Author Mary Robinette Kowal offers a fabulous postal challenge for the Month of February: Mail an item through the post every day it runs. This year, that’s 23 days. A minimum of 23 items. Not so hard. I am going for it and am looking forward to posting something every day–maybe, even on Sundays just for kicks. I’ll try my best to post daily in February to update you on my progress–this will be quite a feat and almost a miracle. If you want to find out more about “A Month of Letters,” check it out at www.lettermo.com.
January was a pretty busy mail in/mail out month for me. I’m pretty sure I met February’s “Month of Letters” challenge in January! I sent and received a number of ATCs, postcards, photos, photo note cards, letters, collages, packages and much more. It was a great mail month. I can’t remember exactly when items were sent and received, but I’ll highlight several.
Imagine my excitement when I received the Shakespeare Book of Postcards (Pomegranate) which features art from the “vast collections” of the Library of Congress. I ordered them (“used”) through Amazon (seller: cheapdozen) and was delighted to receive them in pristine condition. The postcard book offers “oversized” art reproductions based on Shakespeare’s plays and a few artistic renderings of the Bard himself. There are also representative lines from the play highlighted on the back each of the postcard.
Front cover of Shakespeare Plays: A Book of Postcards
Here are a few of the postcards included:
That wasn’t the only bit of Shakespeare I received this month. “Txstitcher,” my partner in a floral mail art swap included a couple of Shakespeare-inspired embellishments in the super-stuffed envelope of floral goodness she sent. I’m a little more Shakespeare-obsessed than usual at the moment because I’m teaching Shakespeare this semester and it’s great to have all of this visual inspiration.
Shakespeare Quote Embellishments
I also received a number of ATCs this month on various themes: Photo ATC, Valentine Owl, Pink Valentine and Dr. Seuss. Some of the ATCs that came in:
And some that went out:
One of my favorite swaps this month was “Take a Photo: Look Up.” My partner sent a lovely photo note card that was taken on a dreary day in Pennsylvania.
“Look Up” by Chari, swap-bot CDheartsdragonfies
Chari reports the weather’s been dreary and it’s difficult to get great photos. This particular photo was taken on a nice warm day at about 11 in the morning. So yes, that’s the sun, not the moon. And, though the photo looks black and white, it’s actually a color photo. I like it! The feel and the color. Sometimes, dreary, rainy, and/or foggy days “make” the best photos! (This scan does little justice to the actual photo and note card).
And here are my own “Look Up” Photos. I chose two cloud photos taken from a plane en route to New Orleans from New York City. I captured at least a dozen great cloud photos that day and I get a kick out of how clear the photos turned out. They were taken through dirty airplane windows, after all!
“No Boundaries” by Me!
“Liquid Mountains” by Me!
This is just a little of the January goodness. I’ll have to highlight the many postcards I received in January in another post. Until then…Toodles!
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