30 November 2018

HitM | An Autumn House


Fabienne (France) sent this nice envelope for the Houses in the Mail project. Don't you love the red stamps-tiles?

Among the stamps, two of them are especially related to houses. The one below, is the Francia contribution to the EUROMED stamps. The theme chosen this year is Houses in the Mediterranean,


29 November 2018

The Mail Monsters Project | 20

One more letter, please!
This Mail Monster visited Fabienne in France, and it came back with a friend:


Not only they brought me a little present.They also were very respectful with the envelope and didn't touch the stamps!


Do you believe in Mail Monsters? Why?
Oui j'y crois comme je crois au Père Noël.
Car au fond de moi il reste une âme d'enfant, et que le rêve en fait partie. Je crois que dans ce monde imparfait il existe des êtres capables de connecter les gens et les mail monsters en font partie comme des elfes posées sur une épaule.

28 November 2018

HitM | Houses in California


This is Claire's entry for the Houses in the Mail project. This house is in a tiny coastal town in California (the USA). It was built in 1950 and added onto, so it is a very quirky house. You can get great views of the pacific ocean from the deck. Wow!


And this one is in Kingsburg. Can you imagine that dogwood tree in blossom?


The house is on the Kingo River, which comes from Sierra Nevada.

Besides the postcards, Claire's packet contained nice surprises. The envelope itself was just wonderful!

27 November 2018

The Mail Monsters Project | 19


This collage-postcard with a Mail Monster appeared spontaneously in my mail box. (Well, I guess Eduard had something to be with the fact...)

26 November 2018

Alice's Mail

Alice-related mail sent by John (the UK):


"Have I gone mad?"
"I'm afraid so, you're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you
a secret... All the best people are."

The Frog looked ad the door with
his large dull eyes for a minute

Illustration by J. Tenniel,
coloured by Diz Wallis

In another moment Alicia was
though the glass, and had jumped
down lightly into the
Looking-glass room.

Illustration by J. Tenniel,
coloured by Diz Wallis




And sent by Bryon (the USA):


On the back, you can read some curious facts:
Issued in 1885,this cover depicts Alice, the iconic character from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, visiting Yellowstone National Park. Carroll's books and the Park become forever intertwined in the public consciousness when, just after the American Civil War, the Nation journalists saw the analogy between those two lands full of strange and magical wonders. Beginning around the time the rail line near the park was completed in 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad began using this analogy as a clever way to promote Yellowstone and their railroad as the way visitors could now reach the real "Wonderland".

25 November 2018

Sunday Stamps | O for Owl

This is my entry for Sunday Stamps, letter O.



This imposing Búho real or Eagle-owl (Bubo bubo) appeared in the 2014 series of endangered especies, issued on 20 October. You can see the 4-stamps die-cut set here. (And another one that appeared recently in Sunday Stamps!)


The little owl (Athene noctua) belongs to a series of  British Owls issued on 11 May 2018. See the 10 different stamps here.


This stamp arrived on this envelope from Alan (the UK):

  

Do you guess why he wrote this on the envelope?

24 November 2018

The Mail Monsters Project | 18

The big Monsters eat letters.
The small Monsters only eat stamps.

This harrowing monster was drawn by Zinn (age 4). It has big teeth to chew up postcards and envelopes, and it is hairy all over so stamps will stick to it.


Mim had a horrible encounter with a Mail Monter. A beheading one!!!

Yes, I believe in Mail Monster because: One time I sent a collage to someone in Holland. It was a woman and a square of color and a letter "n". The recipient had moved and my collage returned to me. The Mail Monster had eaten the woman's head, nothing else.

Was this the most dangerous Mail Monster in the world?

23 November 2018

HitM | The Casa Azul


A new entry for the Houses in the Mail project, sent by Bryon (the USA). 

This photograph by Emmy Lou Packard features Frida Kahlo in front of her family home, in 1941. La Casa Azul ('The Blue House'), located in Coyoacán (Mexico), is now a historic house museum and art museum dedicated to the life and work of the artist.

22 November 2018

More Refreshing Postcards!


More refreshing postcards, bought by Heleen in Belgium but sent from the Netherlands. They arrived during the summer (when one most needs a cold beer!), inside an envelope. I am not sure that the cool beer-shaped postcard would have survived through the postal system, if sent naked.


Sent by Phillip (the USA).

And one sent to Bryon (the USA), made of beer packaging.

21 November 2018

Simple

«Ás vezes, a verdade está diante de nós. Ás vezes é tan fácil como mirar á fronte. Tan simple como observar un sinal deixado no camiño, como ler unha carta, unha letra atrás doutra.»

Pedro Feijoo, Os fillos do mar

20 November 2018

The Mail Monsters Project | 17

The Mail Monsters eat letters for breakfast,
for lunch, for dinner...

Although this collaged mail monster isn't very fat. And it seems to eat not only letters, but many things like secrets, words, brain candy, dreams, fantasies...


Phillip has experienced the Mail Monsters activities, too:


When letters arrive with small (and sometimes large!) pieces missing I like to believe that mail monsters are real.
I think they are shy, quiet, lonely creatures that hide in dark places in post office mail bugs and sorting machines, just waiting for a piece of news, poetry, information, story to grab. Usually just a nibble, but sometimes they get carried away by the delicious words and pretty stamps.
They don't really mean to be monsters, they are just misunderstood!


The sender added the Moon stamp because he likes to think the mail monsters are more active during the night.

19 November 2018

HitM | Dutch Houses on Stamps

These stamps of houses arrived on the back of the castle...

Huis Verwolde
Personal stamps (30 March 2017)

21 Mai 2012

18 November 2018

Sunday Stamps | N for Numbers

I guess that people pays little attention to them, but... Don't you find interesting the design of these humble stamps where the main protagonists seem to be the numbers? All of them arrived from the Netherlands.








This is my post for Sunday Stamps, letter N.

17 November 2018

Bath Postal Museum


The second best thing about postal museums, is receive mail related to them. Like this postcard and brochure from Bath Postal Museum (the UK).
On the postcard:On left: Victorian wall post box, removed from High Street, Keynsham, situated between Bath and Bristol. 
Top right: George VI 'lamp box' from Bath area. These small boxes were frequently used in rural locations attached to a lamp post or telegraph pole. 
Bottom right: Tramcar letter box, first introduced in 1893, for the convenience of passengers. It was hoped by this method, to ease the volume of mail handled by sub post offices.

16 November 2018

You Can Reuse Any Cardboard...


More original pieces of mail sent by Bryon (the USA): a postcard made of the cardboard of a shoe box, and another one made of happy-hens egg packaging:



Sometimes, packaging is too nice to just throw it away, don't you think so? I made a postcard for Heleen (the Netherlands), from the cardboard box of my new watercolours set:


And happily... I found a matching stamp!

15 November 2018

The Mail Monsters Project | 16

The Mail Monsters make letters disappear.
And they can also be tricky, according to John:

What people think they look like

What they really look like

Actually, the sender knows quite a lot about these creatures that steal our mail...
The term "mail monster" is really a misnomer. A monster is described in the dictionary as a "large, ugly and frightening, imaginary creature".
The creatures that sidetrack, delay and even consume our mail are not imaginary. They are as real as hen's teeth but not as rare. They are also very small which enables them to hide in post offices, aeroplane holders, vans and even post boxes. However, like monsters they are ugly and frightening which is why post office cats leave them alone, enabling them to reproduce and multiply in the darker corners of post office canteens, amid the old, discarded mail sacks.
Mail monsters have very vivid imaginations and are very intelligent. As a result they get bored easily. One way of relieving that boredom is to read; so they extract mail and take it into their nests where it may lie for weeks or months before being spotted by a passing postman. Because postcards don't have to be chewed open and have pretty pictures they are the mail monster's favourite type of post.
Sometimes, when the nest gets overflowing with mail mummy monsters make the children take it back to the mail slots. But instead of putting back where it came from, they will simply dump a whole armful in the nearest hole. So mail for Sweden or Malaysia may end up in the slot for Morocco or the Netherlands.
But the worst damage is done by pregnant female monsters. They always get a craving for paper and can consume ten or twelve postcards or letters.
No way of eradicating mail monsters has yet been found.