Sunday Stamps - Horses

I sent March from a postcard calendar to Heleen...

And included three equine-related stamps.

A stuffed toy horse ridden by Woody in Toy Story (from the Disney-Pixar Mail-A-Smile set), horses in Assateague Island National Seashore (one of 16 stamps issued this year celebrating 100 years of the National Parks Service) and horses on the Kentucky Flags of Our Nation stamp which I have shown before.

Thanks to Heleen for showing the images on her blog, I forgot to scan this piece before it went out to the Netherlands.

For links to more horses on stamps, visit Sunday Stamps.

Mail art call celebrating 500 years of Royal Mail

stripygoose and Positively Postal hosted a mail art call 'Make the Most of the Post' to celebrate Royal Mail's amazing milestone.

The USPS planets and Pluto minisheet gave me inspiration to send all 10 stamps on three envelopes:

I stood in line to get them hand cancelled (to try and avoid ugly black lines all over the stamps) and the clerk asked me where the stamps were - seriously! Perhaps he had not seen any of the new stamps yet.

Update: here they are side by side, so the intended message is easier to read (click to enlarge).

Doodles

Katerina made a minizine about doodles you make in meetings, so I sent her a couple I did in envelope 769.

Chevrons to William

Psycho

I have lost count of the number of pieces I've sent to Christophe for his ongoing mailarteeth project. 

Chevrons to Eva

Eva and I had had a small conversation about where the airmail edges on envelopes comes from. I always thought they were called chevrons, but they're actually not chevrons... and parallelograms just doesn't have the same ring.

Anyway, along my search for airmail chevrons and their source, I came across some printed envelopes by Alan B.

So I decided to print some chevrons on envelopes myself, and the Summer Harvest stamps seemed a good match.

Eric Mondays part 13 - stamps

I used low denomination stamps to create a fifty on this one.

We want your trash!

TrashPo bookmark sent to Mail Art Martha.

In this veggie-themed envelope.

The stamps are from a Farmers Market set issued in summer 2014. I think they are a nice se-tenant set. They were criticized for the somewhat high prices shown on the produce, with people saying that it gave the impression that farmers markets are expensive and only for the well-off. I really don't think that such a small detail on a stamp is going to influence anyone, plus I am sure inflation will take care of that eventually.

For links to more food on stamps, head over to Sunday Stamps.

Making Faces

For a recent MMSA postcard swap Christie set 'Making Faces' as the challenge. Faces were to be altered using collage as the main technique.

These are the ones I sent in.

And I sent a bonus face for the host inside envelope 463.

I have to admit, I felt like a butcher, chopping eyes and lips out of magazines, leaving eyeless, mouthless faces behind.

SandPo

Or more fully, sandpaper visual poetry. I love how the torn edges look like snow.

Thanks for the scanner warning, Kat!

She also sent a wonderful collaborative minizine - great saturated colors - and a bonus moon and stars.

A dozen madeleines murdered for the sake of mail art!

Here's the next one in the occasional series of bags Eric and I have turned into envelopes.

Bonus points for connecting the quote with the bag.

Thanks for this unusual and very clever piece, Eric.

Summer (Harvest) Solstice

I sent these two out to Keith and Honi a month ago on the solstice (you remember, the one with the full moon - something that won't happen again until 2062).

The Candy Moon

Today is the full moon known as the buck moon. I am going to rename it the misadventure moon. Even though I labeled it a postal misadventure, it is really down to my own clearly advancing senility.

I mailed this to Candy on May 4th, and had it scheduled on the blog as part of the May flower moon post.

Of course it bounced back to me May 20th because I didn't include the PO Box part of the address, so I had to pull this envelope from that blog post quickly. Silver lining - it came back with a nixie sticker added!

And finally redone and resent May 23rd.

Eric Mondays - part 12 - eggs

This envelope is made from the back of a food magazine. I think I turned all the fried eggs into 50s.

I have no idea if Eric looked at the inside of the envelope at all, but I was entertained by the ad on the other side.

The global moon stamp matched the colors nicely.

A face

Another package from William in Taiwan.

Containing a fascinating face.

The Land Unknown

This envelope based on an old sci-fi film is fantastic. I love the way Eric made the address label look like an old movie ticket.

Ides of postcards

Another postcard from Keith.

And one from Honi, thanking me for sending chicken-related MMSA postcards.

The statement on the back made me smile.

A cigar box graphic on a postcard from Kathie, with vintage postage stamps added.

And another postcard from Keith - happy Dada.

Prince

Great envelope and postcard from Eric.

I'm impressed by how perfectly his shoulders line up with Marianne's.

Prince was a lot different, and his passing was untimely and unexpected. He and his music will be missed by many, including me.

Circus posters

Two commercial envelopes off to the UK jazzed up with Circus Poster stamps.  The tiger stamp is one of my all time favorites.

Stunning Stamp scene

Eva sent me this gorgeous stamp scene in response to my aerogramme - I love how she even extended the city to the edges of the envelope.

Such a clever idea to use different stamps in this way. And the balloon airmail stamps are an awesome accent.

(If you'd like to see it without the annoying postal scribbles, check out Eva's blog here. I honestly didn't even notice them at first, I was so thrilled when I saw this envelope.)

Eric Mondays, part 11 - aerogrammes

I had been thinking of sending something to Eric using stamps valued 50c for his fifty call, however there are very few issued at that rate. While tidying up, I found a couple of old aerogrammes that I used to use back in the 90s, long before most of my family had email and/or the ability to send texts, with a value of 50c. 

They were always cheaper than regular airmail letters, however after they were discontinued (around 2004, I think) you can only use them if you add postage up to the global rate. On the plus side you can now add things inside to increase the weight up to 1 oz (about 27 g I think) ... which is a good thing given what happened the first time I tried to send one to Eric. It looks like the sorting machines tried to eat it... and of course the machine ate the most important part, the 50. 

I had one Chief Anderson stamp left, and added some card inside to make it sturdier (I hoped). It worked, and you can see how nicely version 2 traveled on Eric's blog.

Eva recently had a post about aerogrammes, (which generated more aerogrammes and another blogpost) so I sent her one, too, also with a bit extra inside. It arrived safely. No more chief stamps left, however I thought the butterfly worked as a symbol of flight.

Red mail art

I'm bending the Sunday Stamps rules today, where the theme is 'the color red'. Actually, I pretty much threw the rules out of the window and let a passing band of animals trample them. Just kidding, you can skip the mail art part and find my red(dish) stamps below.

For actual stamps with this theme, head over there.

Independence day happened recently, and I sent this piece to The Artist in Seine.

Update:

I found an image of stamps I used to send a package a while ago, featuring red and blue stamps.

Two stamps from the lead up to the  New York World Stamp show, issued in 2015. The $2 stamp celebrating the postal error of the upside down Flying Jenny stamp printed using the intaglio technique, and a 46c patriotic star, both issued in 2013.

USPS controversially printed 100 sheets (6 stamps per sheet, sold inside an opaque envelope) of inverted Flying Jennys out of the several hundred thousand print run that were randomly distributed to post offices and the stamp fulfillment service center, thus fabricating a rarity. Despite the controversy, the rarer stamps are currently worth tens of thousands of dollars. The value of $2 was also controversial - no domestic rates are that high, so the stamp does not see much use in regular mail. The original error stamps were valued at 24c, and are currently worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.