards that were to be juried.  Boards had themes like Views, Greetings, Topical, etc. It's so interesting to see what people collect and treasure.

Here's the display corner and a portion of the many vendors with their cards. Check out the Facebook page of the organization here.

As a thank-you, the judges received a wonderful book - a history of motels along U.S. Highway 1 through our area - via Postcards. 
If you have any interest in postcards, mail, history, or learing about a fun hobby, check out your area for a postcard show. They're all over the world.

National Postal Museum, Mail Art, and more

 On Sunday, I took the train up to Washington, DC, a lovely 2.5 hour ride during which I got to visit with some friends heading to NYC.

I was going there to meet up with some Mail friends. One I'd met before but not the other two. This was very exciting to me. I'd "known" these people for many years through correspondence.

One is PostMuse, the other is Missive Maven, and the other is my friend Juli.

We met at Union Station, had lunch, then headed over to the National Postal Museum. The new Stamp gallery is AMAZING! We were, of course, like kids in a candy shop!

PostMuse had all of her fabulous pens with her and Juli got to try out quite a few and I came away thinking that I needed to increase my collection of pens. Neither Missive Maven or I carry our pens with us. I'm always afraid that I'll lose one of my favorites. Do you have a favorite pen? Do you carry it with you?

We got to take home stamps from a whole bunch that were on a table just waiting for us to play with, as you can see above. We were even provided with cool envelopes to take them home in.

There were lots of postcards for us to take home as souvenirs and we did! Like I need more postcards, right? Here's what I took home. You'll see these in the coming days, altered, as Mail Art.

Later in the day, Melissa of Craftgasm met up with us. I'd met in her NYC several years ago at a huge craft fair. She now has a shop: ANALOG, stop in if you're nearby. It's full of vintage goodies and mail related items. 

#311

Now to Mail Art -  I've decided to add Victorian scraps to commercial postcards again. I love that a new narrative is created with the addition of one item.

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#314

This card was created while at the National Postal Museum using stamps provided there. I was at Mecca, as Juli noted when posting on fb.

Here's Bizoo interrupting my work the other day. He now covers my entire keyboard. I should put up a comparison photo from a few months ago. This cat is HUGE!

  I was quite delighted to come up on this bicycle and it's sweet shadow.



What more can I say about my trip to D.C. except that is was like a wonderful dream, to get to spend time face-to-face with people I've corresponded with for years. I felt like I was with old friends, and I was. 

Mail Art, pens and Fritzi (my Etsy shop)

 I had such fun thinking up titles for these cards. This one is something about how she thinks about the number 5 when she sees a de Kooning painting.

 This guy's job is to keep records on the fox hunt but he gets distracted, right, cause he looks like he's not paying attention.

 Ah, my Tiny Town series. I just love doing these. I bought lots of them, so hopefully neither you nor I will tired of them.  This is something about her bright smile lighting up the sky over Tiny Town. By the way, the painting is by Maurice Utrillo, in case I never gave him credit.

 I didn't buy many of these Cycladic figure postcards when they were on the 10 cent sale shelf, and now I'm a bit sorry about that. Since I realized I could add features to the figures, it opened up ideas for me.  The title of this is something about how they practiced to perfect their balancing act. ha ha ha. I cracked myself up, really.

 I really like these pens that I got at Muji, in New York City. Now, whenever we go there I pick up a few refills, in any color available. I prefer the .38 for that fine line.

While we were in NYC, I got two sales on my Etsy shop, Fritzi. I sent the items out soon as we returned and the next day, I had another sale. Wow! I added a couple more purses (pockets) including this one made from a 1950s era linen tea towel. I found a Dutch woman's name for it. Lena. Why was Dutch imagery so popular in the United States back then? Anyone?

The studio, the wall, and penmanship

Today, I decided to put my studio in order (again) and was having such fun, seriously, finding bits and pieces of things I wanted to put into collages, that I had to stop and make a postcard to send to Katerina in Thessaloniki! Then I put new stuff on my wall, my REAL wall, then I thought of Andy in the U.K., who is doing the same (This photo is for you, Andy.) A good day in the studio! I got a really nice gift from a friend....a pen set. It's a reproduction kind of thing. A cool box holding pens, one is glass, pen points, and ink. She must have known that I'd actually use it. I added some additional Speedball points that I had. My penmanship needs improvement, which will happen with this set as it requires that I slow down when I write. Okay, so here's to better penmanship in 2010.

Pens and Pencils

Here are two photos of the Parker 51. What a beautiful design with the point included in the barrel of the pen. It writes wonderfully well. In the pen group photo, the bottom two pens are by Sheaffer. The dark green transparent barrel one (doesn't show up so well but it's next to the red pen) is the one I remember as the first pen I ever had that used cartridges for ink. We loved not having to lug around bottles of ink. The Red one is a recent design. The upper group includes a Stypen from Paris (green and yellow) which writes very smoothly. Stypen became part of the BIC company but is still it's own brand. The other 2, like the green one in the previous post, which I mistook for a student pen from Paris, are Rotring pens. I now remember I bought all three when they were on sale (Maybe at Kate's in NYC) and I couldn't decide which color I liked best. They, too, write very smoothly.

Besides fountain pens, I like automatic pencils, which keep a point better than a "regular" pencil. I like sharp pencils!



The two pencils to the left are classic Scripto. One is marked Classic Mexico. I remember these from high school. The double pointed pencil has the word Autopoint on the body and clip. Red lead on one end, black on the other; maybe meant for a teacher's marking pencil. The pencil in the middle is a Parker with a gold arrow clip. It feels great in the hand and belonged to my father. The silver metal (aluminum) faceted side pencil is from Muji. I like that I can put it down and it doesn't roll. Next to it is a nice, slim pencil with no identification and I have no memory of where it came from.



The last two items are a boxed set, pencil and ball point pen (which I don't usually like to write with except on certain slick papers) were probably a gift from someone to my husband. The back of the container says GOODWILL with the word Japan under it. The pencil has a nice heavy feeling to it.

So there you have it, my pen and pencil collection, except for one other Waterman pen that has a broken nib and will eventually go to the pen doctor.

So go find a pen, any kind of pen, and some paper and write a letter. Get a nice stamp. Send it off to someone and make their day nicer!

Pens and letter writing.

I'm inspired to show you some of my fountain pens because I've been reading the Missive Maven's blog - here, and some pen related blogs - here & here. I found Missive Maven through a comment she made on the Letter Writers Alliance site. It's all linked together! Since finding M.M., I've written to her and received mail in return, and have been compelled to find and clean my pens and start to use them again. I'm not completely forsaking my Uni-ball Vision Elite, however.

In the photo, you see two of my Waterman Phileas pens on the left. One was chosen by my colleague Rebecca, many years ago. I love the way these pens write. The middle three are student pens which I picked up in Paris. The students there still use fountain pens, how cool is this?! The slim green one is an Elysees, which was one of the first pens that C bought for me. It needs to see a pen doctor. The one on the right is a Sheaffer pen (looks like the Legacy Heritage!) that I love, because it reminds me of my father who owned one of these in the 50s (possibly the same color.) It writes very nicely and I like the way the point is part of the barrel of the pen. I have several other pens that I'll post soon, including the gorgeous Parker 51, which C dug out of his trove and I will start to use as soon as I get some ink for it. Waterman black is recommended but I have that Sheaffer blue-black that is so classic. The purple circle is the top of a tiny tin that holds 6 small cartridges of purple ink from J. Herbin. I got it in Paris and haven't used any yet.

Even if you don't have a fountain pen, write a letter! Buy a neat looking stamp and surprise someone with a handwritten note! You'll make their day.