More Lombardic versals from Christi - Third side of the ofrenda

 

The envelope from Christi has already been posted. I often forget to shoot the things inside envelopes. This time, when I realized I had missed this very nice card, I also noticed there are 3 distinct styles of Christi's Lombardic versals. 

The greeting above is sketchy and look like she did them quickly.

I'm going to give this version a try.

Below is something that looks like it wants to be a bookmark. I can't tell if the whole thing is done by hand. It is so tiny that I'm thinking she might have done the art, then scanned it and printed it out multiple times - possibly reducing it. The gold is handpainted. And then there is the little red signature. Hopefully Christi will tell me what she used on that signature - it's sooooo tiny.

I love tiny.

Here is the envelope again so you can see the third version. Also, I neglected to point out that she did her own version of the Goodnight Moon stamp and put her own little *character* in the setting. It's adorable.

 

enlarged image of the stamp

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Photo by Erik Brockmeyer

This is the third side of the ofrenda. The six nichos that were on this side are below.

2013

2015

2016

2017

LINK to the TMI post  which is way too much information unless you are looking to kill a lot of time or want to see the whole story in one place.

Oct from Lynne - Second side of the ofrenda

Spiders popped up on many of the October exchange envelopes including this one from Lynne. That's a very nice spider web. It captures the feel of how they are symmetrical without being perfect. 

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Here are the 6 nichos on the second side of the 2025 ofrenda. Each nicho was inspired by the ofrenda that was built in the corresponding year. 

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Those 6 nichos were displayed on the second side of the 2025 ofrenda.

LINK to the full story  -- 

Photo by Erik Brockmeyer

 

Oct from Grace - First side of the ofrenda

Grace had at least one actual popcorn bag that she turned into an envelope. The fun continued with an assemblage of cute stickers and USPS stamps. I'm pretty sure I can return this idea with a paper bag although it will be a generic brown bag.

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This final series about the ofrenda project will feature an actual photo of each nicho. They will be in groups of 6. Each nicho is roughly 20" tall and 15-20" wide. These six nichos were on the first side on the ofrenda. Each one was inspired by an original ofrendas. These six represent ofrendas from 2001 through 2006. Photos of those ofrendas are posted on the long, tedious post - linked below.

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

LINK to the full story

The photo of the honoree, Gary is in the middle and mementos from Gary's life are displayed below the photograph of Gary. Pan de muerto (in the basket just below the denim jacket) is the traditional bread used on ofrendas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_de_muerto 

Oct from Nanski - Intro to last four ofrenda posts

 

Nanski did a nice job of combining several of the popular October images and she had one of the moon stamps. We're still near the beginning of the October exchange envelopes that arrived. 

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Some of you have had your fill of me talking about the ofrenda. Others have asked to see all the nichos. I have posted a full report on the whole project.

LINK to full report on the ofrenda project.  

Warning. It is tedious and lengthy and not a good use of your time - unless you need to kill time. Maybe someone needs a rabbit hole to help with chore avoidance.

 I have some long distance friends who do not read the blog who can relate to projects that take months and I wanted the whole story in one place for them. I have also said that I would post all the nichos on the blog - so I am going to do that over the next four days. And then we will have a closing ceremony for the ofrenda.

The museum hired Erik Brockmeyer to take professional photos of the ofrenda. 

Tomorrow there will be an individual photo of the six nichos on this side.

Oct from Smash - December exchange sign-up

An updated list of styles for our big project is posted at the very end

Smash had a lot of fun with her spider for the October exchange. The three elements of spider/stamp/name are nicely arranged. The USPS cancel ended up in a complementary place. I wonder if I can morph the idea into something for a return envelope for the November exchange. What's round and Thanksgiving-ish? Pumpkin pie? And forks?

***

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

If you participated in the NOVEMBER 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 November 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

***

These were added to yesterday's list:

Spencerian

Carolingian

Versals

Handwriting - lots of styles

This was the original list:

Runes

Uncial

Blackletter

Italic

Copperplate

Neuland

Romans - a basic non-serifed set of capital letters

Foundational - the basic non serifed lower case letters

Serifed lettering

Brush script - pointed brush

Brush script - flat brush

Fonts - this category has an infinite number of styles - it will include all the styles where the letters are drawn and there are many alternatives to how to make particular letters. This would include all the styles where the letters are actually little pictures. 

 

Oct from Samantha - the tool/style chart - part 2

 Welcome to Samantha. I think this is her first exchange envelope but I could be wrong. It is a nice layout and we're all happy to see another troll. This one will be fun to do if I decide to use envelopes I have received when I send the next month's exchange envelope. This assumes the person signs up again.

There are an infinite number of styles so this might get complicated. There are also a couple styles that I will not include because I don't like them. Gothicized italic is one of them. I've never been able to put it into words, I simply don't like it and I won't even post it on my blog. If you don't know it, go ahead and Google it. It's pretty - but I just don't like it.

One style that will be tricky on the chart is italic. Italic is not just one thing. It has a multitude of variations. For now, we will just leave it as one style and we'll deal with variations later.

Here's my preliminary list of styles:

Runes

Uncial

Blackletter

Italic

Copperplate

Neuland

Romans - a basic non-serifed set of capital letters

Foundational - the basic non serifed lower case letters

Serifed lettering

Brush script - pointed brush

Brush script - flat brush

Fonts - this category has an infinite number of styles

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These were added very late in the day that this post popped up.

Spencerian

Carolingian

Versals

Handwriting 

Ruth sent me some photos of several tools that were not on my list - so - this topic is to be continued. 

Oct from Hadley - the tool/style chart - part 1

This is from Hadley, one of our college student exchangers. I like the alternative positioning of the stamp. The artwork is also very nice. I'm not home so I can't look at it closely to see if it's been done with a regular tool or if Hadley is dipping into the world of dip pens.

Maybe today is the day to make a list of every single writing tool that we might consider for our experiment to apply every single tool to every single style of writing to see what we get.

Here are the tools.

Please email me or leave a comment if I have forgotten any. 

I will not include anything that is not USPS friendly, like charcoal. It has to be tools and mediums that will stick to the envelopes.

Graphite pencils 

Colored pencils

Carpenters pencils

Ball point pens

Gel pens

Markers - many sub-groups - based on the type of tip, the size, the shape, the amount of flexibility. We will have to come back and decide how many of these to include.

Brushes - flat and round are two huge categories. Sizes are wildly different. And then there is the medium so we have to figure out how to include those variations and how many to include.

Nibs - pointed and broad edge -and- the very cool scroll-tip nibs

Folded pens

Optional -

bamboo pens

and there must be others.

I'll be curious how many writing tools I have forgotten.

Tomorrow we list the styles

 

Oct from Maggie - Mark Twain - part 2

The orange moon stamp is perfect for Maggie's floral design that is Octoberized with a pumpkin. The lettering is one of those fun styles I'd be able to do if I pulled out nibs and ink. I have no idea who did it first but it's a cross-pollination of uncial, a very old broad edge style with pointed nib. It would be fun to make a chart with all the different tools along the A-axis and all the different styles of lettering along the B-axis and then try them all. That would be a good exercise to start in 2026 to keep the blog educational. Shall we do that?

First we need a statistician to tell us if I'm using the right terminology with my A-axis and B-axis. Then we need a list of every tool and every style. I will start that after I finish my Mark Twain story.

A few minutes ago I had two things from the Mark Twain biography that related to mail. Right now, I can only think of one of them. Without going into detail, trust me when I say he was quite a character. He's known for being quotable because he was not afraid to voice his opinion and enjoyed lively debates. He knew his views were not popular and reveled in stirring things up.

Entertainers were the celebrities of the day and authors were also celebrities. Twain's personality launched him into the rock star category during post Civil War and into the turn-of-the-century. He received a copious amount of mail and had nothing nice to say about people who bothered him with letters that included comments and questions. He resented the time it took to respond and felt obligated to respond. Some people just asked for an autograph which didn't bother him as much because he could sign his name several times on a sheet of paper and assistants could cut the signatures apart and mail them. The requests for additional comments really got under his skin.

In spite of his flaws, manners associated with correspondence seemed to be intact. I don't give myself very high marks in maintaining correspondence. Apologies to all the people who write but never hear back from me. On top of not responding, I don't keep track when I do respond so my stack of mail might be full of mail that I did respond to. Maybe 2026 is the year I just clear the stacks and start over.

 

Oct from Amy - Mark Twain - pt 1

Here's Amy's headless horseman on her October envelope. Old Jean doesn't even remember the story or who wrote it. Visual learner Jean can remember some of the portraits on the deck of Authors playing cards. The mention of authors reminds me to share a tidbit about a well known author. 

I use audio books to put myself to sleep so I always have one book that I'm barely interested in because I set the timer for 15 minutes and miss at least half of each book because I never backtrack to hear what I missed after I fell asleep. When I saw a biography of Mark Twain that was 45 hours long I jumped on it. Partly, I was very curious about how anyone would come up with 45 hours of book-worthy information about Mark Twain. What kinds of details were lurking?

I do not recommend the book unless you need something to put yourself to sleep. It is a dreadful amount of detail about things that are actually very sad. He was a talented writer but totally inept at managing the business end of being an author and even worse at managing his finances. Dismal. 

It seems like the Clemens family did a lot of letter writing and journaling and most of it, maybe all of it, survived allowing the author of the biography to drone on for 45 hours. When Twain's wife was on her deathbed and the doctors advised no visitors, not even family members, Twain slipped notes under her bedroom door and one is included in the audiobook. It is a very generic mushy note. The thing that struck me was that they lived in the same house, but he did not see her for weeks at a time. It was a big house with plenty of hired help so there were people tending to her. But family stayed away. I wonder what it was like to be the invalid.

It's a very sleep inducing book, although there are a couple tidbits at hour 30 that I'll post tomorrow because they involve mail.

Not that anyone would be interested after this scathing review, but the book is Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. He wrote Hamilton, another massive tome.

Oct from Rachael

Google is messing with me. Apparently it did not like what I wrote yesterday so now it is making things blue and underlined for no reason. I tried to start the post under the envelope - but Google was not having it.

Rachael is drawn to circles. I, too, am drawn to circles. I am also drawn to copying Rachael's designs. This one would take a lot of time. I'm not opposed to spending a lot of time on my envelopes. I think I like the drawing part and lose interest when it comes to coloring things in. All the little details work so well - and the stamp is perfect. 

It's Nov 7th as I write this - noting that it will pop up on the day before Thanksgiving - which means the year has sped by at an alarming rate. I need to figure out my annual Dec 24th story. Since I am writing this from Chicago maybe the grandkids will provide something. My nomadic son has also shown up in Chicago for a bit of a visit. Sometimes he'll provide a good story. 

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My kids appear to be grown up. No good stories. That's probably a good thing. I have one grandkid story that has been on the back burner if I don't come up with anything better for Dec 24th.

Oct from Jacqueline - Google's blue polka dot

 

We have several newer exchangers. Often times the new people have a style that will stick in my head. Jacqueline is an excellent illustrator. I know she's east of the Mississippi but not in the south. And I'm not sure if she lives in Richmond VA.  She's done characters that I recognize - like Wilbur the pig from Charlotte's Web. I feel like this is a character - but I do not recognize them. I do not know if Jacqueline reads the blog daily - but if you do - maybe you'd enjoy knowing that people have commented to me about how nice your envelopes are.

***

Most of us have probably experienced that thing that happens when something that came up during an in-person conversation starts popping up on one's phone - and we all know that our devices listen to us and offer suggestions. 

This free blog service that I have been using for 15 years has taken *listening* to a new level. They have a thing that has a name - but I do not remember the name. It put a blue polka dot on this page where I am typing. The blue polka dot has a little pencil and then another little emblem that I can't figure out. It might be an X or square tipped onto the diagonal. It suggests *magic* - maybe? 

I do not know what I did to activate it - but something popped up that said something along these lines:

Hi. I'm a new feature. I will pay attention to what you are writing and if I see something that I think your readers might want to know more about - I will just go ahead and make the words blue and underline them and then link to more information. 

Yikes. 

The last thing I need is something that is not an actual person - inserting things into my blog posts. How will you know if a link is something that I intended or something that *Google* want to put up there to distract you. 

Oct from Christy - visual learning

 

Christy sent this from Ohio. I was going to say that her daughter signed up for November - but then I remembered that it was Cindy's daughter who signed up. I confuse people when I don't know them in person and they have names that are visually similar - as in - 5 letters, starts with C and ends with y. Also, I have all the exchangers on a visual map in my head and I group them by what direction one would have to travel from Des Moines to find them. Both of these C---y people live to the east and south of Des Moines. This is not interesting information, I only mention it to illustrate that I am a visual learner. 

As a kid and even in college - if I had to study for a test, I would put all the information on one sheet of paper - and tape pages together if it didn't fit on one page - and then - during the test - I could access the information by thinking about where it was on my map. And then - as I walked out of the room where I took the test - all of the information would dribble out of my ears and fall on the ground. But, I'd get a good grade.

I am not a fan of that system of learning. 

Yesterday was the first post I wrote while in Chicago as I drank the morning coffee - which is much stronger than my normal brew. I wonder how many posts I'll get done.

Oct from Patty - the spouse/stamp thing

 

Before I took off for Chicago, I snapped photos of the October mail that had arrived. This is from Patty and those skulls are siblings of the ones that appeared on the nicho she built. She parted with a Day of the Dead stamp. Maybe they are still available. It's so hard keeping track of stamps. Once again, Patty enclosed a note suggesting that her design was *chaotic* - and to me, it is exuberant. It feels very inspired by all the work we did on the ofrenda. Hopefully, in 2026 I can ponder and post examples of how to do these kinds of designs and be happy with them. I love the back flap on Patty's envelope. The skeleton is a fun postcard. 

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Ruth - whose work you may see if you do a search for Ruth - sent me a supportive email after I had my little rant about MrW offering to buy *generic stamps* after I was so hesitant to share some of my stamps. Ruth has been using up old stamps - pre-Forevers - where you have to do math to figure out how many to put on the envelope. Her husband decided that he didn't want to bother with math - and boldly bought some new Forevers. Maybe we need to establish a support group for spouses of envelope people. I'd start it under a faux-identity. Then I would be a mole - and see what they say about us - and report it all right here.

I'm surprised that I get away with all this talking smack about my family. If any of them ever find my blog and read what I say, I hope they can tell that none of it is mean spirited. I wouldn't expect any of them to have a glowing report about what it's like to have me in the little 420 tribe. 

Oct to Samantha, Grace, Jessica, Riley, Sharen and Christian

I'm guessing that three days in a row with this series is redundant and possibly annoying. But, sometimes we need to endure hardship. It builds character. My latest book, Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, M.D. has me all fired up to put myself through more adversity. There are so many kinds. The book is compelling because she's a psychiatrist and they are notorious for just throwing drugs at problems. Her perspective is one that looks at a much bigger picture. She suggests that drugs are only one tool to consider as you put together a more elaborate system to deal with the annoyances of life and how those annoyances can manifest in actual illness. 

When I open up my faux-doctor's office, the entire focus will be to eliminate the term mental illness. Your mental is integrated with everything else. Your mental organ is connected to everything else - dare I say, it is essential to everything else. OK - some people are brain dead, but the rest of us aren't.

What, you ask, does this have to do with envelopes? Making art can be a very pleasant pastime where you dabble - or learn a formula that works - and you simply enjoy the process. Other times - you are challenging yourself to learn something new - or looking at how the parts fit together - and there is another level to the process. Or maybe you are trying to figure out why something you just made is *off.*

And then there is addiction. I won't get into it - but - the amount of art supplies that some of us hoard is *out there.* And it's not just art supplies. It might be something else - MrWilson has a thing for CDs - and it's not the kind where it's money in the bank - it's little discs that he claims hold music - but I just hear creepy atonal screeching. One son has a thing for musical instruments. Does anyone really need a piano in the living room, a B3 organ and a Leslie in the dining room, a Fender Rhodes and another Leslie in the man cave along with a Clavinova and a double decker electronic keyboard thing that is more portable - and a drum set - and a xylophone and an omnichord and other drum things and that thing that Jon Batiste plays - and then there are the three organs in the garage that were *strays* that people just gave him..... end of digression.

These envelopes are the end of this series.

Oct to Lucy, Kristine, Jacqueline and Susan

I didn't have enough Keith Haring stamps so I went with baby animals - which are OK. 

Comparing Lucy's and Kristine's - one doesn't have enough red and the other has too much. I wonder if Christi has a method for calculating the right weight - and I wonder if she varies the weight. 

I like the variation where I used spider webs instead of red - although - when seen together - Susan's looks like it might have wanted some red - but it would have needed the Haring stamp. I'm not crazy about how Susan's spider looks like an afterthought. I was doing these on an assembly line which makes it a little hit or miss on how they turn out.