Lunar (Chinese) New Year

Yesterday (January 31st) was the first day of the Lunar / Chinese New Year.  The element this year is wood and it is the year of the horse.  The new year celebration lasts two weeks which means it ends on February 14th (Valentine's Day).  I don't know much about all the ways it is celebrated but it would be fun to participate in some of the traditions.  I read that several different countries celebrate the Lunar New Year, not just China.  Another new beginning.

Artistamps & Zine for Charity

I am so excited that some of my artistamps are featured in a zine [A DISSIMULATION OF BIRDS Volume 2] by TangleCrafts.  She is selling the zine and other items to raise money for Beating Bowel Cancer.  She lost her father to the disease in May and is raising funds for the charity.  Please either buy an item from her Etsy store or donate to Beating Bowel Cancer.

National Postcard Week 2013

The first full week in May is National Postcard Week [NPCW] in the USA.  2013 is the 30th year and is the week of May 5-11.  This is the first year I have participated.  I used photos that I took to make my own postcards.  I created 2 designs and made 100 of each.  My goal was to send 200 postcards.  So far I have sent 208 - obviously 8 not of my design (store bought for specific swaps I joined).  I learned a lot about making postcards.  Mine look pretty amateurish and are a bit thinner than typical postcards - but still meet the postal regulations.  Below are the postcards I made for NPCW 2013.  I have received less than 70 postcards this week so far but I expect more will arrive over the weekend.  Plus I mailed many postcards to family and friends and do not expect a postcard in return.

These are my cats Grady and Zoey on their cat tree watching the mail truck make its rounds in the neighborhood.  Photo taken November 2012.

This is Hayden Falls which flows into the Scioto River in Columbus, Ohio.  Photo taken February 2013.

For more information on National Postcard Week, check out this website.  To see other postcards made and sent this week, click here [a page in the website link above].

MailArt 365

In mid-February I decided to participate in MailArt 365.  I had heard about it a long time ago plus I have received mailart from people doing the 365.  It took a while before I was willing to commit to a year of mailart.  The challenge for me is consistency besides having a small pool of people to send mailart to.  Time to expand my mail circles perhaps...

Anyway, below are some scans of a few pieces (all shown are postcards) that I have sent so far.

Baby Shower Gifts

My cousin's baby shower was this past weekend. I had decided to get more creative and found a fun presentation and packaging for some of the registered items.
 

Thanks to the directions on Little Birdie Secrets blog, I made cupcakes out of receiving blankets and burp cloths. 

I packaged them in a cake box with a window.

  I turned diaper cloths, washcloths, and socks into tiny babies.  Thanks to the blog entry by pharMa that showed how to make these cuties.

 I put these in a cake box too and then stacked the boxes and wrapped twine around them.

They seemed to be a hit at the baby shower.  It did take me several hours to make all these so being creative can be time consuming!

Coordinating cards, envelopes, and postage stamps

I enjoy making greeting cards.  When I saw that the US Post Office was coming out with a bicycle stamp, an idea for a coordinating card popped into my head.  After that I checked the USPS website for other postage stamps that I could coordinate with my rubber stamps.  

Below are the cards I made.  The bicycle set even has an envelope seal that matches.  Two were birthday cards and one was a thank you card I sent to my aunt & uncle who gave me a wonderful manual typewriter (Yeah!).  

I know a postcard that has coordinating front image, postage stamp, and cancellation stamp is called a maximum postcard or maxicard.  I don't know if there is a term for a greeting card / envelope version.  I have no idea how to get coordinating cancellation stamps in the USA for postcards or envelopes or if the USPS even gives an option unless it is a special event of a first issue or something.

Glass Blown Pumpkin

 

A week ago I took a glass blowing class at Glass Axis (through the UA Parks & Rec).  We made pumpkins!  I had to wait 5 days to pick it up since the items have to cool down slowly.  There was a paper weight class at the same time and we all used the same "cool down vat" (don't know the proper name for it) and solid glass sculptures takes a lot longer to cool down than blown glass.  

Since this was my first glass blowing class, I had LOTS of help.  I am sensitive to heat so the thousands of degrees coming out the the gathering vat was rather intimidating.  Plus when working with glass, constant rotating of the rod is important. Below are some pictures I took during class.  I lost a few photos when I downloaded my camera to the computer so there aren't any of the glass being rolled, in the mold or being blown [I am bummed about that].

 

Some of the color selection

 

The rods preheating on the left and the big heating kiln / vat with the glowing hole and a heat shield (metal board with the writing on it).

  

 Some of the shaping tools.  Notice the wooden tool have to stay wet and the long tongs have beeswax applied regularly.

 

The molds: the big and medium one for the pumpkin and the small one for the stem.

 

Adding the stem and preparing to mold it around a pipe.  All colors look brown when heated to such extreme temperatures.