Mailart 365 has moved

I cut up a Chinese postcard and added bits to make this. Not sure how one "makes" surprise, since that rather defeats the purpose of surprise, but I'm sure the meaning got muddled in translation.

The child looks surprised. Perhaps she caught the gingerbread people in flagrante delicto. That's probably worse than if it were parents.

American Express wants me. They keep sending me all sorts of beautiful marketing, and I keep turning it into mailart. I don't use credit cards, so American Express will have to do without me.

This recycled AMEX marketing is now a thank you postcard and will be heading out tomorrow. I had lots of fun paving the path with candy.

Honey Sweet would be a good name for a race horse. The Kentucky Derby is on, but I don't like horse racing, so I'm playing with mail.

The candy wrappers are from some honey drops I bought a long while ago. They were fabulous! But I can't remember where I bought them. This is honey drop season for me. I love being outdoors, but the pollen does me in. I get "throataches," as I called them as a kid. Pain in the head was "headache," pain in the ear, "earache," so why shouldn't pain in the throat be "throatache"? Anyway, I live on honey drops this time of year.

They put advertising on everything these days.

I've been having fun with the Montgomery Ward catalog Paula sent me a while back. This one is heading out for a Swap Bot exchange.

When my children were young, we hosted exchange students for a few weeks every summer. Most of the time our students were from Japan, and one of the most exciting things for my youngest daughter was the knowledge that they would probably bring Japanese sweets for her and her sister. Melanie had quite the sweet tooth (and still does at age 27).

I've been thinking a lot about those students, who would be all grown up now, probably with children of their own. I only kept in touch with a few of them, and that has only been once a year notes. As the days go on, I'm trying to think of all the sweet memories and not focus on what might be.

The image I started with is an actual postcard. It is from a 1980s Dover Publication book of postcards titled William Rowe's Surreal Postcards. Some of the postcards from this book are waiting for "adoption" in my Orphaned Postcard Project, however this one was just a wee bit too surreal. The man was originally holding a heart, and the title on the back is "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." Freaky. Freaky. Freaky.

It's hard to tell, but the jar is filled with chocolates. I cut the jar shape out of the top card and sandwiched a piece of clear plastic between the back card with the jar of candy and the top card. The top card was fun to make because I got to use about a third of my available fonts. I love fonts.

This card is numbered and ready to go, but it is waiting for an address. I'm going to send it on my granddaughter's Postcrossing account but need to wait until we pull an address for someone who is open to getting handmade. I won't send handmade if the profile specifically says "no handmade."

Updated 25 January 2011 to add that this card is going to Daawntje in Netherlands for the "Who Are You" tag game in the Postcrossing forum. I was hoping to send as an official card for my granddaughter, but haven't gotten an address where handmade is okay, so rather than let this hang around any longer, I decided to try the tag game.

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.

This is heading up to my 3 year old granddaughter, Savannah. She loves postcards and has since she was an infant. I live 600 miles (975 km) from my daughters and their families so I started sending Savannah, my first grandchild, cards soon after she was born. My daughter hung them on the photo board above Savvy's changing table and noticed that Savvy loved to look at those cards. When she was older, she would carry the cards around with her all the time. And when she visited me here in Pittsburgh, she spent hours going through a large basket of my postcards ... sorting them into categories only she knew.

I recently got Savannah her own post office box near her house and signed her up for a Postcrossing account. She loves going to her special box, which is low enough for her to open, and picking up her mail. I take care of sending outgoing postcards for her, though, since she is too young to write. Eventually she will be writing her own postcards. Maybe even creating them.