A Taste of Honey

Collage made by Laura (the UK), of a theatre program. It would feel comfortable among my Retro Women...

From India

Postcard sent by Amit (India). The postcard shows Humayun's Tomb, in Delhi. It was built by his widow Haji Begum in 1573, designed by a Persian Architect. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


And more mail from India, sent by Vivin. A postcard of the backwaters of Kerala. Kerala is known as God's country. I believe that when I look at this beauty.The sender added an odd-shaped stamp (yippee!) showing the Aldabra giant tortoise

The second piece of mail from Vivin is a cover:

The stamps are a set of two issued on 20th June 2012, showing traditional Indian painting styles.

Warli folk paintings are from Maharashtra. Warli is the name of the largest tribe found in the northern outskirts of Mumbai (Western India).

The havelis or mansions of Shekhawati are known for their wall paintings. The themes depict gods, kings, flowers, arabesques and scenes from daily life.

Pink!!

Pink collage sent by Dimitra (Greece), in response to my pink mail for the mail art project Colour my world. It arrived inside a no less pink envelope:

Smiling Robots

Sent to Júlia (Hungary) for the Mail a Smile project. The theme last month was Robots. I'm afraid I didn't participated on May, but I am looking forward to participating in the next challenge.

VQR Whole Boxes

Since I started the VQR Postal Project (a year ago! Time flies!) I received not just the round postcards I asked for in the beginning, but a lot of amazing artworks and even... Whole boxes! Naked or in an envelope, you can see some of them here (and all the contributions in the blog).

From France

From Greece

From the Netherlands

From the USA

100 Ways to Bust Writer's Block

50 ways to bust writer's block

And 50 more!

This is not my problem (so far!), but I found them funny and useful. There are neither my ideas, but Sarah's, the author of A nice little life.

Alice in Wonderland

I wrote here that Alice was underrepresented in my albums. I wasn't asking for postcards, but two of my friends are kind enough to look for Alice's postcards and stamps for me (even if they aren't very fond of this book).

John (the UK) sent me two postcards with one of the most know chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: A Mad Tea-Party with The Hatter and The March Hare. It is really nice to have two versions of this illustration!

They arrived with matched stamps depicting Alice and The Hatter (again) and another favourite: the Cheshire Cat.

Heleen (the Netherlands) bought this postcard for me because of the tea cups. Then she realised that here Choo choo looks a lot like Alice:

The funny think is that I thought at first sight that the stamps depict the Queen of Hearts... And then I discovered that they represent the donor-patient relationship, and were issued in honour of 400,000 blood donors in the Netherlands!

All the Alice's pieces of mail in a new album. 

Tea Collage

Handmade collage made of a box of English tea, sent by Laura (the UK).

I like specially the label written in Arabic characters (of course!), and the slogan in golden letters: Make every day a little bit special. I would add: with tea... and with snail mail!

Yellow Letters

Letter sent by Laura (the UK).

By the way, I have realised an odd thing: people don't use a lot yellow for mail. I wonder if there is a reason. For me, yellow is the most postal colour, for mail boxes in my country are yellow, and also in Morocco where I happen to live.

Yellow letter sent by Catherine (France).

Our Solitudes

-You can add me on Facebook,
but only if you want to be my friend in real life
-Well I guess I won't add you then.

I just want to be happy
like all these people on the Internet

Two collages about loneliness that I sent to the Netherlands, to fit in Heleen's mail art project Our Solitudes. Made by press cuttings and washi tape, and about solitude in the Internet era. The envelope shows people... err... not very kind (so maybe lonely too). Also published here.

Feel free to visit the blog of the project.

Collage

Collage sent by Jean Claude (France) - I guess.

Opened:

Tom & Jerry & Friends

Letter sent by Heleen (the Netherlands). Look at the stamps! Tom & Jerry were among my favourite cartoons during my childhood (and still!). By the way, they are very popular in Morocco too. And I also used to like The Flintstones. I am afraid I am too old for appreciating The Powerpuff Girls and the rest, but I really like the idea of matching children illustration with post world.

By the way, don't you think that the Queen looks somehow odd on this envelope?

Odd Shaped Stamps

[This is a post for Sunday Stamps, run by Viridian. The theme this week is Anything you wish.]

Do you like odd-shaped stamps? Have you seen these? At first sight I thought they weren't real stamps! How cool are they?

These are the first self-adhesive non-rectangular stamps in the Netherlands, and were designed for the Youth Philately Day, issued on April 2014. The orange stamp is a egel ('hedgehog'; the word for 'stamp' in Dutch is potstzegel - I hope I get the right sense of the words!). As he needed a friend, they created the duif ('pigeon'). If you are able to read Dutch, you can find more information here.

The stamps were sent by Heleen (the Netherlands) as part of this wonderful package:

In case of you wonder who is looking at you from inside... Is this nice Dutch woman in the shape of a folded card!

By the way, I am afraid that the postal service doesn't trust us any more. They felt that they had to check the postage:

Pisa from the UK

Postcard in a stamp shape sent by Laura. It didn't arrived from Italy, but from the UK. But it was a perfect choice anyway: my friend explained me on the postcard that she had eaten at an Italian restaurant that day... So this is more or less like being in Italy, isn't it?

Europa Stamps

EUROPA stamps are special stamps issued by European postal administrations/enterprises and bears the official EUROPA logo, started back in 1956.

Every year PostEurop hold the EUROPA Stamp Competition. This is an online event where everyone can vote for their favourite design (there is also a Jury competition in which the best design is choses by philatelic experts). The theme for the competition this year is Music. You can see the 2014 stamps and vote here. You have until 31 August to vote.

More information about the competition and past years stamps.