May PTEX to Lisa and Holly - Flowers

Before the sign-up, I doodled some designs. It was on a day when I needed to soothe my brain. I do not recall what had gotten it riled up. Luckily markers and envelopes are the antidote to my unease with whatever is going on.

Clearly, my troubles are not that troublesome. One of the nice things about getting older is that I no longer have the energy to get truly riled up. Maybe it was a mistake to write that. Now, I have to brace myself for something to put me in my place. Seriously, there seem to be little people in my head talking to me. Well, know - not seriously. I think the conversation is with all y'all.

Lisa's shows my usual style of outlining everything after it is drawn.
Holly's shows that with the right stamp it looks better to leave off the outlining.

MarPTEX - to CathyO, Chuck,

That is not my best C. InstaGram was full of fat script with shadows and highlights - so I tried some.

I had finished up the Iowa stamps and then drifted off into lettering styles. Luckily, I smacked myself with a ruler and pulled out the next batch of stamps to use up.



The Abstract-Expressionist stamps. I'm still in shock that I was able to put them on envelopes and send them away. It was gut wrenching. I knew that it would be impossible to create envelopes that I liked - so I didn't even try. I just threw names on envelopes - and out the door.

I did not mail that one to Kate. I just took a picture and it will probably end up as an insert in a future mailing.

Kate's NEULAND (3)

 Kate launched her Neuland-phase in January. I'm keeping this blog post open - in case I get more from Kate.

It will probably show a progression.

MarPTEX - Iowa Stamps to Kate, Troy, Patty, Carole

The lists for the exchange went out on Sunday. Email me if you did not get your list.

I have no idea if anyone will like these - but I liked them so much better than the Monday batch.

I did square off all the ends. These are done with PITT big brush marker.

There is a big difference between the amount of white space on Kate's and Troy's and Kate's even has a strong diagonal which normally sends me over the edge - but this time I love it.

Patty's is rather abstract and I did not do anything extra to it. Somehow, I liked the simplicity. The birthday card pictured below went with her envelope. Sadly - I have a mental block on her name.

Carole's was not a favorite but I did like it better than the Monday batch. I like her town. It was the only one layered with a gold Sharpie and it was very cool. Too bad I did not have blue and green metallic Sharpies....

I saw a cupcake like this on InstaGram - and tried to save it somewhere so that I could link to it -- but that didn't happen. If the originator wants to holler at me - go right ahead and I will add a link to your IG account... I'm not sure the original had colored pencil - that might have been my idea.

Feb PTEX from Florence

There is a nod to valentine's day with the heart - but this design is full of steal worthy ideas.

The white shape could be any shape.

Two color stamps really carry their weight when it comes to pulling a design together.

I've always liked the way Florence does a BIG NAME on the note inside and for the life of me can't figure out why I do not remember to do that myself.

On the flip side, she did some darling tiny lettering between strips of washi tape.

The paper clip is to hold the flap down. It is a handmade envelope and the paper is very springy.

MarPTEX Iowa Stamps to Hester, Trish, Maggie, Jessica

March is getting close to the month when we celebrate the end of the stamp hoard. There were enough Iowa stamps for 9 envelopes. The top two are rather small. I was happy with the colors but neither of these are very inspired. They are not complete toads - but I had to try something else.

I thought perhaps larger envelopes would be better.

Nope.

I tried layers and I also used a white gel pen to square off the ends.

Meh.

Poor Maggie knows that I struggle with the letters in her name...double g- double n - two a's - two m's.

I was going to put Jessica's street between the name and city/state - but changed my mind. Then I chickened out on what to put in that space...


On Wednesday you will see whether things got better or worse.

Feb from RachaelT

The decision has been made to run the valentine themes envelopes in May, rather than Jan of 2020 because I can put a label on all of them [valentines] and then anyone can search valentines ideas at any time.

This was Rachael's first attempt at the DuBosch Jubilesque style that I have appropriated. She nailed it. If you have not tried it - maybe this will inspire you to try it.

Her card is adorable. It would be easy to morph this into other holidays by having other items floating out of the tiny envelope. Shamrocks, birthday candles, skulls, socks.

Uber-stealworthy.

Jan Neuland to Leslie - minimalist

Leslie can probably see a bunch of pencil pondering that has been erased. I was trying to do some rooflines - and finally decided to just leave this one with all that gorgeous white space. Gorgeous to me. I have no idea if Leslie likes white space...
but, I am quite fond of this one.

Hopefully you can see how the lettering is somewhat inspired by Neuland.

Jan PTEX - ORPHANS

If the plan is to post every single envelope that I receive then I need to have one more post for the orphans. Now I have to obsess over when to post the orphans. They could go in a bonus post.

Long story short - I am ditching the plan to fit specific monthly exchanges into specific monthly posts. It was an arbitrary idea and it serves no purpose.

Plus - there are times when I have to bump things around. So the new plan is to continue alternating (daily) my envelopes with received exchanged envelopes. The pictured envelope is from CarolynC not to be confused with CarolynE.

Carolyn E is not an exchanger but she does have a few envelopes on the blog. She was in Des Moines recently and gave me a sheet of the 34-cent illustrator stamps because she had read (on the blog) about how much I loved those stamps. She had missed the other detail about vintage stamps about how they fluster me because I can never find good matching stamps to add up to 55-cents.

As luck would have it, there is a store here in Des Moines that sells vintage stamps. The BHB was with me on an errand and I kidnapped him - and went to the store. He was not eager to sift through the giant tub of stamps with me -- but eventually figured that if he helped, we'd get out of there faster. The stack of stamps was about 6-inches tall. There were tons of repeats and it was not looking good -- but finally - 4th sheet from the bottom, there was one lonely sheet of the illustrator stamps.

Yippee. It will be so much fun to put doubles of these stamps on envelopes. If you are reading this CarolynE -- tell me which stamp is your favorite and I will send you a thank you with your favorite. If anyone else of my *old faithful's* has a favorite on this sheet -- let me know and I'll do an envelope to you using your favorite. How can you tell if you are an old faithful? You participate in more than 6 exchanges per year.

And---- you need to send me the request BY SNAIL MAIL in the May exchange.

Feb Exchange International - Abstract Expressionists + Abigail

The Abstract Expressionist stamps were all time favorites - but I really choked when I tried to use a bunch of them in the February exchange.

Suzanne's was the last one and I wish I had used that style on all of them. I tend to choke on international mail since I expect foreign countries to be annoyed with mail art. I don't know why. But - I choke. I need to just buy international stamps and see if I do better with them. But, then I would  be so limited by the colors.

At the end is one that I did at the end - Abigail's mom was the exchanger - and Abigail was turning 5.

May PTEX Sign-up - Jan PTEX from MissCathy

One more Jan exchange envelope - this one from Miss Cathy.

It is time to sign up for the May PTEX (Pushing The Envelope X-change). Sign-up ends on May 4th.
I will send lists on Sat, May 5th (or 6th at the latest)

To participate - send the following information to me at

jmwilson411 (at) yahoo (dot) com

Please follow this format and don't forget to type your email right under your snail mail address:

Jane Doe (CARDS)
123 Oak Street
Ames, Iowa 50010 USA
jane.doe@gmail.com

I will reply to your sign-up email to let you know it arrived.
If you do not hear from me, re-send your sign up.

You will get a list of 6 names, including yours.
You need to send a decorated envelope to the other 5 people by May 31.
There may be one international address on your list - requiring $1.15 for postage.

Beginners are welcome.
No theme.
Any medium is welcome.
Put (CARDS) after your name - if you wish to exchange handmade cards in your envelope.
At least half of us exchange empty envelopes.
If you are having a birthday in May, let me know and I will put that on the list - birthday themed mail is optional.

If you would like to be on more than one list, let me know. It is nice to have some people to do two lists so that they all come out with 6 people.

Feb Exchange Wrap Up

I lost count of how many hearts I did in February, but I am sure that this is not a re-run because I know I have not typed Annastasia yet. I have to mention each name in the posts so I can do searches.

And Heidi - hers should have been grouped with an earlier bunch.

Which brings us to Jessica who has been exchanging for a while now. I had a whole sheet of the doll stamps and was happy with this color combination, but after I mailed it and looked at the image, I realized that it would have been better to do the border all the way around. It was done with Cocoiro. I do not care for the stair stepped stamps. It would have been better to do a complete border and put the stamps over the top.

My apologies to everyone who received an exchange envelope from me in April -- none of them pleased me. If you want a do-over - please let me know. You'll have to sign up for the May exchange to get the do-over. It will be inside the May envelope.

Jan PTEX from Janet, Patty & Lynne - Black

Janet and Patty seem to be on the same wavelength. It seems like there are previous times when I paired their envelopes.

I neeeed to try Janet's lettering.

Patty has some nice birch trees. As I recall, she did some really nice birch trees on a white envelope. Once again - search [Patty] on the blog and there will be a number of very nice examples of her work. Same for [Janet].

Patty's insert is a postcard. I really liked how it looked with the envelope. I could see me stealing those flowers.

And Lynne has neon colors on black - always a good combination. Doing a partial border diagonal from the stamp is an idea to note. I tend to stay away from corners - but envelope design is different.
Keeping the stamp in the PO's preferred location allows for other corner action.
It's a quirky situation.

It is 8:45 am - I mentioned a few days ago that I was timing myself on how long it took to do 15 posts. All the photography, cropping, uploading, posting, and blurb writing took less than two hours. That's pretty good. It means I can run the blog on 4 hours per month or 48 hours per year.

Now I have to figure out how much time I spend on the exchange.
In theory, I could address 25-30 envelopes in an hour - or maybe 2.
I'm expecting to be done clearing out all the vintage stamps within the next couple of months.
Using only current stamps should streamline the process.

Feb to Fatima, Anthea, Marie and Troy

Remember all the gray hearts on the February envelopes? After hearts had run their course, I lapsed into my go-to style DuBosche Jubilee. Technically - DJ is done with broad edge - so this needs its own name. Jean-ilee?

I was pretty happy with this one and surprised when the next two were not quite as lively. Fatima's is better because of the overlapping.

Troy's is buried in the stack because it is a snooze. It needed something, but I was pretty sure I would mess it up if I added anything else. There is some sparkle on the name that might not show up.

Although, Troy and I chit chatted about the weather in the sign-up- emails and I learned that he has never lived more than 3 hours away from the Gulf of Mexico. I thought his envelope gave a feeling of the cold whiteness that we experience *way up north* - in Iowa.

If anyone wants a glimpse into those people who spend the winter in Antarctica, I highly recommend the Netflix offering, Antarctica: A Year on Ice. Wow -- it left me with more questions than I thought possible. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/

Shout out to the chickadees  -- and to the client who left me with 50 chickadees because she only wanted red birds on her holiday mailing. I love those stamps.

Jan PTEX From Suzanne (Quiltish)

The second envelope from SuzanneE is a style that's been around for a while. In fact it was one of the very first I remember seeing that lured me into the world of lettering as opposed to just calligraphy.

There were some nice books on marker lettering that included this style. I just looked on John Neal Bookseller's website and can't find them. Maybe they are out of print. Does anyone know? I do not recall the name of the author. She might have been Canadian?

Eight Orphans - Kraft and Babies

After spending three days on a job using gold Sharpies on shimmer envelopes - also - centering the names and addresses on squares -- I had a raging headache from the fumes as well as the centering.

It was also the point at which the exchange was mentioned on an old calligraphy list -serve and I had several (7?) new people sign up and I thought I should pull out some real nibs and ink. I enclosed a note explaining why it was wonky lettering because some of the traditional scribes really don't like wonky. It was therapeutic to mess around with nibs and ink after all that Sharpie/shimmer stuff.

I threw Miss Cathy in with this group because she frequently sends me *real* calligraphy. Same with GraceE. I guess Suzanne is not a first timer either.

I had not pondered stamps - and it worked out nicely that the babies looked fine on the kraft paper. I played around with different ways of placing the stamps.

I have to mention all the first names in case I ever want to do a search for the envelopes that went to particular people. Pam, Maureen, Cynthia, Irene, Beverly.

Bonus Post - Exploding head

Today's regular post is right below this one.

There have not been any *head-exploding* posts in a while.  There was that one post with the list of challenges that my merry band of readers have been facing.

Normally, doing envelopes is an antidote for the daily struggles - somehow, it's not working for me at the moment.

I spent the first three weeks of April in Chicago - and really struggled with getting my exchange envelopes done. I am not sure I can pull myself together by May - so I am going to try something different.

If you sign up for the exchange in May, I will put my name on the list as an optional additional exchanger. If you want to exchange with me -- you send me an envelope. I only respond to the people who send me an envelope. You do not need to remember this information. I will explain it when I send out the lists. But, I wanted you to know ahead of time that when you get your May list, it will have this option.

I still love doing the blog --- the only part that was not fun this month was doing my own envelopes. I am confident that I will enjoy doing the envelopes again -- once I get a few other things in order. I'm even thinking of adding IG to my daily posting. The Daily Coyote inspired me to consider that option.


The photo is from this article:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/04/new-ben-zank/


If you need to kill time --- this site has a steady stream of fun stuff:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/

Jan PTEX from Lauren - Caulder

Alexander Caulder is one of my favorite artists. Lauren did a good job of channeling her inner-Caulder. I keep forgetting to ask her what program she uses for her digital designs.

The enclosed card is not digital. Again - maybe she will tell us how she did the design. It is very cool in person. There are some nice sparkles that might not show up in the photo.

I have a pretty illuminated Z - but I do not know anyone with a Z initial. If any of you want it - let me know.

Send your snail mail address to me at
jmwilson411 at yahoo dot com

Feb to Holly, GraceH and Lauren - Love and Wheat

The last of the wheat stamps. Not much to say about this.

Below are the other two that used up the Love stamps.

They are fine.

I guess they show a couple different options for decorating Neuland based lettering. Putting red and green right next to each other is tricky. Overlapping them will make brown.

The envelopes are nice Crane's envelopes - and a little bit bleedy.