Feb Ex - Planets and Maps

Top from Finnbadger and bottom from Florence are a fun pair.

Oops on the cropping of the photo. I had major fits with the photos of this set of envelopes. I will not bore you with the details...

Feb Exchangers Alison and Amy G

These two meandering designs make a nice pair. I can't for the life of me figure out how Alison (top) did those lines. It looks like colored pencil. Please drop me an email - or leave a comment, Alison.

Amy created an envelope out of a printed page from a magazine (or something similar) and layered it with translucent vellum. She enclosed some stamps and we are lucky they made it - as she forgot to glue the ends closed. If there were other items...they did not make it.


***
I found out that Alison's lines were made with colored pencil sticks that were brand new, so they had a nice sharp edge. I had no idea such things existed. It's difficult, but I am resisting the urge to buy some.

One More Birthday Card for George

Grace was a little late sending a birthday greeting to George so she used the Alice in Wonderland theme. George loved it and even left his own yellow Post-It comment on it.

I agree - the lettering is in my stealworthy pile.
Thank you Grace.

P.S. This arrived in February - as mentioned frequently, I schedule posts way ahead of time.

I have a weird feeling that I never posted the birthday cards that exchangers sent to George when I put his name on the exchange list, instead of mine...so they will probably show up in August.... at what point will I figure out a filing system that works?

From Chuck and Faye - Feb Exch

Once again, all the envelopes from the February exchange fell into perfect pairs. The first two are from Chuck (top) and Faye (bottom). I pondered scheduling this series closer to next February since a lot of them are valentine themed, but now that I have the Pinterest boards, I will just pin them on the valentine board and figure that people will look there first.

Plus, I will try to label all of them on the blog. I have not had any labeled valentine - which surprises me....but, it's never too late to layer on one more organizational tool.

Eric's Taco John Bag

Eric is collecting envelopes made out of bags. I love Taco John's and they have great graphics. I would have preferred to just leave the address in white on the circle - but figured I would add it in black in a more traditional place. And I am annoyed with myself that I did not rescan it after I found the two most perfect stamps. I used 2 engraved tulips -black ink on white- with a tiny red heart. They were so pretty. I guess we can see them at Eric's blog.

And this was the flip side. He likes frogs. Taco John was kind enough to put a frog on the back. It is in the circle emblem way over on the right.

Pencils for Kathy and Tina

I forgot to add her last name.
I love pencils.
The critter seems interested.
I love gel pens, too.

I did Tina's first and her address fit perfectly on the pencils. I was not even thinking about it - I just noticed it after I wrote the TINA.

I really wanted to send it without writing a traditional address, but chickened out. I think I will try one with the address on only the pencils and see if it goes through. NOTE TO SELF-This is why this is labeled FOLLOW-UP.

I blotted out the words on Tina's envelopes, so you will have to imagine how cute it was. And then, the frosting on the cake - I pulled out my stack of stamps and WHAM - the colors on the Oscar de la Renta stamps were beyond perfect.

If anyone wants an envelope just like this, they can send me those three stamps and I will write their name and send it back - and if you want the envelope to stay pretty, send an additional stamp - and I will enclose it in an outer envelope. 

Kathleen's Birthday

Her birthday was back in March and this one was done prior to the past few I have shown. It was hiding in a pile and when I ran across it, it reminded me to go back to the PITT white markers. Why don't I have a big board with all my favorite ideas right in front of me?


The answer to that is because I make poor choices. You'd think someone who pinned this would be making better choices:

ornery pins

I'm warning you. Do not go to that link if you are ladylike and will be offended at really outrageous sayings. I know I seem all sweetness and light. But, I have my dark side. Lucky for me, other people do all the work of embroidering it.....

PITT white on vellum

After getting the hang of the PITT white marker on the blue envelopes, I ran out of blue envelopes, so decided to use up some vellum envelopes. The white gel pen did not like the vellum at all, so these aren't as much fun as the others.

The one below was the one I did first where I decided not to use gel pen on vellum. I already knew it wouldn't work. But....ya know how it goes...you know better...but you try anyways.

A bit of a hodge podge - but stamps out the door is the goal.

Cathy's Snake

More fun with the FC PITT white marker and I did not goof up the zip code.

The snake just needed to be slithering along the bottom. It looked goofy up in the corner. I hope the PO doesn't make nasty marks on this one.

Using up Captain Cook

 This was for the March Exchange which I did all in one sitting, except I messed up Carroll's so I did hers the next day. I was surprised how well the FC PITT white marker did on such a pale blue. Captain Cook has the best expression and I was sad to see him go. I should have interpreted his glare as his disapproval of my stamp hoarding. I messed up the zip code....

PO Redesign - Not to be

This was a very cool project that did not get off the ground. You can read all about it here.

Tieton Post Office

The design of the front of the post office is a nice idea for an envelope.

Love Contrail Stamp

The Limner sent me a very cool piece of mail and I needed to dash off a quick thank you. The expression to *wing it* seemed to go along with this stamp. Sooooo....with no planning, I did everything except the word lovely. There was an odd space left over and any number of words would have fit. I wish I had gone with a word that had only short letters at the beginning. The l in lovely really bothers me. Yes, if I did this one a second time, there would be a ton of improvements - but - for a *wing-it* - it's fine.

Would I have been happier with a perfect match on the blue? Yes. Am I going to let it bother me? No. How often do I have these conversations with myself? Perpetually. Is that the *inner-critic* that you are talking to? I don't know. I'd like to think it is the inner evaluator. There is nothing wrong with pondering how you would do things differently in the future. I don't think there is a danger in pondering and commenting. At the end of the day (or in this case - at the end of 2 minutes) I drop the items in the mail. The higher purpose is to send mail. Holy post office. She sounds like she is going all preachy on us. Don't worry - it's the coffee talking.

Onward.

Hester's Birthday

It was fun to experiment with the big Faber Castell PITT white marker. Also fun to find a nice block of stamps that worked with the colors and helped with the stamp purge.

Five (or 10) Ships - March Ex

The next sheet of stamps to use up were these ships. I love them so much. But just have to proceed with the hoard reduction. At least the two stamps will cover the cost of sending a square.

On second thought, I have nothing inspired to do with ship stamps. All I can do is match the color and make it look like water.

So, I will just post all of them since they are seriously redundant. The envelopes are very nice leftovers from very expensive wedding invitations. And I am crazy about white space. So there are at least three things I like.

I guess it bothers me when I write things fast. It seems like they are not worthy when they don't take a lot of time. On the other hand, I think it took a long time to be able to scrawl in a way that satisfies my eyeballs. It bothers me when I get an envelope in the exchange and I know the other person spent way more time on their envelope than I spent on mine. But, I am going to get over that. I spend the time to keep the blog going and run the exchanges - so that should count for something.....eh?

To Finnbadger - TJ Bag - March Ex

Finnbadger and Eric are on a paper bag binge. I can't decide how far I want to delve into the bag thing with them. I am a severe bag-hoarder. Really severe.

Nuf said.

This is a placemat from Taco John's folded up inside a vellum envelope.
Nuf said about the TJ addiction as well.

Except the last time I went at 1 PM to avoid the noon rush, I noticed that everyone dining in - was a gray haired granny-type, just like me.

To KathleenRH - Truck - March Ex

I wasn't sure if it would work to do upper and lower case. At first, I thought it was a dud. But I added the heavier lines and started liking it. The smaller lettering bothered me, so I pulled out the colored pencils and it seems OK. Sadly, I had run out of trucks so ended this series. At the moment, it makes no sense why I had to quit the series. That style of writing should go with any stamp. I don't make sense - even to myself.

To Hester - Truck - March Ex

I loosened up a bit on the second one. and liked it a lot. It was hard to find a good green. The red would have been better. But, I had to use up all the trucks.

Singing and callligraphy

Chuck sent this link which has some fun calligraphy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ll5GOf6-bY

If you click on the name Calligraphy Masters you get to an option with many more videos or you can click this link. I wish I had time to post more videos...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUY9HyK2v0J2N_U4Y0eZsnw

On March 3rd, this was the most pinned envelope from my blog. It certainly isn't one I would expect to be so popular. I'm wondering if I am reading the stats correctly.

Time passes and Jean checks.
Yes I was not reading the stats correctly. This was just popular for a week or a month.

To Florence - Truck - March Ex

There might be a Jean Larche alphabet that looks like this. Well, might be is wrong. There is. But, I have not seen it in a really long time and I am sure if I saw it I would feel bad that his is way better than mine. So, I am not going to dig around and find it. I'm just going to be happy because it was fun to do. I did two more that got funner. I know that is bad grammar. Sorry. I think we should be allowed to add -er and -est in consistent ways.

To Amy - Truck - March Ex

See, I told you I would go crazy in a day or two. This was a square envelope and I thought I had two trucks left, but I did not, so I had to fold it down to a standard size so that I only needed one stamp and then the AMY ran off the top, so I added the last name running off the bottom and just filled in with random words. I might add more. But, would run the risk of ruining it. I might restrain myself. But, I did have a lot of fun with that alphabet and hope some of you try it. Clearly you do not have to be too disciplined about how you draw the letters.

To Jannie - Truck - March Ex

Super boring, but the color is so nice. I put in a fake address. I suspect I will do something much better when I actually write the real address on the paper. It's a really nice envelope. The turquoise marker is a Cocoiro.

To Janet - Truck - March Ex

Not vellum, orphan, nice paper. Black and silver markers. Minimalist. Maybe boring for the blog, but I like minimalism. Hang in here with me, I do go bonkers after a couple more boring ones. The good kind of bonkers.

To Susan - Truck - March Ex

This one is out of order. There were more vellum envelopes with this style of writing. I did not know how well the white would work on this envelope. I only had one of them. This was an exercise in not letting myself rummage through the stacks of stamps to find the perfect stamp to go with this envelope. My new system is to just take things off the top of any given pile and in the words of one of my gurus, Tim Gunn, make it work. I would not win anything with this envelope, but I'm pretty sure I would not get told to go to the workroom and clean up my space.

To Rachael - Truck - March Ex

The C and E are on an exemplar on Pinterest. I mixed in some other styles. And the wheels are somewhat better.

The translucent envelopes are a little strange to write on. I like the somewhat geometric look of the letters with the design of the trucks. More trucks coming.

U of Iowa Special Collection (of books)

http://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/55515469033/miniature-monday-tiny-flipbook-there-should-be

I have been to the Special Collection part of the U of Iowa library a couple times. They have all kinds of fabulous things. I think I have posted about the collection previously. This time, I am linking to the blog because they have some animation showing flip books, etc. It's not mail, but it's pretty cool.

They have one collection of miniature books and also a very large collection of cookbooks. Also a page from a Gutenberg bible and a Babylonian clay tablet that is tiny and is a receipt for a goat.

http://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/tagged/gif

This is the link to their website where you can surf. They do not have everything digitized.

https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/

To Nancy - truck - March ex

There were several truck stamps left and I decided to use them up. It would have been fun to have a little tire tread mark going across the envelope - but I didn't think of that soon enough. The letters in Nancy's name are good for this style of lettering. It was blah, so I added tires. They are a little wimpy, so plan on seeing some progress with this idea on Monday.

To Alison - Jimi (March Ex)

I've done this alphabet before. I hope it is on my Pinterest board.

I colored in the letters with colored pencil.

*****
The number of hits on my blog is now over 750,000 - unless I am not reading the number correctly. Thank you to all my loyal readers. You keep me going in more ways that one.

To Chuck and Troy - Star Trek (March Ex)

For the March exchange, I gathered orphan envelopes and some stamps, markers and pens and was curious to see if I could do 25 in one sitting without falling off the wave.

As I have mentioned before, it always takes a few to warm up. Chuck's envelope was the one that appeared on April Fool's Day. It is too much like crochet to go with that stamp, but his name has the perfect letters for that shape.

Troy's needs more - and I will add another image if I don't forget.
I have a stack of those translucent vellum envelopes to use up.

To Eric from the Other Phillip

I post a lot of envelopes from and to Eric and Phillip Lerche. There is another mail artist, Phillippe Charron who sent this to Eric. It was on Eric's blog. I have no idea how he made the original schmears of paint. The white outlines and lettering could be any kind of white ink or gel pen. 

I plan to steal this idea next time I am painting with my granddaughter. When she was visiting for Thanksgiving, I had her do a bunch of watercolor paintings on cards and then I dressed them up with some stars and tiny greetings. I do not recall if I posted any of them or not. I was very happy with how they turned out. It was really hard to part with them and I did not take very good pictures of them. She is only 3 so I hope we have one more year of nice abstract art from her. I guess kid art is pretty nice until about 7 or 8. It probably depends on the kid.  My own kids were not that interested in art projects so if the grand kids like art projects, Nanna will be over the moon.

Mailable steak for Father's Day

If you start now, you can have this ready for Father's Day. It doesn't have to be just for Father's Day. And I would recommend making a few to have on hand. You wouldn't have to print out her image if you are comfortable with doing your own illustration.

http://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/1038523/fathers-day-gift-idea-diy-mailable-steak

It might be just as cute if it was made out of 3 or 4 layers of corrugated cardboard. Sometimes you can leave the details out and it still has all the impact.

the original blog where i found this link has more foody-mail
http://www.projectdenneler.com/search/label/fun%20mail

May Exchange Sign-up

blog with envelopes
That envelope is from a blog with several fun ideas. Nothing current. It looks like the blogger had a baby and that ended the blogging....

It is time to sign up for the May exchange.
I need the following information:

Name
Address
City/State/Zip/Country
your email

Send it to

jmwilson411 [at] yahoo [dot] com

If you are having a birthday in May, you may add that info to your email and participants have the option of sending a birthday themed envelope.
You will get a list of 4, 5, or 6 people to send to.
You might get one international address requiring $1.15 postage.
You will need to get decorated envelopes in the mail by May 31st.
That's it.
There are additional details at the top of the blog under a tab marked [exchange *RULES*]

Deadline to sign up is May 4. Lists will be sent on May 5th or 6th.
Let me know if you want to be on more than one list.
Sometimes I do not get an even number of participants, so it is nice to have some volunteers to be on two lists.

Any questions - email me.
Thanks.

This just in:
Consider the postage stamp; its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there.
Josh Billings (unverified author) I found this while surfing after I had a comment from Dianne on the April 23rd post.