Mail Art and some blue-ness

 This card has one of my favorite paintings on it. It's in VMFA & was painted in the 1800s. The peanuts look so real! The bird was done by an illustrator, not me.

 My honey gave me a box of 50 postcards having to do with water. I altered this one with the sinking postage stamp and some pots of hydrangeas. Fun!

 This is the reverse & shows the repro of an old French postcard. It's larger than standard and was on a brochure for kids at MoMA in New York. I picked up a couple of these brochures, knowing they'd be great for Mail Art.

 Here's the front of the card, altered with a strip of striped Washi tape, a guy with a camera, and a thin line of map. The circles were already there.

 Some blue sky and interesting clouds; of course, all clouds are interesting! Right?

Some blue water from the pool this morning. I was shooting down on the top of the pool with my little flip cell phone, while standing in the water.  I like the ambiguity, sky, water, sky, water???

Mail Art 365.2 - I begin again

#6

This is the 6th day card, when we got home and I used paper I picked up in Chicago. I liked that it was translucent and the text was fun for a piece of Mail Art.

#3

Here's a very busy composition. The substrate is a piece of cardboard I'd cut from a something while I was in L.A. in April. I liked the crudeness of the shape, which I'd cut using a child's scissors.

#4

In the background of this card is a piece from a painting that I'd torn from an Amtrak magazine, I think. I found it tucked in the travel kit. Since Chicago is the home to the largest collection of impressionist paintings, I thought this would be a good image to use.

#5

I made the 5th card on our last day in Illinois. It was a successful trip, though by the end of the day, or rather night, since we arrived home in Richmond at 11h30 p.m., we were quite exhausted. 

#6a

This card was a second one that I made on day 6. This is an altered art show card. The substrate is from a card that I picked up in Paris last winter.

I can see that, as per the first go around, I won't just be making one a day. I have way to many people that I want to send mail to these days.

It feels good to get up and just get to play in my studio again.

Back on track!

 We went to Chicago for a quick visit with my honey's cousins. The five cousins came together in the city for 2 days, then 2 days out in the corn and soy bean fields at the home of one of them. It was a lovely trip and I felt inspired to begin my 2nd 365 Mail Art project. Here is card #1 using some scraps I had in my traveling Mail Art kit. I'm labeling them 365.2.

 This is the second day, using scraps from things that I picked up plus some bits from the travel kit. I had taken blank cards with me, knowing I'd be making Mail Art. I just didn't think I'd make the commitment to a daily practice again. But I did.

 This is a view from the Charles City Tavern. It's a lovely location on Route 5 east of Richmond. Very historic area of the country, this route leads to Jamestown where the earliest English settlement was established.

 I never tire of taking cloud photos, or photos that include Robinson House, on the grounds of VMFA.

These are glass pieces, reeds, set in place behind the museum's main building. They are, in my mind, one of the nicest installations of Chihuly glass pieces. The red glass is gorgeous in the sun and the reflections are so nice.

And so I get to 1000! YAY!

#998

 Somehow, in my excitement of uploading the final few, I got them out of order. Here they are. The last of this series.

#999

I used cardboard cut from cracker boxes. I like the color that they give for the substrate.










I'm not happy with some of my gluing on these. The paper is silk screened color and very sensitive to anything on it. The adhesive moved around a bit when I burnished the pieces down. Oh well.

#997

This is the front & reverse of card #1000. I'm sending it to Andy, who started the whole thing back in 2010. He was like: let's start a 365 project with Mail Art. Want to join me? And I did. Thanks, Andy, it's been a fun time. The 365 project was fun and got me started numbering, and then I couldn't stop when I was finished.
 You can see what I accomplished during my 365 project here.  And you can see what I've done since that project ended a year later here.

Mail Art & a Mail Art prize!

#994

 This is the ending series of my 365 and beyond. After this series, when I reach 1000, I've decided, with a bit of "pressure" from friends, to start 365.2 so over again, I'll be starting a new 365. I'll make daily mail art and start numbering from #1 again. Exciting!

 I decided with this one, #995 to added random text, creating some odd poetry, with random imagery. Somehow, it actually works okay.

 This is #996. In reality, the colors are very gaudy and jarring. I didn't like the orange and greeny color so I added the red-violet dot. It toned down a bit.
These last cards, 995 - 1000, will be sent to the people that I sent the very first cards to when I started my 365 project.

This was my big surprise this morning. My honey came up to my studio and said "you have a gift waiting for you on the kitchen table." "Really" I said. He said that he didn't put it there and was very puzzled by who did. Who came into our house, didn't say hello, crept out again, and when I opened the card, I was really surprised. This is from our dear friends, BeeBee & T. who live in Chicago. How did they get it to me? It was on the table, on top of papers that said "one thousand" over and over, with a beautiful card, created by BeeBee. I love Hydrangeas! This one is especially spectacular with BIG petals on the individual flowers in the big bloom. The mystery was solved, N stealthily delivered it. He kept the secret. The plant was delivered to him with the card & inserts, and happily arrived as I was in the midst of completing the last of my 1000 pieces of Mail Art since I started to count on 1 Dec. 2010.

Pool - morning time

This a test to remind me how to post to my blog using my old school mobile fone.

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.