The Old Fire Fighter Has Left the Building

Pasadena Rose Parade

My wonderful, 102 year old father in law, JB, passed away.
He is on the right in the vintage fire truck and he had a blast riding in that thing in the Rose Parade two years ago.
He also absolutely LOVED all the wonderful birthday mail art many of you sent him for his 101st birthday.
And a very special and heartfelt thank you to JU who has been sending him mail for the past three years. He loved it.
Mail Art is a wonderful thing. You gave him a lot of happiness toward the very end of a long life.
Thank you.
I am going to miss those boxes of avocados he used to ship me from his tree. They weren't mail art but it was darn good mail.

Why Send It Plain If You Can Send It Fancy?

I really can't seem to leave well enough alone....I've got to play......
I am loving these colors lately..

I had to mail someone some rolo cards for a swap so I had to make a little folder to send them in...just sticking the rolo cards in an envelope wouldn't be much fun, would it?

A bit of outgoing mail

Stationery from Diaso needs some extra treatment to make it more interesting.

Making some collage cards

Someone brought a bunch of old family photos to our mail art group's swap table last week. I've been having fun putting them in collages.
I wish I had a huge box of of old snapshots to play with.

Rainy Day Play
We've had a lot of rain here in SF lately and I love mono printing on a rainy day.....

I'll print on anything I can get my hands on...tags and gessoed over postcards and...

rolodex cards...I printed a bunch of Rolo cards to have ready to collage on...

Altered Rolodex Card a Day Project
I'm still at it...

Altered Rolo Cards

Today's Altered Rolodex Card
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY Sweeties!!!!!

(back of the card)

Dorothea Lange Photo
Just look at the size of that post box! I love it -- and the two kids on top are icing on the cake.

Hope you are all out there tearing and glueing and pasting and making and having a good mail day.

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You're Going to Want to See This......

Want to make some books?
My friend Margarete showed me how to make this.....

and she can show you too......

I had such fun working on this I knew I had to share.....
Margarete taught us how to make these at an SF Correspondence meeting.
And then she came over to my studio to play!

I love it when my friends come over to my studio and play. And I really love it when they arrive with show-and-tell.
Just look at these wonderful FAT and happy altered books.
I couldn't want to get my hands on them -- want to see inside?

My friend Margarete made them all -- and I now you are going to want to know more. Lucky for you, she has a blog and she does tutorials on YouTube!
Here are her YouTube tutorials
You can see how she makes these beauties.....

I love all the different papers and textures she puts in for pages....

This is her RED book -- and it is charmingly small -- just about postcard size. And I gave her the  vintage red roses to include inside.....I'm just saying...

Of course, my favorite pages were the postal pages with vintage stamps and glassine envelopes and pages from old stamp albums.

Check out the cool pockets she makes.....

She also made a whole book from a Priority Envelope she received and the entire theme was postal....

Here's another spread with two kinds of pockets on either side....

Check out her blog too
The little red journal is featured on there right now.

And here is Margarete herself.....I didn't make her work the whole afternoon.....I had some show and tell too and we we walked down the street for lunch.
The day flew by!
That's what happens with art and friends.
Please let her know I sent you if you visit her blog and/or YouTube videos, OK?
It's nice to pass the word about artist friends and I now you (out there in cyberspace) told me you wanted to see more tutorials so here you go!

Now, get busy and watch what she does and go make a book!

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Making

Good Morning
Greetings from windy, rainy, cold San Francisco. I'm loving it. Perfect time to stay inside and work at my studio work table.
After coffee and breakfast and admiring some vintage flower postcards.....

It may be messy but it is where I am happy making things for hours and hours.
I've been busy at this table trying to catch up with my outgoing mail.
But, we never really catch up, do we?

On January 1 I started my Rolodex Card a Day project and so far so good. Of course, it is only January 22 so I have a long way to go...but I am enjoying it..I have posted more photos of them on IG. And we all know I have endless amounts of paper ephemera to work with...

INCOMING
I have had some lovely incoming mail so there is a lot to catch up on...

I decided to "reprint" some of my older zines and send them to my newer mail art correspondents.

And, being me, I had to make little folders to put the zines in.....I do love a good presentation.

OUTGOING to Cuan in South Africa

OUTGOING to Virgo in Russia

Collages for Virgo

It always feels good to have a stack of outgoing mail.....

Rolo cards for Michele C

....tucked into a little folder....

The start of a mail art book.....more about this later....

PROJECTS: Mail Art book, a Rolodex Card a Day, Altered Passports,  Collages

It is raining AGAIN but that ought to keep me busy for a while....you think?
What are you all working on?
Remember, ART SAVES LIVES

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