OK, so I know it’s not Monday, but it was when I started to write this post! It’s been a very long, hot, fun-filled weekend for me (in Benalmadena for my cousin’s hen weekend!) but also totally exhausting, so it’s taken me a while to recover. So today is a very Monday sort of Tuesday, which is good enough for me!

I’ve been a bit quiet on the Mail Art blogging front lately. That’s because I joined IUOMA (International Union of Mail-Artists) on the recommendation of new MA friend Tarah (@MissThundercat), and it’s filled my diary up even more than it already was! With over 2000 members sending and receiving Mail Art to each other across the globe, there’s almost too much choice! If only I could stay at home all day and make MA, I’d be happy. Alas, while there’s bills to pay I will have to make do with my spare evenings and the odd free weekend.

So, with many more addresses in my Mail Art Address Book, here are some of the parcels and postcards that have been to-ing and fro-ing from my letterbox this week.

OUTGOING

To thank D’Andhra (@DANDHRA) for her lovely Valentine, I sent a postcard of my own. Using an old Readers Digest note card, I drew over the top of the Sweet Violet illustration and added some rubber stamp details to finish it off. I then mounted it onto corrugated cardboard with a short thank you message on the back, and popped it into the post to Southern California.

Patricio (aka The Celestial Scribe) welcomes all new members of IUOMA to the fold, and he must receive masses of Mail Art in return from eager or nervous artists. I sent to him a ‘postcard’ made from two squares of card with a square of foam sandwiched in between. I have a near-constant supply of the stuff as it’s wastage from an industrial machine, so I’ll be creating a series of postcards in this way. Patricio’s features an image of a Venetian mask, decorated with gold ribbon and 3D fabric paint. Getting a needle through all that stuff was a little tricky, but my fingers are toughening up for the challenge! This one went all the way to Brazil.

Another of these ‘postcards’ went out to Rebecca Cook in South Carolina. This one was a bit of a challenge! I decided I wanted to embroider each strand of hair, and leave all other details to the photograph. All that hair, together with the now familiar task of sewing the different layers of card and foam together took over 7 hours! I was a bit worried it might get damaged in the postal machines (I sent it as shown, with the stamps and address on the back), but thankfully it arrived safe and sound, and Rebecca seems pretty happy with it!

There are a few more items making their way around the world, which should have reached mailboxes by next week’s post, so stay tuned.

INCOMING

New IUOMA friend Carina Granlund surprised me with a postcard made from an old advert, which says ‘Nyhet’, the Swedish word for ‘New, Newly or Fresh’, to mark our entry into the network. I’ve just noticed that she missed the postcode off the address, so it’s doubly impressive that it reached me so quickly!

Another surprise came from Laurence Gillot in France. Made from an old photograph and envelope, and decorated with beads and rubber stamps, this truly is an expressive piece of tactile art.

That’s another couple of replies on my Mail Art to-do list!