Who's excited for Halloween?!?

Halloween is my favorite holiday. If you've been following my blog for long, you'll know I've done many, many posts about Halloween and Halloween mail. Partly this is because I adore bats, but also because I just like the spooky autumnal mood. I can't really explain why I love Halloween so much, I just do.

So it tends to be around Halloween that I'll jump back into Swap-bot for a couple of Halloween-type postcard swaps. I just participated in a Bat-themed Halloween postcard swap, which involved a handmade bat postcard. Can do! I had great fun using my bat washi tapes and stickers.



Of course this was a perfect occasion to use one of my brand-new Batman stamps, just issued last week.

Now that I'm posting the photos, I just realized that I never used any of my great bat rubber stamps on it! Oh well, there is plenty more mail (October and otherwise) for that.

Happy Halloween mailing!

Fabulous mail to kick off 2014

Already 2014 is a fine mail year. I've spent a good chunk of my free time writing, and have received some spectacular mail in return.

Above, a handmade gocco postcard from the fabulous Carroll, whose mail art and artwork always just astounds me. This postcard is going up on my bulletin board right above my writing desk! Have a look at her own photo of this artwork, which she sketched from her ink storage shelf.



Next up, brilliant bat mail from Donovan of the Letter Writers Alliance. Wow, does she ever know me, and is she generous, or what? It's a light wooden bat ornament, which is probably also going to somehow fly from my writing desk bulletin board. It came beautifully and soundly packaged, and I was able to preserve that loveliness with some fancy fingerwork with my special craft knife, which I had to use to open it. I love mail challenges!



Finally, I have acquired a new pen pal. Normally my pen pal roster is closed, but the 3-year-old 4-and-a-half-year-old son of my dear first cousin wrote to me. He actually wrote me FIRST, out of the blue, and I haven't even seen this fine young fellow in more than a year. So of course I wrote back, and he's now written me a couple of times, most speedily - and he always mentions cats (which just wins me over even further). Here is one of his annotated illustrations from his latest missive.

And now... off to write some letters!

Bats cheer me up

This week I got a lovely letter from S., a pen pal in Germany, and she drew this fantastic bat on the back of the envelope! I love how the bat is holding her return address label (which also has a bat on it). What a treat! This really cheered me up. S., I still need to write you back...

Thank you all for the good wishes on my broken thumb. I wish I could bring good news, but in fact it is healing very badly, so I am having surgery on it tomorrow in hopes that I can regain mobility in the joint. I had hoped the healing process would be well underway, but now with the upcoming surgery, I am looking at another two months in some kind of cast or splint, and a lot more fresh pain tomorrow. So please forgive me if I continue to lay low here, and on Twitter... I've got my hands full just trying to deal with this injury. Thank you all for your good wishes.

Meanwhile, everyone enjoy autumn (at least those of us in the northern hemisphere), and may you all get wonderful mail in general, and especially Halloween mail.

Bats + dragons = a good Postcrossing week

Sometimes Postcrossing can seem like a fruitless desert of boring touristy postcards, but other times it's full of lovely surprises. This past week has certainly been the "feast" in the "feast or famine" cycle.

Above we have the fabulous US-1779560 from the USA / New Mexico. The sender, Dan, said he hadn't figured he'd ever be sending a bat postcard to a Postcrosser, but he'd picked it up because he loves nature. This is a southwestern desert-type bat with a scorpion in its mouth. LOVE! I really like the realistic yet colorful artwork, and of course the bat is wonderful.



Dan was so thoughtful that he even used a bat stamp! This is from the "pollinator" series from a few years back... when the first class rate was 41 cents.



Then, to continue another of my favorite themes, Helen in the Netherlands sent me NL-1328714 from the Netherlands. I hope you can tell by the size of this photo that the postcard is filled with wonderful dragons! The dragons and knights are covering a fantasy-styled old map that looks to be burned at the edges, and the ornate text at the bottom reads "Dragons of the World." The postcard is called "Dragon Map" but I don't see any artist credit on it. Helen works in a bookshop and she loves to read. She mentioned that her son loves Christopher Paolini's Inheritance cycle, which is a dragon fantasy series. I loved that series, too.

And speaking of dragons, I have a confession to make:

I've been spending a ton of time reading this summer. I always read a lot in the summer, but I've become completely engrossed in George R. R. Matin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. I started the first book, "Game of Thrones," at the beginning of the month, and read it in a week... and I was totally hooked. While on vacation I read "A Clash of Kings," and now I'm in the middle of the third book, "A Storm of Swords." I am completely, totally loving it - one of the best fantasy series I've ever read, I think, and I've read a lot of them! - but it is, of course, eating up a lot of mail time. But it's the summer and I've got a fair bit of time, and I am loving the luxury of hanging out in my hammock chair for hours at a time, getting lost in a good book.

So I note all that side literary information by way of explanation, and perhaps apology, for why I've not been blogging as much!

So for now, go write a letter or read about dragons, and have a lovely Sunday.

Handmade Halloween envelope

This was a combination birthday/Halloween letter for my cousin (also a sometime pen pal) whose birthday is almost on Halloween. I made the envelope out of a small file folder that came in a Letter Writers Alliance RSVP Halloween package. The black label also came with that package, so it was like a letter-making kit right there! The stamp with the kitty on the moon surrounded by bats is one I found on Zazzle.



That big-eyed witch face is all kinds of creepy awesome, if you ask me.

Latvian writing postcard + bat stamp

I've complained about some of the crappy cards I've gotten from Postcrossing before, but this one is another winner! This writing-themed postcard is LV-42684 from Latvia. I really like that the design shows ink, writing, and a writing hand, against a warm, well-organized background. Plenty going on, but not too visually distracting. Awesome!



Is if that weren't groovy enough, it has excellent stamps! Of course the Pope gets a "meh" from me, but the bat, people, the BAT!



The bat deserves a closer look. Yay! I like the moose below it, too, which uses metallic silver ink.

Whenever I get bummed about Postcrossing, I remind myself of cards like this. There really are wonderful postcards moving all over the world because of Postcrossing, so if you are a postcard lover and you can afford international postage, I highly recommend it!

AMAZING writing bat postcard from Carroll!

If you know me at all, you know I absolutely plotzed when I saw this postcard. It came to me in my own Monster postcard swap, and the amazingly talented Carroll. Oh my gravy. A bat, holding a fountain pen and writing a letter to me? Incredible! And what a fine bat it is!

You can't tell from this scan, bit it's like this was a painting painted right on canvas. Carroll worked her magic somehow to make this beautiful yet tough, and it arrived in my mailbox today in absolutely gorgeous, perfect condition.



And here's the back. Of course she used bat postage stamps! She also used a wonderful hand-carved stamp of a skeleton holding an envelope, and I'll wager that is bound to be Carroll's own handiwork. If you've been following my blog for a while, you may have seen some of her hand-carved stamps featured here...



...most touchingly one she carved for me showing my dear cat Memo ("Memo guards the mail") which I received just a few months before he died.

Carroll, you have outdone yourself once again!! What a treat!

Bats, wheat, sunflowers

This patient and very artistic pen pal had a fun concept: she wrote the letter in summer, but due to my backlog, assumed I'd respond to it in the fall. In fact I don't think I managed a response until January (eek!), but she incorporated both summer and autumn themes in her letter art.

The bats are just for me, since I love them so, and the wheat and orange were for autumn themes. To open the letter, I moved the little sunflower bit aside.



It looks like all of these embellishments were hand-drawn and hand-cut; what a touching amount of effort to put into making a letter beautiful and unique!

Where outgoing letters await their journey, part 2

I always love to see where people stack their letters before they hit the mail. You know, the product of a day's or evening's letter-writing, where all the proud mail pieces sit until they begin their postal journey. A while back I posted about how I lined them up on the staircase, a sort of natural resting spot near the front door in my old apartment, but no such architecture presented itself naturally in this new place.



My husband insisted I should have something special (he is a good egg, that one), and I searched and searched for something just right. I came up with this metal item because it is both mail-evocative, with the envelope design, and because the front flap is a great place to secure/hang something whose glue, glitter or adhesive is still drying, to keep it separate from the other mail piled up in the back. And I can still get a good view of what's in there, and when it's full.



If you don't read my blog all that closely or regularly, you may think the bat is just Halloween decor, but no... my love of bats keeps that little purse-item hanging there year-round. It serves as not only decor but also a catcher for overflow mail, on days when I've been particularly productive.



I know someone will ask, so I'll just share that I found this Umbra Lettro Brushed Aluminum Letter Organizer very reasonably priced on Amazon.

Where do your letters await their journey?

Paper elephants, all in a line

This fine letter, with its own special Letter Writers Alliance postmark, came to me from Donovan, one of the LWA mavens herself.



She often indulges me with bats.



The stationery has to be one of the most charmingly re-purposed examples I've seen: it's a line of paper elephants, connected by a string. Very fun to read and open!

Best. Halloween Card. Ever.

I don't usually blog about mail before I respond to it, but this one must be an exception. This lovely Halloween card came on Friday, and I squee'd and squee'd and squee'd. Like a stuck little pig. This is the most amazing Halloween card ever! It's got everything: a bat, some wine, little silver dots, the bat is wearing a bowler hat...



..AND the envelope had a glow-in-the-dark spider secured in the corner! There was transparent tape over it which I removed for photographic, but I am amazed and delighted that the spider made its journey intact and unmangled. And how much do I love those Legend of Sleepy Hollow stamps? They are pretty amazing. The sender of this fantastic card, one of the amazing gals behind The Letter Writers Alliance, even wrote a great blog entry about these stamps; if you're itching to know more about them, this is the place to start.



The back of the envelope is graced with some pretty silver-tinged washi tape and a marvelous paper sticker of a running moon-man pumpkin-head man. You can see the legs of the spider on the front poking out from the corner there.

The letterpress on this card is particularly well-done; it comes from Greenwich Letterpress in NYC, a shop that I've actually visited in person on one of my Big City ventures, and I can attest that all of their work I've seen is really fine. I am sore tempted to order a set of cards now.

Anyway, I wish a Happy Halloween to those who celebrate this spooky holiday! Remember: anything can happen.

(Don't let a bat steal your wine.)

Siamese Batcat!

This has to be one of the best Postcrossing postcards I've ever received. It's a Siamese Batcat! Wow. I was pretty amazed by this one, which came from Finland. The artist is Linda Peltola, and though I've perused her site and her Zazzle shop, I can't find this particular wonderful design.



It's so cool when someone reads your profile and sends you something really fantastic. I mean, we all know the Siamese Batcat would not be for everyone, but it certainly made my day!

Austin's bat colony postcard

Another bat postcard! I am rich in fine bat postcards, and I'm so grateful for all the ones I've received. This one shows another place I'd love to visit: Austin, Texas, for their famed bat colony under the Congress Avenue Bridge. *Sigh* Someday.

Anyway, this fantastic postcard came from Stephanie of Sunbeam Sopabox, who has been to Austin many times. Lucky gal.

Pallid bat with scorpion

Jeepers creepers, how awesome is THIS blog reader postcard? It made my day! The lovely Tara sent it from the southwest. I am so envious of her recent trip to Carlsbad Caverns, but at least she sent me this wonderful postcard! Someday I will get to Carlsbad Caverns myself... In the meantime, I treasure awesome postcards like this. Thanks, Tara!!

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.

Bat night

This gorgeous letterpress bat card came in from a blog-reader-turned-correspondent, and of course it made my day.

It was quite a coincidence seeing what company made it, because I had just bought some stationery from my favorite store in Harvard Square from the same company. Clearly I'm a fan of their designs.



MOST unfortunately, I was unable to find any website for Saturn Press, so I can't find a way to buy these online. Oh well.

Batness!

This blog reader picked a great theme for her letter to me! I am very impressed with all the batty-ness. The envelope is quite beautiful - I don't know if all the subtle colors really come through in this photo. What a treat!

On another note, my apologies for fewer posts (and fewer letters and postcards written) lately. Sometimes, life just gets in the way... I've had some unexpected twists and turns at work that have been time-consuming in the short term and may continue to make things a little different, so as always, I'll keep plugging away and write when I can; it just may be a little less than I'd want to.

I will update my letter stats for a new May chart shortly, too.

Antiquarian envelopes

These envelopes are from the Potter Style Antiquarian Note Card Book. I saw these in a real live brick-and-mortar store (which I visit so rarely), and I'm so glad I did, because all the online descriptions of this set do not show you how lovely the envelopes are!

You can have a look at the lovely cards here: they are modeled after antique marbled book covers. Really great stuff, and they take fountain pen ink well, too.

I like that the envelopes have their own built-in decorative labels, so to speak, and on the bottom envelope in the photo above, I added my own home-made glitter bats. (I used this bat punch on pages of the letter, and I took the bat confetti by-products of said punch and sprayed them with glimmer mist glitter spray, then glued them to the envelope.)

Midnight Rendezvous

One of my faithful blog readers sent me yet another gorgeous PaperNosh notecard. She sent me the first one last March, which I blogged about at the time, and this time she sent an extra card for me to use as well.



How apropo - it's a bat lady! This design is called Sorcière Femme d'allure Diabolique, "Midnight Rendezvous" (is that a direct translation? I think not).



The silver accents on the black envelope are the sender's own embellishment work, fitting bats around a cloudy moon.



Even the backs of these cards are lovely. The extra she sent was a joy to write on, though the price per card listed on the website puts them a bit too rich for my blood. It was a delightful special treat, though, and I feel so spoiled!

Dyed in the Wool wine label card

The lovely PostMuse, who does far more than just postcards, send me this crafty card made from a wine bottle label. She said the wine wasn't anything fantastic, but I think the label makes a mighty fine card!



I'm most taken with the label on the envelope, though - I've never seen anything like this before but I love it.



And, because she is awesome and she knew I would love it, she enclosed this large Australian postcard of a flying fox, a large fruit bat, with the matching postage on the front. It's used, and someone else sent it to her, but of course I adore the bat image. Flying foxes are the COOLEST of bats. Aren't they just gorgeous creatures? I certainly think so.