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Made in Chicago

I am back! Foto sent from my old school fone, from Chicago USA!

Saturday morning and i'm lounging around in the house looking at the garden and wishing the pesky squirrels hadn't eaten all our flowers

It was a beauty of a day so we took Jim's boat (August) up Somes Sound to swim. I was in the water for a long time as it was relativley warm at 69! After my swim, I made a bunch of one minute sketches to capture August.

"Send me, send me, send me, guidance as you go" The maine landscape has infiltrated the trash poetry.

Mail art packages for the day!

Another person has bought TWO Sharpies from me. Yes I find it so exciting I have to use CAPITAL LETTERS!

So another slice of awesomeness, this time inspired by Jennifer Kosharek, who is easily the most interesting person I follow on facebook.

She recently painted a friends mobile phone case with a sea tortoise as a request, and I thought it looked gorgeous, so it had to go on the envelope.

I handled colours myself this time with advice from Elena using Sharpie and Flexmarker. The colours had to be modified from the original, which was painted as I couldn't get the tones or blend but had to study lots of pictures of sea turtles to find out what their patterns look like. It was fun!

On our way to Southwest Harbour to get provisions.  Jim took down the canvas and we went 'Bond Mode.

Whew!  I hope I'm doing this right.  I'm new to Mailart 365, and super duper happy to be here.  (Thanks, Andy, for all of your help!)  Here is a letter for my spiffy friend, Jen.  We decided to spend our night writing each other letters, which we sneaked into the mail today.  Hmm, I wonder which letter will arrive at it's destination first.  Go stuffed little envie, gooo! There's a race to be won!  Oh! And just after taking this photo, I found added sticker that said, "Amazing Race." How perfect, right?!

Mr Puzzle in Mars

Mr Puzzle in the middle of storm

Mr Puzzle in the party

211/365, a handmade birthday envelope from a Target circular. Sent to Ashley in Maryland.



212/365, a collaged birthday envelope from another store ad + a Chinese fortune for the year.  Sent to Maya in Florida.


213/365, a postcard made for Handi-hour at the Renwick Gallery to be used as an example of what you could do with the provided materials as I walked around helping patrons. You can see Kehinde Wiley's work peeking out from the brochure I used. Half of the materials I grabbed went on this, and the other half of #214. Wrapped in reused cellophane and sent to Carolee in San Francisco.



214/365, also from Handi-hour. Wrapped in reused cellophane and sent to Donovan in Chicago.

A prompt on Swap Bot has asked participants to swap character profiles, including the basics (age/sex/interests) as well as a letter from the character to either another character or the recipient of the swap. I like creative writing swaps like this. I used Mackenzie, the main character from my failed (seriously, 900 words?) attempt at Camp Nanowrimo this June, Lucky. For pages, I detailed everything I could think of ... I'm  not much of a planner/outliner, and don't tend to do this much character development, but it was something new.

In any case, partners haven't been assigned yet, but I've been trying to get all of my swaps for August done before I go on vacation. Then I thought: Why don't I decorate the envelope? Being almost completely unable to draw maps OR humans, I went with a childlike sketch of Providence, the village where Mackenzie lives, and its relationship to some major surrounding areas (as described in her character profile).

I kind of like this approach. I'm not a very visually artistic person, preferring to illustrate through words, but it's great to get a picture, and I think it'll help my partner see where I'm coming from.

So: Envelopes that illustrate the letters within? Yes, please.

xo June

This was done before 239 and was actually the inspiration for it. I drew it and wanted Elena to colour it but she was too busy. When she saw the end result she wanted to do a peacock too, which inspired me to draw that piece. This is the envelope for a single pack of Sharpies, coloured in Promarker flex.

The first person to buy TWO packs of Sharpies at once, so I decided I had to make something awesome. Elena handled colours and I decided to put a little signature in the top left to show that it was a team effort. I rarely declare to strangers how much I adore my wife, but this one time I couldn't help myself :-)

[UPDATE - I've just discovered that this is the 9000th published post on the site!]

Tiger, tiger,burning bright...   photo damaged by flood waters, paper collaged, gauze ribbon glued to the piece

Butterflies  are free

Made this with husband in mind.

Mr. Puzzle and his shadow

Mr Puzzle walking around

Letter to the President, because even he deserves mail art, right?? :)

xo June

recycling postcard to Sivano Pertone

Every year Molly's Birthday is one of the big summer events.  Molly is 13 this year and it is the middle of The Great Race at the moment... Patrick and I are waiting for teams 3 & 4 to arrive in the barn to answer their trivia questions before they set off on their final task... to swim between the docks.  Last night my sister Katy was dreaming this years' events up.

Neuron 14 of 83

This is going out to Sarah Churchill, who has been one of the stars of Plot 45



Contained within are some quilled Ninja Shurikens by Elena.

[update - I didn't think the piece was quite complete when I looked at that empty envelope. No-one likes to open an envelope and find nothing inside, so I looked around for something ninja-related to put inside. Luckily for me, my wife quills as you probably know, and she;s been quilling a lot of snowflakes lately, and these ones looked just like Ninja shurikens, so she quilled me a few more to put in the package]

I've mentioned my eBay Sharpie sales quite a lot recently as Sharpies have really taken over my life as far as eBay sales are concerned. This is also an eBay envelope, but not for the usual.

Me and Elena recently walked the West Highland Way, and bought a walking guide for the trip. We decided to sell it when we got back and this is the envelope I'm sending it in.

The junction of commerce and mailart again and once again it's not one that I feel I would have sent as a piece to a mailart friend. I have many reservations about sending mailart to paying customers, and in this case they don't know they're getting mailart. So what do I do? Play conservative? Go all out? Leave it blank?



I'm now so used to drawing on all outgoing mail that I couldn't bring myself to send it blank and wanted it to be relevant to the contents, hence the spattering of logos and Scottish flag, but it's not a piece of art from deep within. It's not really satisfying art. It makes me happy, don't get me wrong, but it's not an artwork I would be happy to say, hang up on the wall, unlike some of the others I've made. Admittedly there are some Sharpie envelopes I would hang on the wall, like 236 but designing for envelopes feels more like design work, not necessarily art if that makes sense.

Should art and commerce mix? What do you think?