Japanese postcards tend to be awesome

I've gotten some truly delightful Postcrossing postcards from Japan lately! The postcard above is JP-383733, and the sender had noticed that I'd marked this design as a favorite but hadn't yet received it. I love the clean lines showing the evolution of Japanese mailboxes through the years, and the deep red color is rich and elegant.



Perhaps just as charming, though, is the fabulous collection of postage stamps! Some look vintage and some look more modern, but they're all different and all gorgeous. I wish I could read Japanese - that green one in the middle with the little icon that looks sort of like Mr. Zip must be mail-related, yes?



Here's another fine mail-related postcard, JP-382166, which is an illustration of various scenes of letter-writing. It has a vintage look and feel, but I think it's new.



However, the stamps the sender used look mighty vintage to me! I honestly don't know much about Japanese philately, and I can't tell by "look" whether or not a stamp is vintage, but I've seen more current Japanese stamps and they don't look like this. I love the variety and old scenes! Are there any Japanese stamp enthusiasts out there that can share some knowledge?

I know I spend a lot of characters praising Postcrossing on this blog, but it is joyous surprises like this that sustain my mail delight. It's so exciting to know that such lovely things may await me in my mailbox, who knows when!

Update on obtaining vintage unused stamps by theme

I have blogged before about sources for great vintage stamps, and since my "Where DO you get all those awesome old stamps?" post is one of my more popular ones, I thought I should call attention to an update.

For those in the new, there is a fine gentleman, Errol "Murph" Murphy (emurphy3101 at gmail.com), who sells mixed lots of older stamps in great condition for mailing, and sells them in $20 increments. You pay face value plus shipping (and the shipping for the order is usually just letter-rate first class postage). Best of all, you can request a theme. Olympics, nature, animals, politicians - you name it. I had reservations about purchasing from a stranger, but he came highly recommended and he's been delightful to work with. I've ordered from Murph many times, and sent him quite a lot of business from this blog. To quote what he said when I asked if I could promote his services on my blog: "I'm so glad you like the stamps. I do this as a hobby and enjoy it when I can provide stamps at a reasonable price to appreciative collectors and stamp users."

For those in the know, who've worked with Murph before: his longtime contact email address has changed. It is no longer the cot.net address - you can now reach him at emurphy3101 at gmail.com. If you're interested in buying stamps from Murph, just email him at the new gmail address. I also just learned (thanks, @upandonmyway!) that he has a website: murphs-stamps.com, full of lots more information.

Happy stamp shopping!

Last mail art of 2012

A postcrosser who received one of my postcards asked me if I did any mail art. It occurred to me that I haven't posted about anything I've sent in absolute ages. It's long overdue! I had a tough fall for letter-writing, and my sent stats have been fairly paltry until December, when I really tried to plunge in again as best I could.

I wrote and decorated this letter on December 31, 2012. I had so much fun breaking out my washi tape, stickers, rubber stamps, postage stamps, and all the fixings... they had sat gathering dust for quite a while. My cats Soda and Memo (of blessed memory) adorn the photo stamps, and in fact that stamp of Memo with the fur wig is the last one I had.



The back of the envelope isn't quite so busy, just some red and black and of course a fine Red Tango cat sticker.



Happy New Year! My best wishes to all blog readers and postal enthusiasts for a fantastic mail year in 2013.

Red, white, and blue

I thought some good old red, white, and blue was in order for the season.

This is a letter I wrote last night on some vintage Wessel "envo-letters" stationery. It is WWII era, dates around the same time as the V-mails, but notes in packaging that it can be sent anywhere, not just to and from U.S. troops (as was the intent for V-mail.)



And yes, I do use the stickers I sell in my shop for my own correspondence, too.

To all my American readers, have a wonderful 4th of July holiday!

Gilded

I was feeling golden in my decorative mood for a recent (well, November) letter to Donovan. I combined some large plasticky deco tape with a Martha Stewart Crafts label. I think the stationery is Crane something... it's certainly cottony.



I went with a simple vintage label on the back.



I used a couple of vintage stamps - Abigail Adams, known as a writer (corresponding with her husband, President John Adams), and that lovely rainbow-edged United Way stamp.

Only a few more days where two 22-cent stamps = the current 1st class domestic letter rate...

New shop section: vintage postage

So y'all probably know I have a lot of stamps. I am rich in vintage postage, both from my Grandpa's old stamp collection as well as my many purchasing ventures. I'm now putting a few for sale in the new vintage postage section of my etsy shop.

Many of you also know I'm Jewish, so I'm not going to use the many Christmas stamps that have come my way in various stamp lots. I've just posted two different listings for holiday/Christmas stamps that people other than myself will probably be a lot more interested in.



This Vintage holiday greetings postage book is in excellent unused condition, with 20 29-cent stamps. Perfect for the current postcard rate! They are glue-backed, so you do need to moisten for the adhesive.



Also, a smaller lot of 6 unused individual Christmas stamps.

I'm on the fence about selling some other stamps. The Christmas ones are the only ones I have that I know I'll never, ever actually use. But I've seen a lot of folks selling vintage unused postage on etsy lately, and it seems to be pretty popular. I'm considering selling some of my other postage that I have a lot of, even some of the letter-writing themed stuff...



...like the stamps pictured on this postcard. What do you think? Would you be interested? Should I sell other vintage stamps? Feedback most appreciated!

Unicorn postcard swap update

Remember my Unicorn postcard swap? This is what I sent. I jazzed up the back because I know the recipient, and she really likes rainbows, too - so I tried to incorporate those on the stamps. And of course, glitter and stickers. The silver borders were made using silver washi tape.



I did indeed use this fabulous rainbow unicorn postcards by Pagey on etsy for the swap.

Hope everyone else who participated loved their unicorns! I got a really perfect unicorn postcard for the swap, myself, but of course forgot to scan or photograph it.

Vintage bee illustrated envelope

This vintage stationery set was one of my favorite fantastic eBay finds. The paper itself is sort of a textured pink - I haven't photographed that, as it's not all that special - but the envelopes are amazing! This is the bee design, and there are 3 others with similar styles: illustrated and printed all over both sides.



These photos are fairly true to the color - sort of a yellowish green. Of course I love the directive to "Mr. Postman."



The back of the envelope is seriously amazing! I confess I am a bit of a sucker for puns, so I love all this cheesy word-play. And I adore the bee who is lounging on top of a mushroom, brandishing a fountain pen, with a cute little ink blot below.

My favorite verse is in the pink box:
"Is writing notes a thing you love,
or do you need a 'lil shove?
I'll furnish the shove!"

Tee hee. Bee well, springtime readers.
Now buzz off and go write a letter!

Send me a million postcards (the website project)

Somewhere, through someone else's mail or postcard blog, I saw a link to Sendmeamillionpostcards.com. Hmmm. Interesting. So of course I had to send one.



Of course I wondered why the mysterious postcard collector was undertaking such a project, as I didn't find that really explained on the website... and felt the question was better underscored and outlined in glitter. (What isn't?)



The postcard front isn't terribly exciting, but a cool billboard message from John Lennon in NYC, so since someone will ask, there you see it.

The curator must have agreed that my decorated side was more interesting than the front, since that is what got uploaded to the site.

Check out Send me a million postcards if you're looking for a place to send a postcard. As of this writing, the mysterious postcard collector has only received 295 postcards, so there are still 999,705 to go! I did get a response, which I will eventually post... someday.

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.)

A bevy of wild west girls

This most excellent postcard, a reprint of an old rodeo-type poster, came to me from my favorite sendsomething user in Wyoming.



She even kept the stamps all-cowboy: traces of Buffalo Bill Cody on both sides. Yee-haw!

Trumpet stamps

Here's another one of those fine vintage Mork & Mindy postalettes. On this one I chose special stamps for the recipient, who plays trumpet. (Could you guess?)

Blastoff

This is one of my favorite envelopes I've made. Not sure why, I think I just love the old-school space-style illustration. Here we have two of the other recent Zazzle photo stamps I've ordered: Soda guarding a Curb your Dog postcard, and Magic yawning on a porch. Had to throw in a Skylab space stamp to complete the theme.



Mmm... starry.

April Benevolent Postcard Society offering

This was my final item sent in the Benevolent Postcard Society project. I sent 8 - one each month, dutifully sent on or very close to - the first of the month, and was supposed to receive one each month, too, but I have only received 3. I suppose April's could still yet come. In May the organizer suspended for a month to re-evaluate membership, and I decided not to continue. I had requested for months that a reminder that the postcard should be marked Benevolent Postcard Society (or BPS) be included with the address info email each month, but that didn't happen. I suppose I could have received more BPS postcards, and would not have known, if they hadn't been designated as such - I get a lot of postcards and all.

Anyhoo, I had fun with this one. I used a vintage cat postcard that a pen pal had sent, and altered it with some glitter, metallic gel pen ink and rubber stamps.



Perhaps you can see the glitter, and the blue metallic gel pen ink making the kitty eyes sparkly blue, a little better in this ultra-bright-sunlight shot.

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.

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.)

Today we battle in the tub!

Here's one of the envelopes I've made so far (using the PaperSource envelope templates I reviewed a while back) from a wonderful, fantastical children's book called King Bidgood's in the Bathtub. The premise of the story is that the King doesn't want to get out of the bathtub, and calls all of his daily activities to happen with him in the tub. I really, really love Don Wood's illustrative style. Oh, and I tried to continue the theme somewhat in the stamps, where I used a 29-cent Columbus landing in America anniversary stamp that showed a similar kind of sailing ship.



Above is the back of the envelope as you would open it; I reinforced the seal with some deco tape and gold stickers...



...and now you can see the illustration continue, with the envelope upside down.

I had a lot of fun making this one! It kept making me smile, to look at it.

Mork from Ork vintage postalette

This gem came from a fabulous eBay find (ah, eBay, you are my budgetary downfall): a mint condition, NIB (new in box) set of Mork from Ork rainbow postalettes, from the show Mork & Mindy.

Yes, folks, I remember watching Mork & Mindy as a child - I adored that TV show, and it gave me a lifelong admiration for Robin Williams. This postalette shows Robin Williams in his Mork role, wearing his space suit, and the words are his catch phrase. I'm stumped by the spelling, though, because I recall it sounded like "na-noo" and not na-no. Oh well, discrepancies aside, they're fabulous. The moon and stars sticker came with the original set to seal the postalette, but I gave it a little help with some removable tape.



As if these weren't awesome enough, they're covered with rainbows! The rainbow element wraps around the front, on the address side. This one deserved some very cool stamps, so I tried to go with either the rainbow theme or a space theme, to complement the postalette itself. These are some of my very favorite stamps, too. On the left is the "It all depends on ZIP CODE" mail transportation stamp (of course I love the meta mail theme, but the rainbow puffy artwork is delish), in the middle is the Expo 74/Preserve the Environment stamp with artwork by Peter Max, and on the right is the Love stamp with hearts forming the Os in rainbow colors. The Project Mercury stamp is my nod to the space theme.

This was a fun postalette to send and construct; so far I've only sent the one, but I think I've got 11 left. Hmm...

More deco tape border action

I am blogging with heavy eyelids now, so please excuse any incoherence. I haven't posted in a few days... I've been really busy with work stuff, but I've also been writing letters! Woo-hoo!

Here is another deco tape border with some vintage stamps.



The envelope flap required securing of some kind, because the Edward Gorey stationery oddly doesn't come with any envelope glue. So Marie the Disney cat helped hold down the flap on this letter.

Bedtime. G'night.

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.