I took a whole bunch of photos away with us on holiday this Christmas for pimping. We also went away with a book of patterns and tracing paper in the travelling mailart kit.

I decided to start easy and just work with a repeating motif as I've never done this before.

I had in mind Paulas Geometric Panda, but as Morrisey mentioned earlier today, sometimes you don't get what you had in mind. Cool effect anyway so that makes it into the 365.

Happy Birthday, Mercedes!

Happy Birthday, Nephew!

This one is off and across the Atlantic... I hope it gets there safely. I put it together using elements from my family vacation to Seattle last summer. Wonderful place - I want to visit again soon!

I have all kinds of colorful tape and I love to use it in any mail I send out.

Caran d'Ache Neocolor II Watercolor Pastels

#3

#4

It's a mirror image because I used photobooth.  The stamp blends in well

Fox disguised as a reindeer for my friend Kevin.

another year for my parents

I sent a card that I made for this project to a random postcrosser.

She went thru my handmade cards available for direct exchange & requested one.

I like to send those cards unused...

So i am looking for a page to make an envelope & guess what...

Carl Sagan was suddenly postulating mailart numbers in the billions...

C'mon - how often do you find a cartoon Carl Sagan?

Another envelope ready to go into the world!

Inspired by Mim's color experiments, I wanted to explore red and yellow watercolor and I love Chinese New Year paper.

I'm quite sure Mary Poppins did not have a spoonful of this sugar in mind to help the medicine go down. This candy, made in Serbia, tastes like the worst medicine. I bought it years ago because I love licorice, and I had received licorice candies from other countries in mail exchanges and enjoyed the candies very much. I found this particular candy at a local "European Market" (the shop mistress made sure she told me that at least a half dozen times) and had one in my mouth the second I was out the door. Yikes. I didn't make it to what appears to be the soft inside because it was just so awful.

I did save the bag, though, which I cut up for this postcard. The name of the candy is Negro, and the company, Pionir, notes that it is their trademark product and a "leader in the candy family." Hmmm ... maybe it is something only chimney sweeps can explain.

This is going to a penfriend in Norway who I haven't heard from in a long while. She also likes licorice.

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I am trying so hard to get caught up with my posts. Holidays are busy. A friend is visiting me for the past couple days. We have been crafting and scrapbooking the entire time. I snuck in some mail art.


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Travel to Ghana!

My first piece for this project starting on Jan. 1, 2011. I read about 1000 to 5000 red-winged blackbirds dropping dead from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year's Eve. They think possibly due to loud noise from fireworks. The number 2010 is a number to represent the amount of birds dead and also the death of the year 2010.

MailArt 365 / 35. Celebrate. Sent to Daily Breeze.

A just for fun collage! And I DO like blue -- do you?

My third piece in the Montgomery Ward Shopper series.

One of my favorite parts about mail art is how you can sit down with a picture in your head, and what comes off of your desk half an hour later looks completely different than what you imagined. It keeps me on my toes.

Man and Parrot (#34c)

Interstate 270 (#34b)

Coping in Southern California (#34a)

"Tuscan landscape with eagle and smile"

This is the second in my Table Setting series using recipe cards from 1958. This time I am using mailing seals to hold the recipe card in place for the card's journey. The first time I was going to go with just non-permanent adhesive on the back of the recipe card, but I chickened out and used the mailing seals on that one, too. It is too soon for that to have traveled to its destination, so no way of knowing if my idea works.

This recipe is what we always called a "doctoring" recipe. It just takes something that is already edible and jazzing it up somehow. I love the sound of those curried olives.

I had so much fun "setting" this table this morning. It is like playing with a doll house. The centerpiece is slightly dimensional, but even though I'm going to use non-machinable rate postage, I suspect the flowers will be flat before arriving.

The bits under the plates are called "chargers." I learned that on HGTV. We don't have cable, but both my daughters do. When I visit them in Boston they have to come take the remote away at 2 in the morning and tell me to go to bed because I'm ODing on HGTV. I suspect if we did have cable, I'd get bored of HGTV, but when it is only something I have every three months or so, it is very interesting.

This is going to Sue in Massachusetts. I wish I could shrink myself and slide between the recipe and table setting. Then, after magically unshrinking and enjoying a lovely beverage with Sue, I'd jump on the T and head down to my daughters' houses for a nice long visit.

I found a bunch of torn pieces of mailing paper amongst my scraps...I think I was trying to save the stamps. This is the packaging used to mail my father books, from his brother who lives in Pécs, Hungary. I'm sending this to my friend Jessie, whose book collection is beautiful and inspires me to only buy books in hardcover.

Another cut-paste endeavor. The couple is from a Michelangelo Pistoletto 1968 mirror painting. I'm sending this one out to Firiel, whose last card is now at the Dead Letter Office!

This is going to a photographer couple I know.

Cause Paula likes retro & I like beer!

sorry Paula - it came back in a bag today ....
shredded

One of the things I want to do in 2011 is learn to draw, so I thought I'd get a head start on this little resolution on Christmas day. I borrowed a book called "Pencil Sketching" By Thomas Wang and have chewed up the first chapter. It looks like there's way more to this drawing thing than I thought!

Among the little things I learnt in the intro and first chapter was that there are (sorry if I sound like a total noob - I am one) different types of pencils with different properties. I knew this already, but didn't really put it together that a hard pencil is less versatile and that a soft pencil gives you different grades of shading. I guess I had to see it to really get it.

I also skipped a few chapters and found that the author uses shading to seperate hills and increase the feeling of depth in a landscape, another tihng I'd never really grasped by just looking.

I decided to dive right in and found a picture in a magazine that seemed totally out of place of a bull in the mountains. I've never really tackled landscape before, but thought this seemed a fairly simple one to start with.

This is done on a standard postcard, using B lead on a Faber Castell mechanical pencil.

Overall I'm really pleased with the effect, but there is one bit I can't work out. The little mountain on the right is actually recessed in the photo, but in my drawing it just looks weird. Any ideas?

So being new here, and browsing all around, I am interested that no one seems to show addresses on their posts.
I do wonder if that is a protocol here .... as I always have posted mail art with the address showing.
Then I moved forward on the train of thought to the reality that I love to make and decorate envelopes, not just postcards, and that I could make the focus HERE be the inside collagy bits I put in these envelopes.
So that's going to be what I post, the inside mail art collages that will arrive enclosed in their envelope homes.
Once I get clear on the address issue, I can post the envelopes, too.
I am inspired to have a new focus and place to put work, so thanks to all the fellow mail artists here!

This is the sister card of #32. I loved this fork and spoon from a shopping bag. Wish I had more. And the tiny prints are by Nikki McClure a lovely NW artist who creates an image by cutting it out of black paper with an Xacto knife. I love her.

I agree with you guys -- it's going to be tricky, keeping all the days straight from here on out...

Finally catching up on my scanning and posting! Woo hoo!

Happy New Year's Y'all!!!

Total makeout sesh.

Another page from my reproduction vintage Montgomery Ward catalog. Wish I could buy this glassware at these prices today!

And for January 2nd, I made this! And hooray for taking photos in natural light! I will strive to make my mail art earlier in the day so I can photo it in this nice light. Hopefully this little card is on its way to Australia now...