Oh Baby Baby - look what I got today!

 












"The Hermes Baby Typewriter was the next successful machine from E. Paillard & Company in the late 1930's and early 1940's. Also known as the Hermes Baby Jubilee, it is considered by many to be the "Mini Cooper" of typewriters. When it was first introduced, the Baby gained almost instant success and became the "must have" typewriter for novelists, celebrities, reporters, and journalists of the time. Designed for Paillard by famed Italian designer Giuseppe Presioso, the beautiful lines of the Hermes Baby changed typewriter design forever. The Baby was reputed to be the typewriter of choice for Ernest Hemingway."
Not a great photo of it, but I was so excited about bringing this home that I took just a quick photo with my phone. It's a steel gray with red accents. It's VERY light weight. Way more portable than my turqouise Smith Corona, which weighs like a ton by comparison. I can't wait to use it. My honey found the image of the advertisement on eBay. It shows the machine and the factory in Switzerland.

Some of my favorite things

Mail

Books!

My back garden

sock monkeys

Sock Monkeys: I made the one in the background for my friend and when she died, he came back to me. He's very old. The one in front was made by a student a MICA (Maryland Institute and College of Art) and I couldn't resist buying it, with it's little hot glue tear by it's eye.

My piano

NRRA salt water pool

My studio & making Mail Art

typewriter

 I brought my old machine out recently and was able to get new ink ribbons for it. It reminds me of other times and places and is fun to use, though I have to relearn how to use it - sloooowly I type my words.

violets

A new regime will start - tomorrow!

 We had a crazy week, our first week home! My honey had to install his exhibit/exposition at the gallery with help from friends. It looked great and the openings were successful. Yay! Relief. AND we had a cousins fly in from Los Angeles to surpise us and they DID! They arrived at the preview opening directly from the airport. Wow!

Today, we went to the VMFA with them. I fell in love with this Egyptian falcon. Oh, to own a little replica would be super.

I, also, love this Egyptian head. The way the line of the stone goes across it is so gorgeous. It's hard to believe that these are so old. There is also this nagging in my brain - why are they here and not in Egypt? Okay, I won't go there; I'm just glad I'm able to see them.

Now everyone has gone, we're ready to start our re-entry into our regular lives. Tomorrow, we start the regular regimen, tomorrow.

 Here's the back garden in our spring-like weather that we had for a few days. Now it's colder and snow is predicted. That's crazy! Not happening!

The patio looks nice and I'll be happy to sit out there with my coffee soon.

A friend in San Francisco sent me a typed letter. She posted about typewriters on her blog. 
I got inspired to dust off my old typewriter. I can't believe how heavy it is considering it's a portable. Oh, right, I'm used to my little laptop computer. In any case, I got it out and it still works and the ribbon still has ink in it! Cool, right? I went on-line and found a source for replacement tapes and ordered 2. This is going to start a whole new (old) thing for me. Typing letters! All I have to do is clean off a spot on my work table. Fun ahead! Do you have a typewriter? If yes, what kind?

A cool machine & some mail art

 It's a gray day, back in Richmond, VA. The weekend was lovely.  We have a daughter-in-law now. Sweet.

This cool machine was not for sale, not that I'd have bought it; because, I already own two vintage machines, but not as COOL as this one. It's so basic and you can see how the parts work.

 This is the last card I made while in Asheville using scraps from brochures. Asheville is definitely an art town. Lots of visual art, crafts, music, and lots of good food. I don't think one can eat a bad meal in that town. We stayed at a hotel up the road from the entrance to the Biltmore Estate, and could walk down the street to Biltmore Village, which is now lots of shops and restaurants but was built around the turn of the last century to support the estate. Workers housing maybe. I'll post a few more pix of the place.

 Today's mail art cards are just fun, playful for me. I'd cut circles out of some images of paintings (Matisse?) and like the way I can create a bit of a transparency thing where the circles overlap the color.

The transparency, or whatever the illusion is, seems stronger on this card. I really like the way it turned out. I didn't spend a lot of time on these, needed to pop them out quickly as the day is going to be spent recovering (shhh, I have a sore throat) laying about, drinking tea, and reading.
Just having lots of bits at hand makes daily making easy.

#44s

"1920 fears"

"1950 style"

Some of the participants in Mail Art 365 write a lot about each of their daily pieces. They write their motivation, their technique, their recipients, and such. Me, I write nothing but the number of the piece. I read the other day that some people like to know about the above things so I decided to write about them here. And post process or technique the way I did the other day.



Since I'm trying to use up the scraps that I already have, I find it interesting how I find ways to combine them, ways I'd never thought about but work for me.

The backgrounds on these are from that Merrimekko "newspaper" I got in NYC. I searched in my tins for vintage items. I wanted a person and a thing and some writing. I was happy to re-discover the 1920's bit of advertising. It was from an article about what fears were focused on during the 1920s in the states. The old-timey Georgia Belle seemd to be perfect for the 1950s bathing beauty.  These turned out okay. Now to make today's piece of Mail Art. Running late!!

Typewriters

I have two typewriters. The Smith-Corona is from my college days. The Remington was bequeathed to me by a friend who moved to Europe. She had it in her yard sale for $25, including another ribbon, but no one wanted it. I plan to one day do an art project using them. In the meantime, they collect dust. They are very good at that. I don't know how good they'll be at typing a letter (yet!)