Monday, Mail Art and more!

#224

#223

 I'm still making water color Mail Art. I feel like I have a better idea of how to handle the non-waterproof ink.











This is yesterday's, which I felt was too pale, so I did a bit more with today's. I'm excited about this series.

 This morning, it was overcast when we went to the pool. I like the way the light worked in the photo of these flowers. Kind of dramatic!
 

 I took this photo before C. got into the pool and disturbed the stillness. I like the reflections very much.











Here's our little Z this afternoon. I stopped by and got to spend a bit of time with her. She seems to recognize that she's seen me before.

When I stopped working on the computer for a minute, Bizoo strolled over, lay down on the keyboard, and promptly fell asleep. How nice take a nap wherever, whenever.

Getting ready

#993

 I'm back to my Tiny Town shenanigans. I found this wonderful sad dog in a 1962 magazine. He's perfect! Here's my story on the reverse: "Tiny Town residents liked dogs with sad eyes; however, training them to move about carefully was difficult." Notice how the little person is looking up at the dog (whom I named Étienne) whose paw is soooo close to her.

 We preparing for a short trip and I've cleaned out my travel kit, added new bits, dots, glue, and card blanks, but NO scissors as I'm doing all carry-on luggage. I'll be looking for scissors on the other end or just tearing paper. I'm prepared for several days.

The air was cool, the pool water warm, and the sky a bit overcast, and exercising was quite nice.

SO sunny!

 I arrived at the pool a bit earlier than usual this morning, and it was already sunny and hot. Ducky was taking shelter in a corner!

 The water was cool and still. Just looking at this image makes me feel cooler and serene. I hope it does that for you, too.

 Lucky me, I was able to "grab" these off of Missive Maven's Etsy shop. Letter writing related postage stamps are so perfect for Mail Art and letters.

 Yesterday, I met up with my amiga, Ann, to practice our español. We sat on the cafe deck and it was so lovely. Low humidity, a light breeze, and a view of Jun Kaneko's sculpture and my favorite tree grouping.

I spotted this as I walked into the supermarket. I'd never seen this brand of beer before.  What do you think? Should I try it? Or just buy it for the graphics!

The usual, Mail Art, Pool, all good!

 I'm sending this to Monkey. I altered one of Monkey's Postcards to give the kids in my workshop an example of altering, before I handed out Monkey cards to them. They did an amazing job of altering. You can see examples here.  There's an interview with moi and Monkey, which includes the kids Mail Art.

 I had some scraps of matt board so made these two dotty cards. The dark board worked out well and now I'll peruse my stock to find other dark boards.

 Again, I like the ambiguity of the dots, on top or a punched hole?

 Here I am with this morning's Mail Art. I switched back to altering an existing postcard, having re-discovered my collection of Canadian landscapes that my friend Alexis sent me last year. This makes me laugh, seeing that guy peeking over the landscape, maybe he sent the stamps down the stream. Isn't the scale changed by these bits?

 This morning, the pool water was refreshing, the sky clear, the sun bright, and NO humidity. Oh my. A day's reprieve.

I snapped this with my phone last night after the rain storm. More rain came on a bit later, too. We are a very lucky part of the country right now. Drought going on elsewhere.

All the usual fun!

 The pool this morning was nice, even if the water was 90F.  No one was there but us!











This is my latest, #966, and it's going to London. I sure hope it gets there. I like the poem - "For Sure! The wind felt immensely pleased."  I pick up pieces of text randomly and somehow they make lovely poems, these random bits. Do you ever do that? Let randomness take over for a little while! See what happens.

I made a bean salad on 3 July. It's a classic. I posted the recipe on my food blog here. It is sooo good, we've hardly any left and it's only the 6th!
Make this and let me know how you like it, okay?

Okay, it's still hot here. What's it like in your area?

Hot Saturday!

 We awoke this morning to the news that the air quality was ORANGE ALERT, which is not good. The fire is still burning in the Great Dismal Swamp and the wind blows this way. 

Aaagh, I decided to stay indoors and make mail art and work on my Etsy shop.

 This is one of the Pockets (small purse) that I made for the festival. I decided to scan it and see how that turned out. I took photos of some of the pieces to post in my Etsy shop but I do like the way the scanned piece looks. I didn't have anyone to model a bag for me, wish I did. I think that shows how cool they look on the body.  I'll get one of my friends over one cooler day to model.

 More of my minimal mail art; old paper, circle and line.

 I'm finally making use of the brush tip ink pen that I got awhile back.

 This morning, I used some of the tracing paper that I'd been practicing line work on, as collage bits.

 I like the way these turned out. The transparency works great with the old paper and circles.

Friday, I brought a basket of my bags to my Spanish meet-up at the Science Museum coffee shop. One of my amigas wanted a bag but didn't have cash the day of the festival, so I brought that for her. Another amiga asked if my little Purse for Change could hold a passport. We thought it was too small but she bought one, then later sent an e-mail to say that it fit. Wow, now I can tell people they can be used as passport keepers. Cool!

Cool water and Mail art

 We went to the pool early this morning and oh boy the water was sooo chilly, but it felt good to be doing water exercise.  Afterwards, I "chilled out" for a bit to read. I'm really engrossed in the bookclub book for this month. At Home by Bill Bryson. SO informative. I highly recommend it. But then, all of his books are so filled with facts.

 The cool water was rippled by the movement of the breeze. No one was in the water, just the gentle wind making it move. Pretty, right?

 Here's another card that I did using the cut up cover of a pad of water color paper. So little needed to make it a compostition.

For today's mail art, I used paper on which I'd printed that atmospheric photo from yesterday's post. It turned out too big, and too dark, BUT it worked just fine when I cut it up. Part is the background and part the piece with the circles. I like the way it turned out. Very spatial and somewhat ambiguous. I'm sending this to Spain for a mail art fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis research. I hope it gets through the mail unscathed.

At the pool early.

Water temp now 94F according to the duckie thermometer.
We arrived at the pool at 8h05, a bit later than usual because I didn't want to drag myself from my bed and go out. I heard on the radio on the way to the pool that the heat index will put us a 115F. Okay, I know I know, it's hotter in other places, but I just need to get it out - it's HOT here. Thanks for listening.

#190 & 190a, cool water and hot day

The patient photographer waited for the perfect photo op' in Tiny Town

This morning, we arrived at the pool earlier than usual, since it was already getting warm. We didn't see the temperature duck at first, then spotted it in the corner at the deep end. He seemed confused so we sheparded him to open water. Poor Duckie. Confused!





I've wanted to use this photographer in something special, as he's a very famous photographer. Do you recognize him?

Bon Voyage

I'm sending this altered card to some acquaintances who are leaving for a long trip, on while they'll make a stop in Uganda! This morning, I finished our bag of Ugandan coffee and thought, "perfect!"  It's kind of like this figure is carrying a sign-board, right?






This is a group of three Artist Trading Cards that I sent out in a call for an ATC exchange. I haven't made any works this size in a long time so I had to check into my archives, where I found these "space" related pieces.
They were from a time when I demonstrated to my students how to make an edition of 10 ATCs.  The blue circles are actually holes in the cards, which I scanned with a blue background.  

The Mail Art 189 series and more

"How cute," thought Sally, seeing the Tiny Town men & dogs playing.

 I decided that today was definitely a day to alter a number of cards. They just crack me up, and I'm making them. How fun to make oneself laugh.

I put some funny captions on them, too.

"Here, little pig, here's the trough," Nancy said.

"Helga & Gerda thought the men looked so dashing on horseback."

"Who's old stone face," Jed whispered to Seth.

 This is my experiment for what I plan to do for the asemic art book pieces. I'm going to have 8 of these collages, oh the fun gluing them down. Jdrn gave me some ideas for how to do that, I'll experiment with them to see what works best. Anyway, I'm happy with the way this is going. You'll see more as I complete them for the project, which is due the end of July.

 Spotted the flowers on this small hosta plant this morning. Really pretty looking. Another, smaller hosta, looks like it'll bloom in a few days.

The duck thermometer bobs along by the 4 ft/1.27m marker. The temperature was 80F/26C this morning, but I needed that to help with my foot. 
The little toe is so swollen and bruising up my foot. Waaa. Shoe wearing not so good, even my thong ones have a band across the top where there's bruising. But it's only a TOE!! It'll be fine soon and I can walk wobbly for awhile.
Isn't the rubber duck cute with it's sunglasses? He/she was stuck in one of the drains the other day and we had to rescue him/her.

#184 series, a pool picture & a beet

 More of my altered cards. I'm going to have to stop by the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and stock up on postcards while they're still 10cents each. Look at all the fun I'm having for so little money!

Yesterday, or today, counts as the halfway mark for my Mail Art 365 project.

 I entitled this gal (a cyclidic figure) something like "She could stand very still."  It was a surprise to me that I could make something really different happen for this sculpture with just one element.

 As always, big people looking at the landscape crack me up. Doesn't this just work?

 I chanced my phone getting wet to take this photo. We were at the pool before
8 a.m. Alone as usual, all the movement in the water is just from the two of us. The duck takes the water temperature. It was 88F/31C. Mighty warm. There is one of the new yellow umbrellas and some of the new yellow chairs.

 This is one of the beets that I got last week from my farm share. I absolutely loved the roots on this and asked my honey to take a photo of it for me. Of course, it's so perfectly an art shot. I'm thinking I need note cards or a stamp made of this image.

Here's what I did with last week's beets. I steamed them (the inside is peach and pink) and then made a pickling liquid to pack them in. It turned out very tasty, though my photo isn't as attractive.