Postage Stamps

A collection of postage stamps, originally uploaded by credocola.

I absolutely love stamps. While sorting out all my art supplies and papers I came across loads of stamps torn from envelopes. I already had a collection in an old rooibos tin but I kept finding more. Now the tin is absolutely stuffed. This morning I decided to sort them and see how many countries were represented. In total 31:

1. Australia
2. Belgium
3. Canada
4. Czech Republic
5. Denmark
6. Egypt
7. Finland
8. France
9. Germany
10. Ghana
11. Great Britain
12. India
13. Israel
14. Italy
15. Japan
16. Jordan
17. Lebanon
18. Malaysia
19. Netherlands
20. New Zealand
21. Norway
22. Pakistan
23. Poland
24. Singapore
25. South Africa
26. Sweden
27. Switzerland
28. Transkei
29. Trinidad & Tobago
30. USA
31. Zimbabwe

This is my pet peeve:

Week 12 of 2010

I received this fantastic postcard of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park from PostMuse last Friday. It was posted on the 8th of March from Pittsburgh and was therefore in the mail for 11 days. It is another UNESCO site and the 2nd for my UNESCO collection.

I received this postcard from Ilona (aka The Missive Maven) yesterday. Isn't it beautiful?

It was posted on the 7th of March as far as I can tell so it was in transit for 18 days from Rhode Island. What's up with that? Lately some mail from and to the USA has been taking an extraordinarily long time to arrive - 6 weeks in some cases.

The information on the back of the card reads:

Cat and Kitten, 1986, by Pamela Higgins Patrick (American). Pastel on paper.

I have been unable to discover anything about Ms Patrick but the postcard comes from The Cat Postcard Book © 1987 Running Press Book Publishers and that can be seen on Amazon.com here.

These are the wonderful stamps that Ilona used and she writes that all except the dragonfly stamp are vintage and more than 30 years old.

The Cardinal bird stamp was issued on 20th September, 1972 and is from a set of 4. The George Gershwin stamp is from a set entitled 'American Arts Commemoration' and was issued on 28th February, 1973. The flowers are for the 1982 Valentines Day and the dragonfly is from 2008.

Since last Friday I have received the following mail:

Various stamps I purchased off the internet

3 Postcards

A Swap-bot swap

2 letters via letternet.de

The Winter 2010 issue of The Letter Exchange

I have posted.... nothing. Oh dear. I have been so busy remodeling the shop where I work that I am absolutely exhausted at night. I spent most of today mooching around and doing nothing in particular. I hope to be more productive tomorrow.

I have 4 followers. Yay!!!

Pen and Ink

On Tuesday morning whilst searching for my mislaid envelope template I found a massive bag of pens and pencils that I have collected over the years (those are some of them pictured above). Most date from my early to mid 20's so they are at least 10 years old. They do not work anymore. In fact some are empty and used up but I kept them anyway because I just couldn't bear to throw them out.

My first real favourite pen was a Parker fountain pen that my aunt and uncle gave me for my 18th birthday. It was a special edition and had two tone blue stripes. I absolutely loved it for about 2 years and then it was stolen off my desk one day. Since then the kind of pens I have tended to like are very thin nibbed roller balls.

However, following Missive Maven's awesome post about her fountain pens and the letter I received from Patty (which was written with a fountain pen) I would like to start using a fountain pen again. I found a Parker in the collection but I know I had others. I just need to find them.

In the meantime I thought I would go and look for ink cartridges. Things have changed a lot since the advent of gel pens and rollers that come in a multitude of hues and now it seems that the only fountain pen ink cartridges you can get are blue and black. How terribly dull. I had visions of addressing my envelopes in Scarlet and Emerald and Violet.

To make myself feel better I bought pink and blue Pentel Slicci 0.7 gel pens. It worked. I do feel better ^_^

Postcard Tuesday

Today I posted 7 postcards to various people. They were supposed to go yesterday but I forgot *tut tut* Anyway postcards are now on the way to the USA, Iran, India, Finland & the Faroe Islands.

I also received 500 Maxi cards in the post that I bought off a website. Some are pretty cool and I am going to post them to people. Others I can take the stamps off or the card can be altered. Anyway I am quite happy with them.

Swap-bot swap

Beginner-friendly profile-based art swap, originally uploaded by credocola.

I signed up for a swap on swap-bot which I really shouldn't have done because everything was in such a mess, I didn't even know where I could find a pair of scissors in my room (yes, it was really that bad!) and besides which I hadn't made anything in years and I had forgotten how. But now I am ready to post this swap to my partner tomorrow and I am really pleased about it because I am sick of agonising over what I should send.

Faux Postage, originally uploaded by credocola.

The first thing I made that came out right was some faux postage. They look really good ^_~

Envelopes, originally uploaded by credocola.

The first two envelopes I made had to be discarded because I made errors and smudged the paint etc etc. So included are 2 envelopes which I hand painted or designed, 2 made from an old atlas and 3 made from gift wrap.

ATC Kit, originally uploaded by credocola.

Finally I made this ATC Kit and I am really proud of it. It includes:

• 5 ATC blanks in an ATC envelope – corrugated card, hot pressed watercolour card, textured brown cardstock, plastic (cut from the lid of an ice cream tub), 2 pieces of acetate (materials can be sandwiched between)
  
• 3 ATC labels for the back of ATCs
  
• 5 ATC envelopes made of various papers
  
• 5 pieces of unusual paper ATC sized or bigger
  
• 6 ATC sized pieces of decorative paper cut from gift wrap (for backgrounds)
  
• Some circles punched from coloured card
  
• A selection of images mostly cut from gift wrap and decoupage paper
  
• 3 10cm lengths of bias binding and 3 10cm lengths of cotton tape dyed by me in nice bright colours
  
• A handmade envelope to hold it all

Decorated Envelope

I had an absolutely brilliant week-end of making a mess in my bedroom (and then I had to tidy it all up so that I could get into bed). I am feeling a lot more organised but there is still away to go before I will feel everything is just right (if that ever happens). Nevertheless I got quite a bit of crafting done but in the end only one thing was ready to be posted off today. This was an ATC for a swap on swap-bot. I hope the receiver likes getting bright mail (I do!).

I received today 2 letters from Germany via letternet.de and 1 postcard via swap-bot. The letters are very short and the postcard is awesome!

There is no information on the back but I think they are a black bear, mule deer, loon, Moose and Bald Eagle.

In other news my brother is getting married next year and it is NOT going to be a Star Wars themed wedding (darn! I was planning on going as Chewie then I wouldn't have to get my hair done) and my cousins had a little girl in Australia today (whooohooo!)

Brown Bear

This whole week the only piece of post I received was this lovely card from Finland of a Brown Bear. It was send via sendsomething.net by Iina A.

Thank-you ^_^ I will send something soon ^_^

The postcard that I sent to Poland arrived. You can see Spellbound's post here.