Notice for the exchangers - THE DAILY POST IS BELOW THIS ONE

 We interrupt the regular posts to discuss *empty* envelopes - with exchangers. If you are not an exchanger - just scroll down to the regular post.

In the *rules* for the exchange - we make it clear that it is an envelope exchange and you do not need to create a card or write a note or send anything to your fellow exchangers. About half the people send  *empty* envelopes. Half put something inside.

We need to change the concept of *empty* to mean - *no need to open the envelope because the only thing you will find is blank paper or recycled paper or a piece of card stock - something to give the envelope a little heft.* If anyone has a suggestion for a word other than *empty* to indicate that there is nothing to see on the inside - please let us know. But it has to be one short word. Maybe we should put quotes around the word "empty" - I don't even want to do that. I think I'll just trust that if someone joins the exchange and sticks with it - they will learn the ropes.

I had already scheduled this topic and it will reappear on the 11th - but I just found two more mangled envelopes in my mailbox on Monday. One is just wrinkled. The other one is torn and while there was a light weight index card inside - that was not enough to make the envelope stand up to the machines.

This one is from new exchanger MacKenzie. From now on, when I get new people signing up I will alert them to the need for an adequate amount of *something* in an *empty* envelope.

Gavin provided a cautionary example for how much *something* is required.

His weight index card with a note wasn't enough to protect it from being chewed up by the USPS processing machines.

This one came in an outer envelope provided by the USPS with an apology for the damage.

A 3x5 card is too small for a 5x7 envelope - also - both the card and envelope are light weight. There are some envelopes that are very sturdy that don't need any insert - so I can't give specific instructions on what will work.

This is what I do. The orange paper is leftover notebook paper - and slightly smaller than 8.5x11. I normally use a sheet of printer paper - but figured the orange would show up better in the photos.

I position it so that the long side is lined up with the longer edge of the envelope and fold it up so that it will fill the envelope from side to side.

Then I fold the other side down so that it fills the envelope from top to bottom.

I have also started using old greeting cards as filler. When I tear off my big wall calendar, I cut it up for filler. I also open the mail that says *empty* and save it to send in my own *empty* envelopes. I also save and reuse the filler paper that arrives in *empty* envelopes from other exchangers.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

DEC gold to Irene & scribble to Grace

This is the eighth one in the series and I felt like I hit a groove where I didn't have to think too hard about the shapes. I didn't have to pencil things in first. I could bounce things around. The doodads were fun. 

*Blumenthal* could have been bouncier. I wish I had made *IRENE* larger. 

There might be a few more of these - but I'll save them for later. This has been five days in a row on the series and that seems like more than enough.

I wonder if anyone would ever write and complain about what I choose to post. I wonder if readers critique the content.

Most of all, I wonder if anyone is going to try this style. To me - it is beginner friendly and fun. 

One more.... I went back to the scribble on the main stroke - and I'd do more of these. The way I put one holly leaf on each letter is a new variation - which looks good when there are five letters to the name.

 

DEC to Nanski and Irene (fine line and gold)

Somehow, I couldn't get myself to pull out different tools. I was too wrapped up in coordinating with the stamp. I ended up liking this one and I'll do more if I have more wreath stamps. I can see this version of the font being very useful with stamps that have geometric doodads.

I finally remembered the assignment to try a bunch of different tools and pulled out the gold Sharpies.

This one did not photograph very well - and even in person - it needed to be tilted to catch the light to look good. It was easy for it to just look really dull.... but, I was having fun. Maybe the blue dots needed to be larger.

 

Dec to Gavin - scribble version

I lost track of the mission of choosing a style and using a variety of tools. So I resorted to scribbling several lines to see if I could shake things up. Of course, I only did it on the G and then had to try to sneak in some scribbly lines on the other letters. I need to try this one again and make it super scribbly. I like the looseness and it was fun to do - which is the whole point.

There are still about 4 or 5 Dec envelopes left for me to do. If I do some more scribbles - I'll add them here. Otherwise we get a short post.

 ***

I forgot my idea to add on more scribbles here - and they will show up later. 

DEC to Kate, RIley and Morgan

 Real time add on: I can't tell if this article is behind a pay wall - it's about middle school kids who are learning cursive for fun. LINK to cursive article

This is the second version of this style where I used a big bullet point marker. Obviously, I didn't write with it. I wrote with a thin marker and then went over parts of it with the bullet point. Then I added the doodads. It's not much different from the original one. I'm happy with how the stamp offered ideas for the doodads.

Now I have to decide if I am going to run all 6 variations in a row. Will readers get tired of things that are too similar? Is anyone even going to try this style? Maybe I'll run two at a time. 

It's hard to imagine that this one is part of the series. After doing Kate's I tried a double ended chisel tip marker and after I did the R - I didn't see any way that the rest of to was going to work so I just switched to something fun. At least it compliments the stamp. Maybe it should have had some white. 

Then I tried this - and once again, I couldn't figure out how to add doodads.

I was going to take photos of this series - in progress - but only took one - and then forgot to do any others.

Dec to Christy and Lynne - First Style/Tool test run

Here we are at the first Style/Tool test run. I chose a style where I did not have a full exemplar. Patty sent me an envelope with the style and said it was from a class with The Postman's Knock. Since I only had JEANWILSO to work with - I had to guess what the other 17 letters looked like. At least I had 3 vowels. I did find a few more letters at The Postman's Knock website. 

It was lots of fun to do and I am looking forward to trying it with some different tools. My *exemplar* is just a rough draft in pencil. It is unlikely that I will do a more polished one. I'd have to get at least 2 requests from people who think it looks like fun and who would then send me an envelope using the style.

For the Accountability Posse - I spent all morning doing hoard reduction. I've been working the blog photos and posts for about an hour. I will now reward myself with some puttering at my desk. Oh - I did 3 loads of laundry, too. Daily drudgery should count for something.

 

Dec to Renee, Jessica, MacKenzie, Jeannette, Mary, Amy, Maggie, JeanR and Janet

There was an early post with this idea on an envelope for Jacqueline and it was one I really liked in the first set of envelopes with these stamps. Somehow, the letters in Renee's name didn't work out as well.

Then I tried it with Jessica's name and it's OK. I'm not happy with how the last name turned out. Jessica's name, challenging in its length, is very hit or miss on how successful it is. I always have fun with it. Too bad I don't have time to do 3 or 4 versions to always get a *hit.*

These two are pretty good. If I did them over, I would write MacKenzie a little larger so it went from edge to edge. Jeannette's is pretty good.

Mary's edge-to-edge is pretty good. 

The red ribbon letters seem wimpy. They should have been bolder.

The wreath is overworked.

I forgot to do the light yellow green dots on Amy's

Maggie's was the first one of the second set and the red dots were wimpy so on the rest of them I switched to larger red dots that were not layered over the green.

After I did the first set of this style I thought the names wanted to be written in a circular wreath. It was much harder than I had anticipated. I have rough drafts of all these names but when I went to finals drafts I only did these two and then I switched back to something that I thought was going to work better.

There are two ways to do these - Jean's is written in a circle with the baseline at the center. 

Janet's has the first name upright on the top - with the base line in the center and then switches the last name to having the baseline on the outside of the wreath.

Some letters - like the A - can be really easy in one direction and not so easy in the other directions. Look at the two As in Janet's name. 

 

Dec exchange envelopes - January Exchange Sign-up

Happy New Year. I took this photo at the post office when I mailed the envelopes that went out early in December. They are variations of the earlier holiday envelope. Tomorrow I will run all of them at once because they are redundant and we prefer variety. Then I will have the first in the series where I take a style and try it with different tools.

Also - as I obliterate my hoard by finding people who are interested in oddities... if you sign up for the exchange and if you would like me to send you some random stamps from Italy and the Vatican, I will send them to you in your January exchange envelope. The number of stamps you get will depend on the number of people who would like to re-home them. 

Many of you know the drill for signing up for the exchange. We have been getting several new people so we'll see how clear the directions are. Often times people omit their email after their snail mail address. Let's try for 100% this month.

Today through January 4th is the window to sign-up. Lists are sent on the 5th.

If you participated for the DECEMBER exchange - just shoot me an email that says: SIGN ME UP - you do not need to retype your address and info.

Send your sign-up to:    PTEnvelopes-at-aol-dot-com

Let me know if it is your [Birthday] month or if you are willing to be on [2 Lists].

If you were not on a December list - or if you only sign up occasionally - or are a new exchanger - please send your information in the following format:

Jane Doe

123 Oak Street

Ames, IA 50010

janedoe@aol.com

[Birthday]  [2 Lists]  -- if those items apply

If you are new to the exchange - here are some helpful details:

https://pushingtheenvelopes.blogspot.com/p/rules-of-exchangement.html

Sadly - the exchange is now limited to US addresses. 
 

DEC to Ava - falling off the wagon

Ava's first exchange was in December. I love the letters in her name and hope she signs up again. This is very similar to some of the envelopes that have already been posted. I had done some holiday envelopes in November and figured it would be OK to do some more of the ones that I thought had been successful. There will be a couple more days of variations on this theme and then we will have something new.

***

Did anyone notice that yesterday's blog post was written as though it was the last day of the year? The minute I clicked on [Publish] and saw that there is one more day, I pondered how to correct that. It's ironic that I also announced the plans for the new year. 

Man plans, God laughs. 

Jean plans, everyone else laughs along with God. 

*** Do not read any further if you are trying to get things done. The following is only for people who have run out of things to do and need to kill time.

The new year has not started and I have already fallen off the wagon. My *wagon* is not about drinking it's the organizational thing. Does anyone know where that expression came from? I was curious and here is what I found:

Suggested explanations of the origin of ‘on the wagon’ focus on actual wagons that were used to transport people; for example, condemned prisoners who had taken their last drink in this life and were transported to the gallows by wagon. Another story has it that Evangeline Booth, the US Salvation Army National Commander, toured the Bowery slums in a wagon picking up drunks and delivering them to sobriety. The phrase pre-dates Booth’s work in New York, so that can’t be the origin. It isn’t far from the truth though, but, as we’ll see below, no actual wagon rides were involved. 

‘On the wagon’ was coined in the USA around the turn of the 20th century. The phrase began as ‘on the water-cart’, migrated to ‘on the water-wagon’ and finally to ‘on the wagon’.

The late 19th century saw the emergence of several temperance organisations, notably The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893 and The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874. These followed on from the work of The Abstinence Society which had encouraged millions of men to ‘take the pledge’. The Pledge wasn’t just a vague intention to avoid drink; it was a specific and absolute promise never to drink again and was taken very seriously:

“I promise to abstain from all intoxicating drinks except used medicinally and by order of a medical man, and to discountenance the cause and practice of intemperance.

Water wagons were a commonplace sight in US cities at the time. They didn’t carry drinking water but were used to damp down dusty streets during dry weather. Those who had vowed to give up drink and were tempted to lapse said that they would drink from the water-cart rather than take strong drink. 

The first reference to it that I’ve found in print is from Alice Caldwell Hegan’s comic novel Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 1901: 

I wanted to git him some whisky, but he shuck his head. “I’m on the water-cart.”

‘Water-wagon’ was soon used as an alternative and the distinction between the figurative phrase ‘on the wagon’ and real water-wagons was made clear in this piece from The Davenport Daily Leader, March 1904:

“Peter Solle took a bad fall from the water wagon this morning. The water wagon was not that imaginary, visionary affair that is sometimes applied to he who signs the pledge, but was the real thing, all there and big as life.”

***

The quote is from https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-the-wagon.html

Battle Toaster

 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Blogger has not been alerting me to the comments that people have been leaving - so that I can approve them to be posted. I just discovered all kinds of lovely comments and OKed them. Thank you to everyone who left a comment. They confirm all the nice things I said in my  Xmas eve post about how much I appreciate my reader/pen pals.

***

I blocked out the street address which was right above the city/state/zip.

I've always enjoyed designing and addressing holiday cards for my daughter. It was easy when the kids were little - I just did everything and she was grateful. Then the kids got older and there were no good photos of them for a card so we stopped doing them. Then the granddaughter turned 10 and wanted to know why their family did not send cards because they received so many. So, my daughter let her daughter design them and they ordered them online - shipped to me to do the addressing. That worked out fine.

This year the two of them made a huge blunder. Instead of the usual 5x7 cards, they ordered 6x8. On top of that they ordered double thick. They had no idea that the weight would be over an ounce....and I had already bought stamps - for normal 1-oz mail. 

I did not discover the blunder until their order arrived to be addressed - and I was hoping to do a one day turnaround to get them in the mail. I could have put a yellow school bus stamp on each one - but that would have looked goofy. So I did double stamps on 40 of them and then bought some 2-ounce stamps. They're OK - but I haven't told them what I did. I'm guessing they will be OK with it - I just couldn't make myself buy double stamps for all the cards. I suppose they can fire me. [Real time add-on: they were fvery happy with what I did.]

***

My son and I saw this car in a parking lot while he was driving me around looking for more of the Holiday Cheer stamps - back when I thought I only needed 80. He said he had seen it around the neighborhood. I was wildly excited to see it for the first time because I love art cars. Note the sign below the license plate that says *Battle Toaster.*

There are a couple actual street signs on the driver's side of the car. The stop sign is no longer red

I like the fire extinguisher mounted by the windshield. And below is a close up of the dash board sculpture. 

My son knows that I'd love to get one of the retired LLV postal delivery trucks. He asked me if I could magically have either an LLV or the Battle Toaster - which would I choose. That's a really hard question. If we are talking magic - I guess I would go for the LLV but have it turned into a Battle Toaster.

The interior of the Battle Toaster was actually pretty nice. But, my son would not let me take any more photos. Personally, I think if you create a vehicle like this you are happy when people want to photograph it. 

Happy New Year - tomorrow we have the January exchange sign-up and then the next day we launch the new and improved style/tool/layout project that intersects with the hoard reduction project and legible addressing project. <Eye-rolling>

Ben's birthday envelope.

 

I ran out of photos of envelopes so I didn't quite fill up December on the snowy day. <days pass> It's been a week and there was more snow. I did a quick envelope to my grandson who has a Dec 17th birthday. I'm surprised it took me this long to notice the POW in that family's last name. I wonder if he's even seen the old time cartoons with the loud noises done in lettering. He reads graphic novels for kids. I haven't looked at them to see if they have creative lettering.

On my trip to Chicago in November, Ben mentioned that he really liked to write in cursive and had done a whole page of cursive at school that day. I asked him to write some cursive for me. It is so scrunched up. That seems to be what happens to a lot of people. I wonder why.

Oct from Mary and Leslie

Even though we are not in a halloween mood - from a design standpoint these two look great together. Lots of people still had Day of the Dead stamps left. I wonder if they will be available in 2026.

Mary's design (above) is fun. I hope I remember to steal the idea of the name across the bottom. I can think of so many ways to do it where the address would still be very clear for the scanners.

Leslie's (below) might have needed some human eyes - but it was just going across town. I wonder how that works. I have posted, previously, about the one place in the US (I think it is in Utah) where images of envelopes pop up and humans try to figure out what the address is. 

Many years ago, there was a woman in our calligraphy guild who had a job with the USPS and she sat at a desk where actual mail that the scanners could not read would slide by on a track, stop in front of her, and she would decipher the address and type in the bar code. I have no idea if such a job still exists. I'll try to find out.

 

Oct/Nov from Janet, Leslie, Sharen and Cindy

There has been a two week hiatus from writing blog posts.

Here we are at the end of the year. I have two blog posts to fill and then we will launch 2026. I feel the need to wrap things up with the halloween themes. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to start holding half the incoming holiday envelopes and post them the following year. 

These are all fun - I'm happy to report that I have been vigilant on the final push of the hoard reduction. There is no deadline. Maybe I should set a deadline. I'm writing this on Dec 6. Maybe I can reflect on how much has been accomplished in the past three weeks when I get to my final edit of this post.

 

Well, it's a week later, Dec 12. There has been progress on all fronts. I'm hesitant to say that because it might jinx things. On the other hand, the way I am logging this progress report makes me feel like I am keeping a journal. I've noticed several articles on the benefits from journaling. The only time I journaled was when I read The Artist's Way. After I finished the book, I never journaled again. 

On the other hand, if I go back and read old blog posts - it's like reading a journal. One thing I read about how to establish a journal writing routine was to not be too rigid in exactly how/when/where/how often you write. So, that exactly what's happened with the blog. 

Nov to Jacqueline

 

SURPRISE!!!

I actually had one envelope that I really liked in November. Thank you for putting up with all my complaining about all my Nov exchange envelopes. I wish I had come up with this idea earlier. Now that I have it, maybe I will do some more. It was lots of fun to do and I can even think of some fun variations. Maybe I can use this idea for everyone who received one of those yucky gold envelopes.

I don't think I even talked about the cardinals. The shapes on the branches seem like really nice shapes  to use in the design but they were harder than I imagined. Maybe they needed to be done with a brush. 

I haven't been giving many updates on the writing of the blog posts on the snowy day (Nov 29). It is now 2:15 p.m. and I have only five posts left to fill December. That's very doable. I'll go do one of the hoard reduction chores and then come back and write 5 more. Thank you Accountability Posse. You are really keeping me on task.

Nov to Christy, JeanR, Maggie, Rachael, Janet, Patty, Amy and Wayne

Merry Christmas. Here are 8 lumps of coal.

I'm perfectly happy with the sentiment of thanking my exchangers for exchanging.

It's hard to say why I am so disappointed in these. One would think I could find something nice to go with the gold. I like gold. Maybe it's the black that is throwing me off. I still have a lot of the gold envelopes left and I don't like to give up - so I fear there will be more yucky gold envelopes. 

Maybe the right stamp will appear. The stamps with white backgrounds are better than a lot of other one. Maybe I should try those stamps with the gold calligraphic *ThankYou*

These layered ones remind me of the pictures where you have to wear 3D glasses to see the image in 3D.

I wish I had done three stamp shapes on this one - and maybe that's the solution to the gold envelopes - lots and lots of stamps. Something really crazy. As I said, I'm not afraid of a challenge and I do like the idea of figuring out something wonderful. I just don't want to figure it out on the very last envelope...and then have no more gold envelopes....because the last thing I'm going to do is buy more gold envelopes. I did not buy these - they were left over from a job.