2016 sticker organization system

In my previous post about my newly organized writing desk and study, I mentioned I had a new organization system for stickers and stamps, and that I was considering separate blog posts about said organizational systems. Blog readers were so enthusiastic about that prospect that I must deliver! So here's a look at my new organization system for stickers.

A little background: I have a lot of stickers. You will see that in this post. I use them almost exclusively for mail and mail art, decorating envelopes, letters, postcards, etc. Previously they were fairly loose and unorganized, floating through desk drawers and scattered on my desk in piles and mis-matched envelopes... they were a mess. I could never find anything. I would say, "hey, this person loves owls, I know I have some adorable tiny owl stickers somewhere," and then I would root through desk drawers searching for them. It was a waste of time. I always meant to organize my stickers, but it was a pretty huge project. As I was setting up my writing desk, I had both energy and inspiration, and decided to do it. I should have taken photos of all the piles of my stickers as they were spread out across the entire study floor, but I didn't. Oh well.

So, my current system involves the following components, all of which I will show and explain:

Large sticker books

Small sticker books / boxes of stickers

Loose stickers sorted by theme in pocket dividers in a 3-ring binder

Loose stickers sorted by theme in drawers

Above we have the large sticker books, all together at last. They are all the same size, mostly but not exclusively from Dover. I am particularly fond of the Edward Gorey and Kliban cat sticker books. These live on top of my stationery shelves, normally tucked in next to my mail organizer. (If you want to see the whole setup in contect, see my previous post about my newly organized writing desk and study.)



Small sticker books and sticker boxes, which fortunately are all about the same size, are stacked in a pile on top of the stationery shelves, right next to my writing desk. This seems haphazard and isn't completely ideal, but I have in my head a fairly accurate idea of which stickers live there. The small books are almost all Dover, and include essentials like the Glitter old-time cats and kittens stickers (kitty kitsch!) and the Cavallini Par Avion Tin. There are also a couple of random notebooks and journals in there. Ooops. Nothing's perfect, folks!



And now, the meat of the matter: loose stickers. These were the biggest nightmare. I do not assert that my system is ideal, and I created it on the fly with materials on hand: a 3-ring binder and a few extra plastic 3-pocket postcard holders. Each pocket has a theme, and here we have fauna (glitter and non-glitter) and fantasy/mythical creatures (hello, unicorns!). You can see through to some of the pages behind it. I will spare you each and every one of the sections, but others include glitter/sparkle stars and rainbows, bats/Halloween, flora, objects, etc. This system clearly still has flaws, a major one being that it's very easy for stickers to fall out the top, so I'm careful when I'm handle it. A minor flaw is that I still have to pull them out of the sections to find something, but it is less of a hassle than rooting through entire drawers as it used to be.



The drawers still contain loose stickers, but each drawer has its own exclusive theme: the largest themes of the lot. This drawer holds exclusively CAT STICKERS. Ha. 'Nuff said.



The other drawer has one main theme with a smaller unrelated subset. The main theme is mail / meta / writing (air mail labels, mail-themed stickers, stamp-themed stickers, stickers of pens, etc) and the minor theme is snowflakes, because I tend to use a lot of snowflake stickers, and I like them close at hand.

So there you have it. My system is highly idiosyncratic and tailored to my own tastes and collections, but so far it is working extremely well for me. I'm curious to see how this system holds up over time; I am sure I will develop some complaints, but it's better than a mess of unorganized stickers!

Giveaway: Edward Gorey Evil Garden 2014 calendar

What better way to end the year than with a giveaway? One lucky blog reader will win this 2014 Edward Gorey Evil Garden Calendar. There's nothing wrong with it except for a slight rip in the plastic wrap (which you can see in the photo above), but it's still in its original packaging.

Why am I giving it away, you may wonder? Well, my mother-in-law is awesome. She knows me and my taste so well that she gave me the gift of this calendar, which is the very one I had already purchased for myself. I am looking forward to hanging my copy above my writing desk on January 1, and this one is for someone else to enjoy.




THE INEVITABLE RULES

1. HOW: To enter the giveaway, leave a comment on this post. One comment/entry per person, please.

2. WHO: No anonymous comments will be approved. You need a blogger profile to enter this giveaway (simply because I need to know who you are - I'm not going to count through "anonymous #7"), and if you don't have a blogger profile yet, just make one. It's fast, easy and free, doesn't require a blog, and I think only requires a valid email address. Also, you must provide a valid email address in your comment. If your comment/entry doesn't have a blogger profile with a valid email address, it won't even get approved, lest it throw the numbers off for the random number generator when I do the final pick. Lastly, keep your eyes peeled for this magical phrase after you submit your comment/entry: "Comments will be visible after blog owner approval." If you miss that and comment twice, or three times, or more, I'll delete duplicates.

3. WHERE: Due to postage costs, I must restrict this to USA only. Apologies to my international readers... I will do a giveaway JUST FOR YOU sometime in the future, but not this one.

4. WHEN: I'll make the selection on Monday, December 30, 2013. Get your comments in by 12pm EST that day.

Good luck! I'm so glad to pass this on to another Gorey lover.

UPDATE: Winner selected, congratulations to #2 - lucky Ambrosia - and thanks so much to everyone for your interest! I am deleting comments so your email addresses will not remain visible.

Of course I spent money in the Edward Gorey House giftshop...

I promise this will be my LAST post on my visit earlier this week to Edward Gorey House (at least for a while...?), but I thought it essential to share with you my purchases from the gift shop. Of course I was highly excited about the gift shop, and indeed, they had a very fine Gorey selection.

Above, we have the poster for this year's exhibit itself, Edward Gorey's Envelope Art. The poster doesn't show Gorey's actual envelope art, but it does show some lovely mail-related Gorey artwork. I wish they had this poster available as postcards, or this artwork as a postcard, but oh well. I was so taken with the poster that I just had to buy it, for decor as well as a fun commemorative. It is adapted from Gorey's cover art for "Other People's Mail," Berg Collection, NY Public Library, 1974.



They had a fine selection of Gorey postcards, so of course I had to buy a bunch. Here they all are. I included the paper back they came in, because it was pre-stamped with bat stamps. SWOON!



I bought one postcard of the artist himself...



There's the full info from the back of the postcard, for those of you who (like me) want the full story.



I was terribly excited to see these "The World of Edward Gorey" stickers, because as far as I know, they're discontinued. I used to buy them regularly online and in certain bookstores/stationery stores, but I haven't found them anywhere in years! So I had to buy three sets. Yay.

I wanted to chronicle my finds before I sent any, but now I think it's time to go write some Edward Gorey postcards.

Edward Gorey House visit: Part 3

As previously mentioned, Gorey was a cat lover, and apparently his feline companions had run of the house to do as they pleased. I find it utterly charming that the House Museum included this placard near the original couch. "The dramatic and creative result of many years of many cats is the couch you see before you..."



Yep, that's what the kitties can do.



Gorey wrote The Gashleycrumb Tinies, one of his most famous books, in 1963. It is an abecedarian book featuring the death of a child for every letter of the alphabet. It's delightfully morbid. My current 2012 calendar, above my writing desk, is from the Gashleycrumb Tinies. This month I see "Q is for Quentin who sank on a mire. R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire," complete with the accompanying drawings. Behind the house is a "graveyard" for the Gashleycrumb Tinies... here we see O is for Olive run through with an awl. (Here's more about the gravestones, if you're interested.)



Here I am posing with the garden sculpture of The Doubtful Guest. What an honor!



Naturally, I had to get a little silly and try a sort-of imitation. It kind of looks like he's sniffing my head or sucking my brains out, no?



After our visit, we headed over to The Optimist Cafe for lunch - just a few blocks down the road, and a delightful lunch. They had a whole tea menu, so I indulged in a pot. It was an indulgent day, an utter delight. I hope you've enjoyed my excessive posts about the visit (and good gravy, I think this is more photos of my own self than I've ever posted, oy!) and, as I said before, I encourage anyone in the area to make time for a visit. The Gorey House is open seasonally, April through December.

The Edward Gorey House visit: Part 1

The Edward Gorey House visit: Part 2

If you want to see the whole slew of photos of my visit (with commentary), hop on over to my full Edward Gorey House photo set on Flickr.

And don't forget to check out the Edward Gorey House website, too!

Edward Gorey House visit: Part 2

Edward Gorey's kitchen was filled with character. Here we see his fireplace mantle. Note the cat food bowls on the hearth, and the cat on the mantle. Cat imagery was EVERYWHERE (Gorey adored cats and always had "about 5 or 6 at a time"), but alas, the latest Gorey House live cat had just passed away two weeks before my visit. (That cat was not one of Gorey's, but an adoptee and fixture in the house.)

Gorey often made his own puppets, usually stuffed with rice. The framed puppet on the mantle is Figbash, a character created for his book "The Raging Tide." I believe this is the first, original Figbash doll, but I could be wrong... I was in another room when the tour guide explained that, and I was only half-listening.

There's also a nice fat cat on the mantle, and a couple of dogs, and of course an axe... reference to his Gashleycrumb Tinies book? "K is for Kate who was struck with an axe." Now, can you guess my favorite thing about the mantle? Look at the braces holding it up. They're carved bats!!



The last waffle of the millennium? And it's a dancing girl? I missed the story of this in the tour. I guess I was wandering at that stage. This is one bit I wish I'd heard more about. Wow. I do know it's from the restaurant where Gorey ate two meals a day, nearly every day... you can also see the framed waffle itself.



Speaking of that restaurant... here's a month of receipts from it. It's fascinating to see what he ate. He ate at this place twice a day nearly every day, and it was a quirky local place where diners filled out their own order slips, bussed their own tables, and had their own mugs hanging on hooks in the place. So these were his orders, in his own handwriting. I saw a lot of eggs and tuna melts.



If you're a Gorey fan, you probably know that he drew/animated the intro theme for the PBS show "Mystery!" I remember seeing that in my early childhood, and being utterly enchanted... perhaps that's one of the early seeds of my Gorey obsessions. The back room was filled with Mystery memorabilia, and there is a TV in the corner that loops the intro constantly. I don't recall if this reading man with cat figured into the Mystery intro, but I love the artwork.



Sorry this photo is a touch blurry, but I just had to throw it on the blog for its Gorey charm. This kid-sized table and chairs, with a bunch of Gorey stamps and crayons and paper, is in a corner of the Mystery room. I asked about the stamps in the gift shop, but alas - they're discontinued and the store had none to sell! In typical Gorey style, even though this looks like a kids area, there is a delightfully disturbing quote from The Doubtful Guest posted on the wall above the characters (from that scene of The Doubtful Guest) that reads:

"It joined them at breakfast and presently ate
All the syrup and toast, and a part of a plate."

Thus concludes Part 2. Stay tuned for Part 3, where you'll see photos of Gorey's cat-scratched couch, and photos of me posing with The Doubtful Guest (tee hee).

Edward Gorey House visit: Part 1

Here begins my official, extensive chronicle of my fantastic visit to The Edward Gorey House yesterday. I have so many photos to share with you that I think I'll need to break it up into multiple posts. If you want to see the whole slew of photos, though, hop on over to my full Edward Gorey House photo set on Flickr.

So above, you see me posing with the fantastic, dapper front door cat. This is the actual front door of 8 Strawberry Lane, but now you enter and exit the house/museum through the side door (aka gift shop).

The current exhibit is what got me off my duff to finally visit the Gorey House: Edward Gorey's Envelope Art!!



Most unfortunately, the Gorey House allows non-flash photography everywhere BUT the current featured exhibit. So, alas, the items I most wanted to photograph were strictly forbidden. Words do not describe the utter amazingness of the envelopes on display - originals, in Gorey's own hand, through the mail with their old stamps and postmarks and all - so if you are at all able to make it to the museum to see them, I cannot recommend it highly enough. (It runs through December 2012.) Many of the envelopes were featured in the recent book, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer, and I hear that book is wonderful. I'd like to get it. But quite a few of the envelopes were to many different people (including delightful ones to Gorey's mother), and I don't know if those feature in the book or not. I somehow think not. Anyway, the image above, a reproduction on a sign outside, was the only "envelope" I got to photograph. Some cool things were in the special display room, too, and photos weren't allowed anywhere in there. So I couldn't take photos of photos of Gorey snuggling with his own cats, or his original "I love cats" artwork, complete with cat, or of the typewriter by that mantle. But oh well. All the more reason to entice you to the museum yourself.



It's a 90-minute drive to the Gorey House from my own, so of course one of the first things I needed to do upon arrival was visit the loo. Even the humble potty room was enlivened with Gorey character, including bats on the mirror. (Swoon.)

I escaped the tour to do so; we got there right at opening, and jumped into a very large tour that had just begun. Full disclosure: I did not care for the tour and only shadowed it. My best beloved and I struck out on our own, reading placards and exploring at our own pace. I heard bits from the tour, but not only was I put off by the size of the tour - the rooms were small, and not everyone in the tour group could even fit inside the room being toured - but I was not enamored of the tour guide. You know how it is. Sometimes you just don't click with 'em. Nothing personal.



Epistolary Play!! I confess I'd never even heard of this, but how I would have loved to have seen it! I was bummed that the gift shop didn't have any of the postcards, but oh well. How awesome is the tree of pen nibs?? In my Edward Gorey House Flickr photo set, there's also another great photo in this vein of a bouquet of pen nibs for Epistolary Play.



In the area that used to be the main front staircase of the house, there is now a display of Gorey's fantastic involvement in the 1977 Broadway staging of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Gorey designed both the costumes and the sets. He was nominated for Tony awards for both, and won the Tony for Best Costume Design. I somehow managed NOT to get a good photo of the Tony itself.

Because this is so extensive and photo-heavy, I'm going to break this up into multiple parts. Ready for more? Voila - Edward Gorey House visit: Part 2!

Today I went to the Edward Gorey House!

Today was a VERY exciting day in my little Missive Maven world: I finally visited The Edward Gorey House! I took a little field trip to Cape Cod, Massachusetts - Yarmouth Port, to be precise - with my best beloved, and we spent a lovely time exploring the house and grounds, followed by a fabulous lunch at a cute teahouse nearby. I took 80 photos and absorbed ever so much about one of my all-time favorite artists. It did not disappoint - we loved the house so much that we decided we have to go back as soon as they have another exhibition. (I believe they change a few times every year.)

Proof: I was really there!

I took a whopping 80 photos, and I will soon be sorting through them and writing a FULL post all about this lovely visit. But I was so excited about the adventure that I just had to share it with my dear readers right away.

I cannot believe the days have flown by. How have I not posted since August 11?? I apologize for neglecting the blog, and if truth be told, neglecting my mail somewhat. My life has been filled with ups and downs the past few months - family drama and health issues combined with wonderful trips and joys like this - but at least I can say I have been living it to the fullest. Summer rhythms are about to cycle into the fall season, and that always brings changes... but I am still here, and very excited to share not only more Edward Gorey House photos with you (hopefully tomorrow), but MAIL-RELATED Edward Gorey House photos!

For now, though, it's time to go write a letter.

Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey!

Wishing Edward Gorey happy birthday is a posthumous endeavor, since he died in 2000, but today is Edward Gorey's birthday, so I have to do a post about it! A dear friend gave me a 2011 Edward Gorey calendar, which is hanging above my writing desk, so of course the Gorey calendar notes Gorey's birthday.

For a Gorey extravaganza, here's a link to all of my Edward Gorey posts.

Have a Gorey-licious day!

Edward Gorey smorgasbord

A blog reader sent me this wonderful array of Edward Gorey mail art. The envelope is decorated with Gorey illustrations, and she included handmade Gorey cards with handmade Gorey envelopes. What a treat!

Gorey galore-y

Here's some blog reader mail art from someone who shares my love of Edward Gorey! You can see the envelope below the card, which had some beautiful flower stamps on it.



And here's her hand-stamped card, featuring a moonlit extravaganza of frolicking Gorey characters - complete with bats! Yay. I love the Gorey bat. I have that stamp, too, but I probably don't use it often enough.



I broke out some Gorey stamps of my own for the envelope I sent back to her.

US-696230

I don't often send a postcard from the Isabel Samaras set, "On Tender Hooks," via Postcrossing, because the Samaras stuff tends to be quite odd and offbeat. But this Postcrosser had a combination of things listed on her profile that made me think this one would be a good fit. Of course this set is from Chronicle Books, home of so many fine postcard collections.



As we learn on the back, this work is called "Gone Native (Princess Broglie)," and is oil on wood from 2005. I livened it up with an Edward Gorey stamp (a fairy? a princess? a fairy princess?) which I embellished with some glitter pens, but I'm not sure those really come through on this photo.

Just a little something

I sent a little something to Jennie of Red Letter Day Zine, and of course I had to decorate the envelope.

I used a bit o vintage postage, a few rubber stamps, and some accents with Stickles glitter glue.

Handmade Edward Gorey fold-and-mail

If you read this blog much, you know how much I love fold and mails. And you know I love Edward Gorey. Well, this fountain-pen-using letter-writer got creative and sent me a handmade Edward Gorey fold-and-mail! Not only that, but dig the metalicious mailness going on in the quote: "I hadn't anything to do, And so I'm sending this to you." (Extra credit points for any blog reader who can tell me from which Gorey book that comes - I don't actually know the answer myself.)

I love how the woman sort of blends in with the wallpaper (can you tell her hand is raised?) and of course I am exceedingly fond of any Gorey cats. This one is very smug on his cushion.



Here's what the front of the envelope looks like - so groovy that he used white sealing wax on the front of the envelope! The fold is very debonair coming over the top of the front at a jaunty angle like that.



Here we have the first layer of unfolding; anyone who wants to copy this awesome fold should be able to do so from these photos.



Voila: the letter side unfolded. He has very artsy handwriting, no?



Finally we have the front/back, depending on how you look at it - the non-letter side, shall we say. This was very well-executed, with the Gorey panel printed (looks to be laser printed, is my guess) just so on the paper.

Gorey glitter fairy envelope

I got some brown paper envelopes to go with my moo.com photo postcards, and I really dig the look. This one got some decorative touches from my Edward Gorey rubber stamps, a Stickles glitter glue dot border, and Glimmer Mist glitter spray. Above is the photo taken without a flash...



... and here's a photo with the flash. I think I prefer without, but that glitter can be mighty persnickety to photograph well.

Incidentally, I realize my blog postings have been very heavy on the received and lacking on the sent, so I'm trying to even that out.

He wrote it all down zealously

This postcard is from Edward Gorey's "The Glorious Nosebleed," via a postcard book from Pomegranate Books. The title of this postcard/page of the book is "He wrote it all down zealously." (I added the bat sticker.)



I put some Gorey stamps on the back, plus an advertisement for this here blog, but only got all Gorey-licious after reading in her profile that the recipient was a Gorey fan. I have since learned not to put quite so much effort into a general open Swap-Bot swap, or should I say I've since learned not to bother with the really general postcards swaps, because most of the postcards I received in these things didn't seem to have much thought put into them.

But I had fun with this one.

So my current Swap-bot stance is to host my own swaps if I'm really interested in one concept (like the cat postcard swaps - I'll set more up soon!), or maybe jump into a few interesting and specific ones, but my initial infatuation with Swap-bot has calmed down and I'm devoting most of my postal energy to my regular correspondents again.

Speaking of which, it's time to go write a letter...

The piece was sung eXcruciatingly

Another fine offering from The Glorious Nosebleed postcard book from Pomegranate Books, I sent this one to Doulton via Sendsomething.net.

Edward Gorey stationery from Pomegranate

I can't believe this is the first time I've managed to blog about my beloved Edward Gorey stationery from Pomegranate. This is great stuff, with part of a drawing sliced down the side of the page. There are 4 designs, and this is one of the sets that gives you more paper than envelopes, which I totally appreciate: 48 sheets, 25 envelopes. As you can see, the envelopes have their own lovely printing inside, though they are not gummed. The set comes with stickers to seal the envelope, but I usually add some more stickers just to make sure it stays sealed through all the postal machines and such.

Anyway, the paper is of an excellent weight and texture, takes fountain pen ink beautifully and never feathers or bleeds.



Even the box is lovely. I can never thrown them away when I've finished a set. (Oh yeah, and that's my red Esterbrook LJ next to it. Doesn't the color go nicely?)

They're currently on a half price sale at Pomegranate, but they've been like that for about a year now... my paranoid mind worries that perhaps they are going to be discontinued, so of course I've stocked up.