ATCs for Iryna B.

I made these three ATCs for a trade partner in Belarus, Iryna Barysava. I added a couple more that I had made previously and mailed them all in a decorated envelope. I am hoping they arrive in one piece.

The End of October

Well, it has been a long time since I blogged here. I have just ended my 69th year (Oct 22) and quietly slipped into my 70th year. I don't feel old, so I must not be. I retired in June and have been trying to figure out why I get less done now than when I was working. They (who ever they are) say that "work expands to meet the time allowed." It is nice to be able to work in the garden during the day and not late afternoon after work.
My wife and I went to Alaska in late August for a train and cruise vacation. It was our retirement celebration, and we had a stupendous time. We started in Fairbanks and ended in Victoria, Vancouver, Canada.
I have been blogging at Mailart 365 from January 1st until now, posting images of my mail art. The goal has been to create 365 pieces of mail art, envelopes and postcards, in 365 days. I did very well during the first half of the year, but I have fallen behind since August. I have only finished 230 pieces of mail art. I have 66 days left to complete 135 envelopes. That is only two or so a day, but I will be in Israel for twelve days starting the day after Thanksgiving. So that only leaves me 54 days.
I have also tried to do a few artist trading cards to send off to people who have sent me some, in decorated envelopes of course. Here are three of a set of four ATCs that I made this week. I titled the set: Music of the Spheres. (The 4th card was sent to a trader in New York before I scanned the set.)

Two Pinterest Boards

Well, after several months of perusing Pinterest, I put up two boards; one for my ATCs and one for mail art. We Canyons District middle school librarians have started a board for our combined libraries to encourage reading and library activities throughout the district. So, I decided it was time for me to practice with my own board. I titled my boards, "Enveloping the Word" for mail art and "Big Art: Little Spaces" for ATCs. I hope someone will get some ideas from my pins.

Two ATC Posts

My first ATC trade for March was a quick trade Mayan mask theme. I found this Mayan head in an old art text. After trying it out on several backgrounds , I decided this black and white op-art was the best fit. I especially like the way the black and white appeared in the eyes. I sent the card off in the hand made envelope below.

The second trade of March was a pattern card. My trade partner likes kaleidoscopes, so I wanted to use the patterns in the form of a kaleidoscope. Along the way of experimenting, I thought of a Victorian puzzle purse as an extension of the pattern theme. I have never before now made a puzzle purse that did not start with a square piece of paper. Rather than cut of the extra parts under the top folds, I had to adjust the folds so that the purse would open to show the pattern on the inside. After a lot of trial and error, this is what came to be.

I made tight creases on the inside folds so that it easily collapses back into the shape of the card.

I sent this trade in a single sheet folded into an origami envelope. I created the page on the computer. I used this paper, because I felt that the collage fit with the pattern theme of the trade.These envelopes generally make it through the postal machinery, but sometimes they get chewed up. I usually ask the post office to hand stamp these types of envelopes and hand sort them. They will often hand cancel but then throw them into the sorter anyway.

February Mail Art and ATCs

Because I have been so busy doing family history/genealogy work and scanning family photos all winter, I have not done any mail art or artist trading cards since last Fall. I started to swap again in February with some Valentine ATCs, a decorated paper trade, and a mail art swap. Here are my little creations:

This is the envelope (front and back) that I decorated for the paper trade. The decorated envelope was not part of the trade, but I like to do mail art whenever I have some time to do it. My wife says it is a little too much to decorate the return envelopes when I send out the bills. I only do that once in a while. I had to ad another 

The theme for the first Valentine ATC trade I did this year was to alter a King, Queen, or Jack of Hearts playing card. Several years ago, I found two movie star (Clark Gable and Greta Garbo) playing cards on the internet. The cards were of diamonds, so I already had to alter them to use them in the trade. I cut out the heads and the bars with their names on them and pasted those pieces on the hearts cards. Only one card was required for the swap, but a king must have a queen, and since I had the two movie stars, I made a pair, and added a couple of heart "jewels" to them. I also made the envelope in which to send them, which was also not required for the swap..

Below is the second Valentine ATC trade and its envelope. I used tagxedo.com to make the word collage heart. My swap partner said on her profile that hot pink was one of her favorite colors, so I colored one of my op-art backgrounds with a high lighter and added a tiny jewel heart at the center of one of the spirals. I tiled the tagxedo heart on an 8½ X 11 piece of copy paper, folded the envelope, and added a few other things.

The following envelope was for a thank you note. I made the stamp, showing my grandson, at zazzel.com. Each stamp costs twice as much as a regular first class stamp, but it is worth it for a special letter when the recipient knows "my" baby.

The purple dots look a little like Mickey Mouse ears. By the way, if you happen to see this young lady at Disneyland, beware. She is one of the pick-pockets from the 1630 French painting, The Fortune Teller, by Georges de La Tour. I have used her as a decoration many times. Thanks, Georges.

Erin Go Bragh, Part 2

I made this ATC for a "St. Paddy's Day ATC Swap" and sent it off this morning in a handmade envelope. I made the envelope from a page from an old LIFE Magazine and glued a few things on the cover. A problem I had with the envelope was that the glue was not adhering to the glossy magazine page. Hopefully it won't fall apart in the postal machinery.

 

My daughter-in-law's aunt fell a week ago and broke her shoulder. It was a bad break, and they had to replace her shoulder. I sent her a get well card in this envelope.

 

I sent out another decorated envelope last week for a "Make It Pretty" envelope swap.

Erin Go Bragh, Part 1

I just sent out an ATC swap with a handmade envelope. It is an early St. Patrick's Day ATC. The background is layered tissue paper using a glue wash to adhere the tissue to poster board. The envelope is made from a magazine page with some stuff glued on. I never know if I have too much or too little.

While composing this tiny post, I am listening to Virtual Choir. It is hard to concentrate with 5000 voices singing at me, so it is taking longer than I planned to post this. Oh, well. Erin Go Bragh!

Optical Art, Op Art and Crossed Eyes

While sorting through a box of old art papers, bits and pages from magazines and other fodder that I have saved for art projects and collages that are yet to be created out of the chaos, I found a folder of black and white op-art that I have had for at least thirty-seven years. Most of the pieces are copies of student work from the early years of my career when I taught art at Union Junior High. They are the high contrast black and white, geometric designs which if looked at too closely or too long cause the eyes to cross and summon hallucinations, head aches and, in extreme cases, a dead faint. Best to be avoided, but if not, at least taken in small doses.

 

 

 

So small it is. I made some copies on cardstock and chopped the sheets into 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch cards. Then I broke out the gel pens and started to alter the cards. I have a black and white ATC trade coming up, so I used three of the cards as a background for a set of chat noir cards.

I used a few others as backgrounds with some cutouts from magazines, but most of the cards I have been coloring with the gel pens. Here are a few cards that have been colored, but are not in a final, finished form.

Five Cent Stamps, ATCs and Handmade Envelopes

I just finished two separate ATC trades with the theme of postage stamps. The challenge for both trades was to make a collage of stamps for the background of the ATCs. That was not too difficult a task, but trying to decide what to do as an embellishment or for something in the foreground had me stumped for a few days. The stamps came from a box of stamps my grandmother sent me in the 1960s when I was an avid stamp collector. She had a friend who worked for a publisher, and the friend gave the stamps from the manuscript packages to my grandmother to send to me. I have dozens of the same stamps, mostly five  to eight cent commemoratives. I made both collages the same, but the second one has two different stamps. I could do a comparison puzzle with the two; "How many differences can you spot between these two cards?"
For the finish on both cards, I cut out the "golden five" from two little copies of Charles Demuth's painting, The Figure 5 in Gold, and glued them down over the stamps. I thought that tied the card together: five cent stamps and the number "5." I outlined the stamps and the fives with black gel-pen. My hand is not very steady any more, so there is a wobble on the outline of the fives of each card. That just proves it was handmade, right?

I also sent off a card in a "Heart" ATC trade. That one started as a copy of a scherenschnitte Valentine that I made a few years ago. I scanned it and reduced the size to the dimensions of an Artist Trading Card, 2 1/2 in.  x 3 1/2 in. Using pen and ink, I added dots and some squiggles to change it a bit. I have used copies of this paper cutting for ATCs in the past.

Using the envelope maker that my daughter gave me for Christmas, I made the envelopes to send off the cards. The papers I used were wallpaper, and pages from magazines. I worry about the magazine pages going through the postal sorting machines because it is thinner than envelope paper, but I have sent some magazine-page envelopes through the mail successfully in the past. Here are some before and after shots of two of the envelopes, front and back: