Mailart 365 has moved

I cut out one long picture from a magazine advert and then cut it up further to make some steps, adding other bits(coffee, washing machine dial, stamps and rubber stamps) to it as I went along, taking a step in the right direction!

Couple drinking coffee, car wheels and a lady wearing a strange jumper, all going in new directions!

Lately, I go to bed at night thinking about my first cup of coffee in the morning. I don't think this is a good thing.

I've been drinking way too much coffee this summer. I've tried to just limit myself to one cup in the morning, but it isn't working. The stuff I do at work in the morning is typically stuff that is easily done while enjoying a cup of coffee, and I can't seem to separate the task from the enjoyable beverage.

A very long time ago, FarStarr sent me a sample bit of artwork created by something called "liquid nails." It seems to be a construction grade glue, and FarStarr colored and layered it on cardstock. I cut the sample into three bits for this series of postcards. It is the very colorful bit in the upper right corner of each piece.

I don't have a huge amount of faith that the adhesive I used is going to keep the bit of liquid nails art in place for the postal journey, but I've got fingers and toes crossed.

I have a tall mug at work which says "Better latte than never" on it so when I saw that and this empty box in the cupboard I decided that I was going to use them both as inspiration for today's piece. There's nothing I like more than a large latte especially first thing in the morning! Besides the clock face I also added the smiley sun because I do feel more pepped up once I've had a dose of caffeine! Do you think I might be addicted....?

My inspiration was a big cup of coffee, so I decided to do postcard inspired to coffee. I found really nice picture with coffee cup, stamp, some coffee beans pictures and large brown chocolate piece. For background I used dark brown hard paper with some words on it.

I've never seen a coffee plantation, or how coffee is harvested, but I think the plantations are quite large and the harvesting is tedious. I love that there is a "coffee belt," the only places coffee would grow. I would love to make a real belt out of coffee beans ... or maybe coffee beans and some hemp. I don't know if coffee beans go bad ... it wouldn't be good to have them rot on my hips.

Today was that coffee class I mused about early in the week. The class was more than wonderful, and very geeky. There is calculus involved in brewing great coffee.

We were shown seven different ways to brew coffee and three of those ways produced a coffee I really love. One is a simple pour-over, using a Abid Clever Coffee Dripper ... very inexpensive, fairly quick, good for week days. Another is Eva Cafe Solo which is beautiful, but fairly expensive (I'd cry if I broke it), but it would be fantastic for the weekends when I have more than one cup of coffee and more time to fuss over it. And the last is the lovely Hario Glass Dripper, which is not very expensive, but requires more patience than I usually have for coffee. But, I may just learn patience because that produced the sweetest coffee I've ever had.

I think I might send this card to Aldo Coffee as a thank you note. Greg doesn't typically drink coffee and he was even enjoying the class. That alone makes me happy. I would love someone to share my coffee mania with in the morning.

This weekend Greg and I are taking a coffee class where we will learn how to make the perfect cup of coffee without a fancy machine. I've been using Keurig single serve coffeemaker, but it uses plastic pods to hold the single serve coffee and I'm use too many of them to feel good about it. They are not recyclable. Besides, I know coffee from freshly ground beans that were harvested by someone who is getting paid a fair price for the beans is better for everyone. I hope I'm a quick learner and this time next week I am brewing my own single serve coffee without a fancy machine.

When I started MailArt365, I made it my goal to create only food/beverage related mailart and to send to 365 different people. I'm really not having trouble with the 365 different people, but I am getting a bit tired of my food/beverage theme. However, I am going to stick it out. I do create other mailart that is not food/beverage themed, so it's not that I'm in a rut. Just not as inspired as I was.

Tomorrow we are going to Handmade Arcade, and I'm hoping that will inspire me.

A vintage photo of World War II bomber factory manned by the ladies! And coffee break time is calling!

Once upon a time I would drink anything that was called "coffee." Then I met Greg, who taught me that food is to be enjoyed, but also appreciated. He got me to look at labels, care about where the food comes from and how it is produced. And I enjoy food, and beverages, a whole lot more now.

I've often been called a "coffee snob" because I refused to drink electric drip coffee made with cheap coffee. I try to explain that caring about where the coffee comes from and how it is grown doesn't make me a snob, just interested in more than the commodity, but it usually falls on deaf ears.

Whenever we go to the hardware store, which is often because my significant other is quite the do-it-yourselfer, I spend way too much time in the paint department, reading the names of the paint colors on the chips. I love the names they give colors. I always come home with a huge stack of paint chips. One of these days "they" are going to notice, and will shut me off. But until then, I will gather as many chips as I can.

This card features three coffee colors, Mid Day Mocha on the right (sort of blends in with card background), Coffee Bean on the left, and the swirly one under the mouth is Macchiato. If my walls were painted any of these shades (and I am quite partial to that Mid Day Mocha color), I would find it hard not to crave coffee even more than I already do. I'm very suggestible when it comes to coffee. If I just read the word "coffee" in a book, I immediately want coffee. Not a good thing at night when I do most of my reading.

This is going to Canada, to Jeanne for whom I have owed a reply since early November. Yikes!

My Keurig coffee maker is my morning sunshine. It makes one cup at a time so my coffee is always fresh. I actually prefer pour-over coffee from my favorite coffeehouse, 21st Street Coffee, but that is far away and expensive.

The photo is from a Swap Bot exchange I did years ago called What I Ate Today. I thought the photo journal I made was in my Flickr, but if it is, I can't get to it anymore because I don't have a pro account.

I'm sending this to the delightful Angie in Wisconsin.

Stuck at home today -- snowing outside on top of slick, icy roadway. Would love some pie & coffee. Don't have either, so it's hot apple cider and shortbread cookies. I adapt.  Plan on eating my daughter's eggrolls that she left in the freezer for lunch, and will forage for dinner! But would really love some pie & coffee!!!!!

Today I figured I could spend lots of time creating because there isn't mail pick-up on Sundays. I had this envelope book project planned for a few days, picking out the bits and pieces, but not actually putting it together. I always pick out way more than I use. I've made this little book project a few times. The first picture is the book opened to its center.

I have a ton of coffee-related ephemera. The only other theme I have more of is alcohol-related. And I have almost as much cheese-related ephemera. Booze, cheese and coffee ... my favorite comestibles.

The second picture is the front. I will write the address on the blue strips and take it to the post office to figure the postage. I do not want to put this inside a cover. I want to mail it as is. I may cover the front and back with clear packing tape just to help keep it clean while traveling. I will seal all the edges with special clear stickers that are used to seal magazine edges. This art is going to a penfriend in the US, although I almost wanted to mail it to myself. It is one of my favorite works.

When I uploaded the images, I discovered I had forgotten to put the MailArt365 sticker and art number on the back (left image), like I had planned. Both will go in the upper left corner. I'll sign the lower right.

The first page has a coffee cup with "Snowball's Chance" covering the original Starbucks branding. Once upon a time I wanted to have a coffeehouse and in my daydreams, I called it Snowball's Chance. The daydream evolved from just a coffeehouse, to a coffeehouse by day and then at night the coffee bar would rotate to reveal a very hip wine bar.

The next page contains a vintage clipping from a magazine like Life or Good Housekeeping from sometime between 1940 and 1959. The clipping pulls up so the entire article can be read. The article is by Mary Margaret McBride, a well-known journalist and radio commentator. It details a "new term in our language," the expression "a coffee." I've typed out the article and put it on Google docs so that anyone can read it. I thought it quite quaint and charming. I especially like the part where you can keep coffee warm by leaving it "on an asbestos pad over a low flame."

The center section has the ribbon tie ends glued to the page and slipped inside the pocket. This ribbon is a lot heavier than ribbon I usually use for these envelope books, but the colors matched the envelopes so well that I couldn't not use it.

I don't understand decaffeinated coffee. It doesn't taste very good and the process to decaffeinate it is really nasty.

And the last page has another pull out, like the Mary Margaret McBride article. This one is the story of goats discovering coffee. A goat-herder noticed his goats being quite frisky after he moved them to a new location. So he checked out the vegetation they were eating and decided to pick the berries and see what he could do with them. And that's how coffee came about. Well ... the story is mostly legend, but it is cute.

I have written letter on a few small sheets of paper and inserted them into the book pockets and will take this to the post office in the morning. It will be interesting to see how this one travels. I'd like to do more of these as the year goes along. I had lots of fun, and used up lots of bits.