Goldfishy glory

I wrote my Halloweeny decorated letter in response to this beauty from the Goodnight Little Spoon lady. What an envelope!! It came printed this way, Cavallini has some tres gorgeous envelopes, and it was so delightful to pull this baby out of my mailbox. The way she addressed it is so artistic and creative in the letter formation, too.



I love the 3-D pop-up HI, and am kind of amazed it arrived unscathed from so far away.

Mail art thank-you

My amazing little package full of mailbox postcards from Carolee of PodPost begged a mail-art-licious thank-you response, so I had fun putting this puppy together, with all the meta-postal goodness I could muster. Only the Shakespeare stamp doesn't really fit the theme, but he's the bard and I love him, so he gets to join the party.



The envelope is vintage 1971, from my grandfather's days in the post office, commemorating the official change of name from "post office" to "U.S. Postal Service," complete with new logo. I love that this envelope shows both the old and the new logos.

I am feeling rather clever for putting my return address in the wavy lines of the "please hand cancel" rubber stamp image.



As is typical, I don't think the glimmer mist spray glitter is really showing up very well in this photo, but I tried to showcase it here.



On the back is a vintage air mail label (I found it on eBay, for anyone who's wondering), whose glue tastes so awful I have to prepare myself to lick it. But that's part of the fun, saying pTOOey and swishing around a tasty beverage as I affix the label... which is cool enough to merit the distaste, in my book.

I feel rather some pressure to make something quite amazing, these times I have sent mail/mail art to the fine authors of the fabulous Good Mail Day book, but it's a fun challenge.

6 more days to sign up for Cat Postcard Swap

Just a reminder that I'm hosting a Cat Postcard Swap on Swap-Bot. There's a little more info in a recent blog post, too, but the last day to sign up for the swap is Friday, November 20. I'll assign partners on Saturday, November 21, and then the mailing deadline is the following Saturday, November 28. I hope you'll join up - lots of kitty postcards pawing through the mail should be great fun! And hey, I'm just a few committed swappers away from being one of the top 10 swaps right now... (as if I need anything else to nourish my competitive instincts.)

UPDATE on 11/15/2009: This swap is now one of the top 10 swaps on swap-bot! WOW! My first swap and all! I just looked at the participant list, and am so absolutely tickled to see so many of my own pen pals and blog readers on there. (It DOES seem that a disproportionate number of us are cat lovers, doesn't it?) Thanks so much for your support - I think this will be really fun!

Halloweeny decorated letter

This one went to Bianca of Goodnight Little Spoon, who got extra Halloween decorations to help compensate for the fact that they don't get Halloween in Australia.

Of course she blogged about it already, and she scanned the back of the envelope, too, which I didn't think to photograph before sending.

Oh - and I'll mention this because she is my cat who appears on this blog least - the tabby cat on the far right postage stamp is my kitty Magic. She enjoys pumpkins and often manages to get herself photographed near them. I'll leave you with the original photo (taken in October 2007) from whence that photo stamp was made:



(Magic is so named partly because of the M on her forehead, which I gather is quite common for tabby cats, but she's super-special because she's Magic. But she's also very shy and doesn't hang out on top of my letters like Soda and Memo do, so that's why she doesn't pop up on this blog very often.)

Good post package, direct from PodPost

How awesome are the PodPost princesses? They saw my blog post salivating over this wonderful postcard I received from PostMuse, and as a way of thanking me for the mini-review I did of their book Good Mail Day, Carolee sent me this little envelope...



...full of those fine postcards!



I was kvelling and plotzing all at once, I tell you, to get such a rich and lovely gift. More eye candy:



Now I have mailbox postcards, to fill mailboxes...



...with this awesome and uplifting quote.



Make every day a good mail day!

Bat punch fun

A friend gave me a gift of some autumn-themed paper punches last year. There's a cat, two different leaf shapes, and a bat (my favorite, of course). I like to use them on envelope flaps and color underneath for effect. I photographed this process for you...



...and Soda helped oversee the procedure. (The punch, with the envelope, is at her feet.)



First, I colored underneath the punch area with a silver gel pen.



Then I closed the flap without sealing it just to make sure I had the whole area covered.



Here's a photo of the punch itself on top of the envelope, before sealing - with Soda's paws in the upper right-hand corner. (See how helpful she is??)



Then, voila! A silvery bat window. (Alas, it's not quite centered, but hey, that adds to the charm, right?)



Soda thinks so.

Cool Turkish stamp

This stamp came on the package that contained that fine Bic Easy Clic fountain pen, and I liked the stamp a lot... so I photographed it to share with you. I don't get a lot of stamps from Turkey...

On another note, please applaud Sirpa for letting me know about GIMP, an open-source photo-editing software that I think will allow me to do the sort of photo touchup I was doing previously with Photoshop... so I can crop, edit colors and levels and blur out personal info and such. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of more regular blog entries now - thanks for your patience!

Bic Easy Clic fountain pen

One of my very generous blog readers - in Turkey, no less! (I didn't even know I had regular blog readers in Turkey!) - sent me this Bic Easy Clic fountain pen. I had previously admired it when it was mentioned on The Fountain Pen Network, and bemoaned the fact that it was not available in the USA. So, he just sent me one!

Although pink is my least favorite color, this is a fantastic little pen. It differentiates itself on how simple it is to refill the cartridges, and this is indeed the case. It takes a short international cartridge (in the spirit of Halloween - I received this in mid-October - I decided to use a Diamine orange cartridge instead of the generic color - dark blue, maybe? - that was included with the pen) and once you can figure out how to pull the pen open (requires a specific sort of grip and pull), it's quite simple.



So you just drop the cartridge in, and then close the pen. It all fits beautifully, and seems quite leak-proof.



This is a small pen - here it is in my small hands for size comparison. I rather like that aspect of it; I prefer small pens.

I wish I had photographed a writing sample - this pen has a simple, medium line. It writes exceedingly smoothly for the price point, and starts up immediately. All in all, I'm incredibly pleased with this pen and absolutely tickled to have received it as a gift.



It's a little boring, but here's the back of the package. We now know it was made in France.

Whew! Nice to have done a real blog entry post-computer-crash. If the photos aren't as nice as my normal ones, I apologize - I'm editing with Picasa, and haven't figured out a good way to blur out personal info there, so for the time being I'll have to use photos that just don't contain any personal info that needs to be blurred out.

...and now it's time to write some letters...