Dec to AmyF, Irene, Christy, Janet, AmyG, Jess

 

This is either the second or third year that I did my December envelopes and put them inside of the November. envelopes so that I could skip sending anything in December. I like to lighten the USPS's seasonal load by 30 envelopes. Although that's insignificant. The main reason I like making a non-mailed envelope is because I don't have to make it legible for scanners. 

This year I used up some vintage madonna stamps that Kate sent me. She had a stash of them and was not coming up with any inspirational ways to use them. I realized that there was nothing interesting about using multiples. They want to be alone - so this was a perfect way to use them. I was very happy with my concept. The execution took quite a while to figure out. 

I also had quite a few of those teddy bear stamps. They do not have a denomination printed on them so last year they confused the USPS and one envelope that had enough of them to equal the current cost was returned to me. I'm sure that some postal worker was not familiar with them. So, rather than go through that again, I figured it was better to use them on my non-mailed envelopes.

Here are two ideas where the ideas were better than the result. On Amy's, it seems like that popular style (called clothesline) needs to be on straight lines. I had wavy lines on my mind from doing those wavy lines with the trees. Good example of how it's fine to experiment with the blending of ideas, but sometimes they don't work out.

Normally, I do not screw up a versal that was inspired by medieval designs. IMHO, the epic fail here is that there are no examples of medieval work in white gel pen on red paper. It's tricky to mix a  contemporary medium with medieval design. I'm not saying that it's impossible - I'm just saying that I would have to try some other ways to make it work. It would be a fun challenge, but not one that has caught my interest at the moment. Actually, there are a ton of contemporary versals - so there is a solution. It doesn't seem like a good use of time to keep trying to use the contemporary material but stick with the medieval designs. And yet, you know me, I like a good challenge. 

There was one good idea that came with the Dec envelopes. Since these were not going through the mail, I realized that I could use fantasy addresses and then I would not have to block them. More than one person contacted me, curious about the goofy address. I should have tucked an explanation inside.