RIP Mailart365

 "Not every act of art creates something special, but it creates something. It is the act of art that is important, not the result." Michael L. Goodman

Last week, I tried to log in to Mailart365.com to post some new images. I found that the site is no longer accessible. Only two of us were still posting in 2025; even the creator of the site stopped posting a few years ago. I completed five years of creating 365 decorated envelopes and postcards each year. I took a short hiatus after year five. I was up to 110 items in year six. Fortunately, I kept an image of each envelope and card in a file, so I have my own record for reference, and I am still committing acts of art every day.

This is one of the first envelopes, front and back, that I posted in year one of my adventure on Mailart365, a subscription renewal for Classical 89 radio.

An envelope from year two.

A collage postcard from year three.

A crayon colored envelope, front and back, from year four.

A decorated magazine page folded into an envelope from year five.

Commit Acts of Art Every Day!

Enveloping the Word: 2023 Christmas Cards

"Not every act of art creates something special, but it creates something. It is the act of art that is important, not the result." Michael L. Goodman 

It has been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog. I will attempt again to keep something going. I have decided to concentrate on decorated envelopes [Enveloping the Word], ATCs/postcards [Big Art-Little Spaces], and handmade books/art journals [Book Art Mania]. I am going to refrain from commenting on criminal political antics, disgusting current events, and the mindless morass of social media in the third decade of the 21st Century. I shall leave any observations I may have on those disasters for other venues, and here concern myself with acts of art.

So, for this first post of 2024, I want to present the decorated envelopes I made for my 2023 Christmas cards. I wanted to have a stylized wreath surrounding the address. After several experiments, I settled on the following pattern. I first drew a circle on the envelope followed by two interlacing, serpentine lines to represent foliage.

I added a few circles for decoration.

I used Tombow ABT Water-Based pens to color the wreath. The greens are numbers 173 and 245. These are two of my favorite greens that I often use together. The gold is number 993, and the red is 845.

I sent out 87 decorated Christmas cards in 2023. I posted photos of them on Mailart365 where I finished my fifth year making 365 envelopes a year.

Here are two of my experiments before I settled on the final wreath design above. I sent these experiments out as well because no envelope gets wasted.

Here are some cards from previous Christmases.