August from Grace -- Grace Edmands

 

I wish Grace lived in my neighborhood - because one year the ofrenda was embellished with an elaborate art installation that had colorful lines that swooped and swirled all over the place. Has anyone noticed that for every single envelope, I am seeing a way to make a nicho? I think this is number 3.

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Look what I found - a person in CT who has a business called Pushing the Envelopes. It's all printed items using calligraphic fonts - no actual calligraphy. https://www.pushingtheenvelopect.com/

Here's a look at Grace Edmand's work - the real stuff. https://www.instagram.com/graceedmandscalligraphy

August from Mary - Curve creased origami

 

I wish Mary lived in my neighborhood because I need to build a nicho that has some black and white checkerboard. One year, the honoree for the. Day of the Dead event was a well known person in Des Moines' restaurant world and one of his restaurants was a 50's diner. 

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Here is a father and son who are dovetailing math and art. It's from the Craft in America series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb74qMEBFrg

The sculptures look so complicated, but when they show how they make them - it looks super easy and it's something that I will be trying.

You may find more examples by doing a search for curve creased origami on Google.

August from Kate - Pips

 

I wish Kate lived in my neighborhood so that she could come over and use that stamp on one of the 24 nichos that have to be built by the middle of October. It's Sept 12th - and I'm nervous.

***

People make fun of the NYTimes because they have so many games to play on their website. It looks like they have put the mini-crossword behind a paywall....which is OK - because they added Pips - which I love.

This game is based on dominos - and it took me a few days to catch on - but - Oh.My.Gosh - once I got the hang of it - it's become my new favorite. 

I finished the easy puzzle in 24 seconds and the medium puzzle in 3 minutes - and the hard puzzle in 4 minutes. If you like puzzles, just go to the New York Times - and click on games.

August from Mia - ofrenda update

 

Here is Mia's August envelope....and I am only two weeks ahead on writing my blog posts - so - it looks like we will have two solid months of me talking about the ofrenda - and comments on the envelopes will be confirmation that I enjoy getting mail. Trust me -- the mail that arrives from my pen pals is a welcome part of each month.

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The first mention of the big ofrenda/Day of the Dead project was on April  23rd. I'd been working on the project for about a month. I pre-write some of the updates - so - progress reports may not be in order. We hit the deadline for flowers - I needed them done by the end of August - with a two week grace period - which we are using. This is a 7 month project. 

I fiddled with the sculls in July and August - and worked out most of the kinks. Keith, the lead designer on the event wanted scroll work rather than flower designs on the skull so this is what it looks like at the moment. 

I have to make smaller flowers for the eyes and we prefer a black mask - but it does not photograph well at all. The skull with the mask will represent the year 2020 when the event was not held. When I saw the photo of this skull before it had the decorations - it made me sad. I much prefer a plain white skull. Covering up the big skull with designs will be like leaving the hospital with my new baby and going straight to a tattoo parlor that is willing to tattoo a baby. I guess that skull is a few months old - but you get the idea.

There will be 24 nichos (niches) to represent each ofrenda for the past 24 years. Patty is creating the one for 2021 which had butterflies and hearts. Janet is doing 2022 which honored Luchadores - the wrestlers.

Below is the only photo we had to inspire Patty on her Nicho.

It's a portion of the 2021 ofrenda. 

As you can see - the aesthetic is colorful and busy.

Guess what Patty - I finally found out who was being honored in 2021 - all the people who died from covid. Patty finished the border on her nicho - and was waiting to hear what to put in the middle.

The internet tells me: In Mexican ofrendas, butterflies, particularly monarch butterflies, represent the souls of deceased loved ones returning to visit during the Day of the Dead celebrations. Their presence is believed to guide the spirits to the altars where families honor and remember them.

August from Rachael - square root + puzzle

 

This is in my stack of inspirational ideas to appropriate in the coming months. As I write this I am consumed with the ofrenda. My apologies to those who are weary of that topic. 

I so wish that Rachael, as well as any other makers-of-stuff, were local so they could make nichos. The image below would be perfect for a nicho. Have we talked about nichos? They are a *niche* - somewhat like a shadowbox - sometimes with doors. The ofrenda will have 24 of them - one for each of the past ofrendas - because this is the 25th ofrenda.

 

Here is an example of one that is heart shaped. I'm hoping Patty or Janet will want to do a heat shaped one.....

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Here's another add-on for the math aficionados. It's extra special if you were born in 1980 or if you have offspring born in 1980. That's my daughter's year - so she turns 45 in November. Forty-five is the square root of 1980. That's mildly interesting. The big deal is when we look at 45. It's a very special number because if you start squaring the numbers - 1, 2, 3, etc - and you get the numbers 1, 4, 9, etc -- and then you add 1 + 4 + 9 etc  you get 2025. Once again - that's just numbers - what's the big deal --- 

well - you have to watch the video - fast forward to the part where they make a puzzle with literally hundreds of thousands of solutions - but only 17 people have been able to do it just by using their hands/eyes/brains. I really want to make one of the puzzles - and see if I can be number 18.

LINK to the puzzle and I am warning you - the first 6 minutes is tedious - but then it gets wildly exciting to those of us who love numbers.

If you are not friends with numbers - that's OK - life would be boring if we all liked numbers. I'm happy that you like other things. 

August from Nanski -- LEGO jewelry

 

Nanski provided more ideas for the monster stamps. Now I'm tempted to see if I can find more of them. Grrr at myself for even thinking that. 

I've been stuck in one spot (because there are workmen doing stuff) - filling up posts for the month of September and the goal was to get all the August mail loaded. I still have 12 envelopes photographed from August. In theory, it would make sense to get them all done today. However, the workmen have to run a loud fan and the noise has done something to me that is preventing me from managing my attitude. I need to switch gears and think of something else to do. Thank you for letting me vent a little. It's not really a whine - it's just a low level grumble as I figure out something to do other than run out the front door screaming. Now I'm laughing. I wonder what the workmen would do if I actually did that. I'm thinking of it as a piece of performance art. I would need a film crew to catch their reaction. Then we would get a film editor to turn it into something very clever. Then we would have to change our whole career path to making performance art....

......did anyone see the trap I was setting? Sometimes I surf - and then I see stuff that is truly inane - and then it gets so inane, I stop looking at it and go do something productive. So maybe that's the value of the inane stuff. It inspires us to think about how we are spending our time. Somehow the gems still reach me. 

***

I do not wear jewelry - but if I did, I would be tempted to get some of this LEGO jewelry. It's so pretty - and clever.

LINK to jeweler's IG

This is just the tip of the iceberg. She has many designs - some more complex than this - and some nice videos showing how they are made.

August from Juliana and Jessica - CardboardMom

Juliana reported that this idea ended up taking more time than she had anticipated. I'm glad she warned me - because I like the idea a lot - but unless I had a clear exemplar - I would not want to figure it out. Or, I could just do a version to Janet, JeanR, Jessica and Juliana. 

I grouped Juliana and Jessica - as they are the only two exchangers I know of who have younger kids - and they might be inspired by the add-on of the day. I can think of a few grandmas who might be interested, too. 

 

***

On Aug 27th I was doing Day of the Dead research and found a website called CardboardMom.com. There are not a lot of posts but a couple caught my eye. I did a search on the blog for *cardboard* and it veered off into a very wistful (almost emotional) few minutes. Cardboard is my muse. CardboardMom is a home schooler - so most of her posts are about home schooling lessons - and she has books to recommend.

Here are a couple links --- the first is for those of you who have grandkids - especially toddlers. Toddlers love to build things and they love to crawl into little cubby holes.

LINK to igloo building post

LINK to CardboardMom's website if you are interested in browsing

Hipster 8 - Aug to Maggie, Mia and Jaylen

This one is pretty simple but I like it - it looks like it happened very fast - which it did - but - I had to do the first 15 to get to a point where I could do this style fast - and like the way it looked.

I pulled out a different exemplar to do this one and I had a whole story that went with it - but, I forgot to write it out - and now I do not remember. I don't even know if I can find that exemplar and do one like this for Meg in Australia....

I was going to put 3 baby animals on Mia's - but it was so much cuter with just the one stamp. So Mia got a bonus this month. 

I'll toss this in - for anyone who is liking this style and thinking about using it.

A friend called me wondering if I could do a quick envelope with a card inside - to put with a present for a recent graduate.

I tossed this off in two minutes.

The little 3-pronged *flowers* are an homage to the CIA logo. CIA is the Culinary Institute of America.

I left space at the bottom for my friend to sign it.

Design tip for writing a note - if you have a t-square - it's really easy to draw lines on paper - and that becomes a design element. I had my friend email me the words she wanted - and then I printed them out so that I could get everything spaced and centered nicely. Note to self - show how I do that in another post.

This concludes the Hipster series. I hope it hasn't been too boring. It might have been more educational to show a better progression of ideas - but that would have taken up more bandwidth than what I have. And I do not even know what bandwidth is, I just know that mine is not adequate.

 

Pencil bat Ben - skull situation

 

I spend very little time on mail to my grandkids because they do not save envelopes. Those baseball bats are ridiculous - I could/should do so much better - but, I am consumed with other projects at the moment.

I am only including this very sloppy envelope to show how I sometimes outline my very quickly scrawled writing. I don't have to outline everything - it's more of a *squaring off* process - so it goes pretty quickly.

Here is a before and after. Sometimes I look at the original and feel like it was better without the squaring off. The thing that gets me started on squaring off is that I see things like the *o* and the *e* that need a little touch up --- I could/should just fix those spots and then be done with it....but I get carried away.

And the paper was bleedy - which makes it worse. I see that I forgot to do the bottoms and the center peak  of the *w*

***

The following was written in late August. I'm sure a lot has changed since then.

Yesterday morning I discovered that I had not scheduled a post - so at 6 a.m. CST I moved the Sunday post into the Saturday slot. Earlier in the day, I had taken some photos and scheduled an update of the Day of the Dead ofrenda project. So that was an easy one to move into the Sunday slot.

The flowers are all folded and now they need to be fluffed. After staring at the skulls for a couple months, I had to throw them off the proverbial diving board and see if they were going to sink or swim. 

The little test skull is made out of printer paper. Since there was no Day of the Dead event in 2020 due to covid - I decided to put a mask on the little skull as a representation of that year. So I needed to make it into something that was event-worthy. I thought I could just laminate mulberry paper onto it to give it a little heft and a nice homespun surface. 

I tried Elmer's glue - and at first it seemed fine - but then the paper started to cockle. Cockle is the word to describe what happens when paper gets wet and loses its flatness. It can go into something that looks like corduroy or a more bubbled appearance. Once it loses it flatness, it's pretty hard to get it to go back to flat. 

I had filled the skull with bubble wrap to give it support. That was a waste of time. The bottom panels were fine - but it started to cave in on the top. I had 3 miserable days trying to even think of a possible remedy. I would even wake up in the middle of the night and ponder (worry).

I had to do surgery and extract the bubble wrap and then coax the paper into something that was going to work. I ditched the fancy mulberry paper and used really cheap 1-ply paper napkins. The aesthetic of ofrendas and day of the dead paraphernalia is very rustic. So, I'm embracing the aesthetic. But, I'm stumped on how to prepare the large skull so that I don't have a gigantic cockling problem.

Above is the big skull - waiting for a brainstorm on how to finish it.

As much as I like to avoid aerosol products - I'm going to try to coat the large skull with something acrylic and waterproof - and hope that prevents cockling. I've been told that Krylon is acrylic. Most aerosol paints are oil base - and I do not want to put an oil based product on paper. 

This is the small skull during surgery.

It was going to be really hard to get the skull to conform to the shape of the flap.

I had to insert a piece of plastic which would be the *metal plate* that is used in actual brain surgery.

So, I got the flap to fit, layered enough napkins over the incision -- and then realized that I had forgotten to refill the skull with bubble wrap. GRRRRRRRR. After the brain surgery dried - I realized that I don't need the bubble wrap. It would be easy to crush on purpose - but it is surprisingly rigid. All I need is some kind of brainstorm on how to fill the eye sockets.

***

Update: I remembered that people often put flowers into the eye sockets. That's perfect. 

Hipster 7 - Aug to Jessica, Lisa, Christi and Meg

Real time add-on.

Yesterday - at 6 pm - I was working on the October posts. My September envelopes were not nearly as good as August - so I was thinking I should skip participating in the October exchange - because I am so distracted with the ofrenda. 

Then I thought - maybe I should poll the exchangers. Not all of the exchangers read the blog - but - if you do exchange - or if you have ever exchanged - and if you have a couple minutes - please email me and answer this question:

Would you be disappointed if you did not get an Oct envelope from me?

Please send your response to me at ptenvelopes-at-aol-dot-com

This was probably the very first one I did in the series -- and then below are the last ones I did. I almost forgot to do Christi's - because we have Christy and Christi - and I was inept at keeping track of things. Or maybe I sent two to Christi - but, I don't think I did.

I can think of better things to do with the chipmunks --- the orange marker is a better match - but it's a little too dry.

I have yet to think of something really good to go with the rabbit. I like that I left some of the strokes disconnected. Overall - I like these looser, 3 layer letters a lot more than that very first one - which is tight. There's nothing wrong with tight - but somehow I lean towards the more gestural approach.

I'm happy with the colors on this one - but - this stamp looks better on a kraft paper envelope.

 

August from Patty - boro stitching

 

Remember when I posted this in the black and white scan that arrived in my USPS informed delivery email? Isn't it pretty? It's something I'd like to try. As I said - August was a bumper crop of good ideas. If you read this Patty, please tell me what kind of adhesive you used on the white oval. I tend to avoid adhering mailing labels - but I can see how it gives a person so. many options.

***

I've only watched the first minute of this video - it's about a person making his own version of a $4,000 jacket. It involves many hours of hand stitching - to make the garment look like is has been mended so many times it is now 100% *mend* - I like visible mending and this carries it to an extreme. It just looks sooooo comfortable.

I'm writing this on Aug 22 - in two days I'll have an update on the ofrenda project. Here is a little cliff hanging teaser -- step 2 on the small skull was almost a disaster and I have not yet figured out how to proceed with the big skull.

Hipster 6 - Irene, Aicha, Mary, Davonte, Aurora

Irene's is one of my favorites from this series. It is a good example of how much fun it is to have a long name. I had done Jessica's first - because she had a birthday early in the month and I realize that I forgot to run it first. I'll run it tomorrow. I might have to try her name in the same style as Irene's who has 15 letters. JessicaSchwessinger has 19.

At some point I started layering three different colors with fine lines. I might have run some of these previously. I'm not in the mood to go back and look at posts that are written and scheduled to pop up. 

Davonte, Aurora and Aicha are all postal workers at the main post office - which is why I don't block their addresses.
 

Grace and the Edward Gorey Envelope Contest

 

Clover alerted me to the annual Edward Gorey Envelope contest on Aug 18. I am adhering to my set of rules for filling the blog - and not bumping this one forward. The deadline is Dec 8th - so, I don't think this is too late for the announcement. Below is a link to the website - and a link to the 2024 winners.

Our exchanger pal, Grace Edmands got 3rd place last year and she did not tell us. Congratulations Grace!

LINK to the Edward Gorey website  Click on the tab for the 2025 contest. Then click on the word HERE - where it says to View last year's winners here.

Here is a screenshot that includes a comment about how much the mail carrier who delivered Grace's entry liked the penmanship.

Sept to Meg

There are quite a few things I would change about this one. It's almost hard to imagine that hose three stamps were part of one set. They are quite diverse. I only took parts of the lady's face for the lettering - which should have been larger. Also the colors should have been closer to the stamp colors - but matching colors with markers is a challenge.

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LINK to 10 minute video on a chalk artist

I didn't have time to research and figure out if this is truly the guy who came up with the whole idea making those amazing optical illusion chalk drawings on pavement. Also, I want to know why they are always chalk. Why don't people hire him to do paintings?