Leap Year's Day

Hey, it's the blog's first leap day!

Over at IUOMA there is a clock-lovers group, and we decided to send Leap Year's Day mail. Here's the pile ready to go out to MomKat, Heleen, Artist in Seine, Ryosuke, Tony and Erin:

I thought more people would sign up for this, and made several extra packets which went out to Ruud, Ti Ar Raden, Eva, Erni, Philippe, Steve and Tony.

Happy Leap Year's Day, everyone.

MMSA Stamp Heads received

Here are the amazing stamp head postcards I received through MMSA. Such a great variety of stamps, colors and textures.

From Pamela

From Tricia

From Joanne

And from Ellen.

White shapes VIII-XII

To Steve D

To DVS

To Chris W

To William M

Charlie Brown

Eva is good at pointing mail art calls out to me. This is one for the Philatelic Museum in Singapore having a Peanuts mail art/postcard exhibit.

And I sent this bonus one to Eva.

3 by 12

This gorgeous and unusually-shaped envelope is from Philippe C. And accompanied by a beautiful stained glass window stamp.

Elvis

An envelope made from a Philatelic cover sent to an Elvis fan.

Another one to Mailarteeth

It's been a while since I sent anything to Christophe. Here's my first mailarteeth for 2016.

January envelope exchange - received

Before I get to the January envelopes, here's one from the December exchange from Lucy. Always great to receive a brightly-colored envelope when it is cold and grey outside.

The back was fun, too. And thanks for the bonus card inside.

In from the January exchange...

...from Jean R. Love the sentiment on the card she included. The watercolors on the envelope don't show up as nicely as in person.

From Carol. I like the vintage stamps she used to complement the colors on her envelope.

From Rehj. I like the icicle effect. The zipcode is done with clear embossing - very cool.

And great sea-themed envelope from Lilli.

Banana Mail

Today is World Banana Day, so here are the envelopes I sent out in recognition to the Banana group at IUOMA. Apologies for the images - the scanner did not like the bright yellow marker so these are phone pictures.

Sunday Stamps - Sunrise/Sunset

Today's sunday stamps theme is the sun on or close to the horizon. I am featuring 2 stamps that I have in my possession, but have yet to use.

For the rest of today's Sunday Stamp Sunscenes, go here. 

USPS tends to release stamps that celebrate the existence of each state on their 50th, 100th, 150th etc anniversaries.

Louisiana was admitted to the Union on April 30, 1812, a mere 9 years after the land was bought from Napoleon as part of the Louisiana purchase. A stamp celebrating its bicentenary was issued in 2012 featuring a photograph of the sun setting at Flat Lake taken by C C Lockwood, a Louisiana photographer.

The cost of priority mail went up on January 17 from $5.75 to $6.45. This warranted the issue of a new stamp for this rate. The stamp features La Cueva del Indio, a cave on the north coast of Puerto Rico. The cave is famous for its many petroglyphs, and is part of a Natural Reserve. The stamp artist is Dan Cosgrove. It doesn't specify in the stamp info, but based on the cave's location this would have to be a sunset as well.

You can see here the relative size of these stamps. The state stamp is the standard commemorative size.

Coordinated mail

Sometimes it's great when mail art arrives on a  regular basis, that one bright thing peeking out of the group of white envelopes. Other times it arrives all at once. I had a really great mail Friday a few weeks ago. Look at this handsome bunch, you would swear that Eva, Heleen, Jon and Carol had coordinated it.

Carol's is part of the January exchange, so it will be coming up in a later post.

Eva made her envelope from a calendar page, and added part of a cool metallic coffee bag (?) to her note.

Here it is without the postal bar code. 1437 refers to the new Islamic year which started in October 2015 (the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, rather than the Gregorian solar calendar).

On the back you can see the Gregorian 2016 new year.

Heleen sent me a postcard of a castle in the Netherlands, since I wrote on her blog I didn't know any. The sheep stamp is fantastic, and is by the same photographer who took the picture of the castle. Heleen even added a little castle stamp.

And Jon sent me a postcard with a painted image of David Bowie. I love the back, too.

Oz Mega Win

This showed up on my phone when I was playing words with friends.

 Screen captured (but not downloaded) and sent to Eva inside this envelope. Front:

And back:

___________________________________

Bonus reblog.

Last year I sent another Oz piece to Eva. Recently Eva showed the stamped side.

I find the GIANT cancellation fascinating. I have never seen anything like that before. Also entertaining that it ended up in the wrong corner, leaving the stamps unmarked. They even managed to escape the dreaded sharpie.

Update!

Eva forwarded a picture of another received large postcard where the giant cancellation is in the correct position. I wonder if this is for larger pieces of mail that USPS classifies as 'flats'.

And here's the close up

Thanks, Eva!