Mail Art, of course, and some snow news.

#25-2015

#26-2015

Snow is coming

#32

 What an assortment of Mail Art -1) altered a card that I made from a print of my Artist Coloring Book collage, 2)used some circles, 3)altered a commercial card from our trip to NOLA - landscape beautification project, 4) made a batch of "snow is coming" cards. In between, I made some other numbers of cards. It's been fun.

The snow started yesterday about 2 pm. It was fine and continuous and stuck to the ground. I took this through the window in the kitchen (see the screen?)


It kept coming, and coming, and coming, so fine and so quiet.









This morning, the bird bath shows how much snow fell in our back yard.

See how the snow rounds things out? Softens the edges.

It's sunny now, but very cold, and, oh my, it's going to get colder.

Our city shuts down, meanwhile, in Chicago, where there's lots of snow and is as cold as it is here, my friend goes out and about with her life.

Me, I'm a shut-in - who'll catch up on responding to mail and knitting and hoping there'll be mail delivery.

What's weather like where you are?

A snow day off - a maker's heaven!

 I rediscoverded my merit badge! I earned it all over again for completing my third 365. I'll have to find a good place to attach this badge!
Or just display it in my studio to remind myself of my own merit! ha ha ha

Our snow didn't amount to much, maybe an inch but it is very cold and so it's VERY icy out in the world. I decided to stay home and make stuff.

My older sister had sent me a vintage tea towel awhile back and asked me to make her one of my pocket purses.

Here's my trusty old sewing machine, with one completed purse ready to send to California.

 Here are the other two purses plus two purses for change made from vintage fabric - love the fruit print. I didn't get a photo of the one I sent to my sister, as I was eager to package it so the mail carrier could pick it up at my door this afternoon.

This is the scene looking down from our bedroom window this morning. Overcast and cold.

Later, the sun came out, though it didn't help much to melt the snow, since the temperature is below freezing.

Here are a couple more of my altered vintage postcards.

It was a perfect day, staying indoors in flannel clothing and warm slippers, in my warm studio, making stuff. Bizoo would wander in and out, sometimes sleeping on the chair with the pillow, or just checking on what I was up to.

A perfect maker's day.

Catching up on Mail Art Monday

365.2 #230

365.2 #231

365.2 #232

I decided to put a few of my Tiny Town prints in my Etsy shop. I had three that I couldn't fit into the gallery space so they are immediately available. I thought, why not try it! This is one of the prints.

365.3 #80

Surprised

365.3 #81

365.3 #83

365.3 #82

The following 6 pieces of Mail Art were done during the past week. I was running on empty, or so I thought, but somehow, ideas came to me. How, I just looked at what was on my studio table, or in one of my little tins of cut out bits.





















My friend Katerina had sent me cut off strips of color paper from her projects. They've come in handy.










Washi tape is always a favorite default of mine, as well as, the ubiquitous circle.











Surprise! We had snow yesterday. Big, fluffy puffs of it fell from the sky. Lots of those big puffs fell in a short period of time and cause havoc to reign. Lots of fender benders. We made it home okay and found our hen and her chick surprised by the snow, as well.








3 bits of paper and I have a composition!!

365.2 #233

More of Katerina's strips of color. The substrate is cardboard cut from boxes and any other source that appears in our house.

More of the usual plus the unusual

#213

#63

 Monday, I switched direction away from my minimals. I wanted to try out my new Cavallini rubber stamps. Oh I do like them, having to do with postal things. Even those waving lines to cancel faux postage.

#64

#214

I used a nice gray card board, the backing for the stamps that I receive in the mail, and tore up a 2010 estimate for ridding our house of termites. Turned out that we didn't have any. Hah! Used postage stamps from Finland and tiny cut out squares from some other project came in handy.






Here are two more in this series.
Fun with stamps. These are from a different Cavallini set that my honey got for me awhile ago.









And the rubber stamps on this one are from my collection of postal franks and immigration stamps.

 Here's our surprise yesterday -  ususual, snow falling! We didn't get a lot but it was cold and very windy. The valley region to the west and north of us got LOTS of snow. I heard some places got 30".  Wow, memories of my childhood.

Here's another unusual thing - a snapping turtle that we saw at the Maymont nature center last week. It was so prehistoric looking. One of the staff told us that mature one's spend all their time in the water, but when it was less-mature (I guess) they used to have a ramp in the tank so it could climb up out of the water. One day, they came into the center and found this guy taking a stroll!
What a surprise for them!

Look what happend Friday!

 It snowed. This is the view from my studio window. People were out and about in their cars though the roads were slick. People drive crazy here as we're not used to snow.  This morning (Saturday) the sun is out. It's 26F so no melting of snow yet.

 This is a view from the back window upstairs. Lovely dusting of white. It's so pretty to look at, but I don't want to go out. I've become a weather wimp from living in a milder climate for so many years. In Chicago, where I grew up, this would be nothing!

I've added to my studio window sill collection. The driftwood bird is a gift from a friend, the two tiny ceramic birds used to live in the downstairs bathroom. I ike my little clutter of cheery things.

Brrrr - snow, old stuff and mail art

 Last night, we noticed that the water wasn't getting hot, hmmm, and then noticed the room was somewhat colder. We felt the radiators and they were COLD! With the temperature going down to -9C, we were thinking we'd need that second blanket. I called the reception, and barely got out "Bonsoir, Monsieur Le Guardien" when he rattled off in French that they knew about the heat and the repair people were on their way. I guess he'd been getting a lot of calls! In any case, before too long we had heat. When I awoke at 7, I looked out the window and saw this. More snow!

 Here's the scene at 9 a.m. You can see that lots of people have walked past our place. And now at 11 a.m. the snow sweeping machine has been by and swept the top sidewalk clear of snow, the streets having been cleared earlier. It's 21F/-6C. brrrr. But we will go out this afternoon. We're thinking maybe the Gobelins factory, which has a display of contemporary tapestries.

 Here's what we bought at the brocante on Saturday. 2 old almanacs and an old diary. They are very interesting.

 Here's a page from one of the almanacs. The best birds to have as pets.

 This is a page in the little diary. Notice the date - yes, that's right, 1896!! Old penmanship is hard to read; I can make out a bit of what this says. It's about buying plants!

 And here's a close up of the lovely yellow lilies that Zoya brought us the other night when she came for dinner. It's like a bit of sunshine!

 Here's the series of photopostcard alterations that I've done. Anne thinks that I shouldn't mail them out; that I should keep them and do an exhibit. I'm a bit squeamish about that because of using another artist's work as the base.

 Altered with three pieces.

Altered with three pieces.  You can see that I've given myself limitations of only three items to be added. I like setting parameters.

If you missed seeing the work I did for an entire year, during my 365MailArt project, you can go to the set on Flickr, here.

Snow day & mail art

 The snow fell through the night and morning. The yard, as always, looks so pretty to me, with snow covering it.

I could have used the same photos from last year, right? But I didn't. This is today's version.

 The wires are like white lines across my yard. It's very quiet. No one is out and about. I threw some crumbs out for the birds and I see evidence of their having visited, with little prints on the snow.

fish with color experiment

Dog with color experiment 

 Today's Mail Art continues with the color experiments. I didn't have anymore of these fish, but I found this fine dog. I'm sending the dog card to someone whose name is sort of connected to dogs. I don't want to reveal it at this time in case, the recipient reads my blog. This is pretty mysterious, right?

Snowy night and Christmas trees.

late last night

 We had a nice visit with our niece and nephew. See their tree? It's loaded with Moose ornaments and we added one to the collection this year. One of their cats enjoyed watching the snow start falling. Just a few flakes at first.

Later in the evening, we had dinner with friends. See their tree? The ornaments were varied and colorful. The snow came faster and thicker. We drove home carefully. There weren't many people out and the snow falling made everything so unreal.

Monument Ave crossing; see the Monument?

Bowrings tree

Davis Tree

Kitty Davis