Magnificent Muppet Monsters!

Here's another fabulous letter by my favorite Muppet-artistic pen pal. (I've blogged about his previous offerings, including a Sesame Street artwork postcard and a Shockingly Muppet-licious letter.) The stationery is "Mailing the Muppets Keep-in-touch kit," released by the U.S. Postal service in conjunction with the Jim Henson/Muppets stamps in 2005.



The generally disapproving Sam the Eagle guards the back of the envelope.



Around the edges of each page, inside of each little orange square, he drew his own monster doodles...



...inspired, as he writes, by Walt Kelly, Dr. Seuss, Jim Henson, etc.

Need a closer look at those doodled dudes?



I know I do!



What a treat!

The Letter Tree

Some lovely artwork I received in a letter from an artistic pen pal. I like the idea of plucking letters from trees... It seems especially appropriate for summertime.

Hong Kong flower

I got this delightful letter from a blog reader in Hong Kong. I am so in awe of this flower doodle on the envelope. It looks kind of effortless to me, but all those little scribbles just make up a beautiful flower. This is what amazes me about people who can draw. Anyway, I really dig the flower, and the sweet letter included.



Included was this funky gift of some Chinese papers, including this "Story of Children."

On another note, I'll apologize again for the scarcity of posting. Life is nuts for me right now. On the positive side, the other night I wrote 10 postcards instead of taking time to to a blog entry, so I suppose that's progress...

Martian letterbat

This fabulous correspondent not only made drawings on the envelope, but it looks like she watercolored them! Her dogs are at the bottom, and on the top she gave me a letterbat. I enjoy her commentary as much as the artwork.

Turtle mail

Turtle mail! So cute! Is this a slight upgrade from snail mail? Speedier? Who can say? I positioned the card over the other sheets and envelope so you could see the great stamps, and the wonderful embellished page numbers (with little envelopes!) and "snail mail rocks." Ah, the special joy of letter doodles...

(For another view, the sender bloggged about this long ago when she actually sent it...)

Orange ivy + Wilde quote

I can't say why, but I found this orange ivy doodle on the front of an envelope quite charming. The fact that it came from Frostproof, Florida - a town I've never heard of, despite having lived for 3 years in Florida - added to the charm.



The back of the envelope, along with a few letter-writing phrases, had a sticker with a fabulous quote from Oscar Wilde:
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

I am rich in letterbats

In the same week, I got another bat gracing an envelope - lucky me!! This one came with a fine glittery gold wax seal, too, and sound effects from the bat.

Meep
(That's echolocation.)
Fwap, fwap, fwap
(That's the gentle sound of a bat flapping its wings, of course.)

Goddesses, bat caves, and crabs, oh my!

This envelope only begins to hint at the glories this letter holds. I warn you, this is going to be a seriously photo-heavy post.

Possibly my favorite part:



The bat cave! Ah, a pen pal after my own heart... You gotta view this one large, folks. You have to see full size to appreciate the detail. The one in the bottom left corner is even going after an insect! Fabulous!



Then we have some wonderful illustrations to descriptions of hermit crabs.



I love that the crab is sighing.



Horseshoe crab loves me!



... a ghostly corner bat ...

She also sent an awesome bonus sketch of Kali, in response to the Sanjay Patel stationery representing the Hindu goddess Kali that I sent her. Her Kali is the KICKASS Kali! I'd want her on my side, folks. Since it is a signed piece of artwork, though, I don't want to mess with it by blurring out her signature, so I'll let you link over to her own great blog and read about it/see it there.

The sender also blogged about this letter she sent me, but I wanted to show off even more of her awesome little doodles, which she probably takes totally for granted.

A Penny Dreadful poem

My creative cousin gave me a doodle and an impromptu poem on the back of her new Penny Dreadful stationery. Tres cute!

Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans! Enjoy your 4th.

Treasure map letter!

This wonderful letter from a very creative correspondent carried a pirate theme. I have to note that these are not stickers or stamps - this beauty is all hand-drawn.



Part 1 beckons with a bloody knife and a skull-and-crossbones warning.



Inside, part 1 is a fabulous treasure map. Not only are all the edges decorated with doodles (the legend to a treasure map, really) and witty spellings, but she also creatively crumpled and "aged" the paper. Was it coffee or tea spilled on the paper to stain it? It's a VERY cool effect, and I'm afraid a lot of it was lost in my blurring out the words for privacy. For details, view large.



Gotta share some close-ups of my favorite corners. Love that octopus.



HA! Widow's Peake!



Part 2 (page 2) is a message in a bottle.



Finally, a hand-drawn cut-out skull glowers from over the Crane marker on the back of the envelope.

What a treat!!

To Plugger Jay: The Desperate Penpal Experiment continues

To follow up on yesterday's post, here's the letter I wrote him in response. It is on an absolutely smashing International Girl Arabic birds aerogramme, about which I will kvell in further detail in a future post very soon.

If you want to read my letter to Jay, you can have a look at a larger view of the photo above, in which you'll hopefully be able to decipher my penwomanship.

Because the aerogramme included a space that commands "draw picture here," I gave a rare effort at a doodle, which came out pretty well, considering my skills in the visual arts:



For the fountain pen aficionados out there, the text of the letter and the envelope vampire are all done with Noodler's Eternal Hunter Green in a Sheaffer Agio F. The blood dripping from the fangs of the envelope vampire + the written caveat is Noodler's Tiananmen Red in a Hero 329 Fineline. I think the color representation is pretty accurate, if you're wondering about the inks.

Alligator doodle

A conversation about Florida and alligators inspired this wonderful alligator doodle from one of my California correspondents.

Letter doodles are such a treat!

Decorated page numbers

One of my correspondents not only writes lovely letters with great pens and ink colors, she also fills them with artistic doodles, particularly around the page numbers. Little ladybugs!!



I just love these.



Every one is always different.

buggy

I love this card, from a Flickr pen pal, and I love the hand-drawn heart border on the envelope!

I kinda dig insects.

metallic sparkle letter bliss

This truly amazing decorative letter came from Wolfidy, who actually APOLOGIZED for not having cool stationery - whereas I think the home-made original doodles are better than any printed product! Wow. I held this under the light just admiring the metallic gel pen ink for quite a while.

It featured an awesome purple/silver salutation:


and a bat doodle which I love.


Hooray for snail mail! This letter, of course, made my day.

magic pygmy shrew

Cherysh does the best doodles. His letter wasn't at ALL boring, but I do love the magic shrew.

I gave him the juice box slug stationery. Mmmmm. Sluggy goodness.

(Found this on Nutandbee's Etsy shop.)

Why letters from Cherysh make my day

He dubbed me H.R.H. The ninth Regentess of Bucklersbury.

I won't let it go to my head.

This is a photo from June, but hey, this blog is brand-new and I'm populating it with all kinds of missive-ly goodness.

And the melting sausage (it was hot) can't be beat.