Busy Busy

We all know that at this time of year it can get very busy, we all seem to manage to find 50 things that must be done by the end of the week.
I am trying to get things sorted and also remember to mail out birthday cards, christmas cards and postcards for Postcrossings.

However it shows that things are a little busy when you receive this from the mail....

Yes, that is correct, I sent a birthday card out in such a hurry I forgot to put a stamp on it, so they sent it back to me letting me know that if I still wanted to send this item then I needed to put a stamp on it!

Postcards

As mentioned before, I have joined Postcrossings, a postcard exchange website.
We have been receiving a few cards recently and the boys are loving it when another card arrives from somewhere else in the world. They are just beginning to realise that there are other countries out in the big wide world. For a long time they thought everything was in New Zealand!

These are the ones we have received recently:

From Japan

From China

This is of course helping me in my quest with sending snail mail each week. Sadly I haven't been that creative with what I am sending lately, but I am still managing to send something each week

This week I have just sent out 4 more postcards.
They have gone this time to America, Finland, China and Germany.

I was lucky enough to find some lovely cards of Hamilton and landmarks of New Zealand in a local $2 shop for 50c each. Really do need to keep an eye out for postcards so I have a collection ready for when I need to send more out. Some of the people who you send to have specific requests on the type they would like to receive! None with multi pictures on them, no churches, no animals etc Sometimes I think people should just be grateful for what they receive and enjoy receiving them.

More on Snail Mail

At the beginning of October I joined in the fun of sending snail mail every week.
I have been good so far and successfully sent something each week. Sometimes it has just been a birthday card to a friend or relative, although I did write a letter the other week and send that off.

Whilst searching the web for something at the end of October I came across this site Postcrossing.
It is a website where you register with them and then they give you an address to send a postcard to. In return your name and address gets given to someone somewhere in the world and a postcard will get sent to you.
Here is what Wikipedia is saying about it.
They even have a Facebook page.

So I joined up, and have even sent my first postcard from New Zealand to China. It took 17 days to arrive and travelled 9,350km to get there. I know cause the website tells me so!
I currently have postcards on their way to:

1. Finland 16,426km away
2. Russia 16,512km away
3. Germany 18,424km away
4. Korea 9,697km away

When you get given an address you also get given a code, this code is then written on the card and when the card is received the receiver registers the code on the website thus letting you and the website know the card has arrived.
That is how they are able to say how long it took to get there, although this is calculated from the day you request the address to the day when they register it, so if you accidently take 5 days before you send it off, and they then take a couple of days to register it then it will not be an acurate time frame but who's counting!

It is a slow process but if you have kids who want to receive postcards from around the world and you don't mind spending a couple of $$ each week (postcard = 70c or $1 and stamp = $1.90 so about $2.60 for each postcard to currently send) then you could potentially have quite a collection after a while.
Would be great for a class to do for a school year.

These are the postcards I have got to send, nice simple scenes of New Zealand and the surrounding town where I live. This seems to be what people write in their bio about what they want to receive.

I have just written a few lines on the back about New Zealand and anything else I can think to write at the time.
I will let you all know when I receive my first one and where it came from.

Mail Art

While surfing some new blogs recently, I came across a few that have been talking about Mail Art.
This is meaning decorating the envelope in any manner you see fit to make it an enjoyable piece of art to receive.
This can be as simple as adding a sticker or 2 on the envelope or more elaborate as doing a painting or even making the envelope from fancy paper etc.



like my little extra bit on ths envelope (1 sticker and a transfer)

 Now I have always liked the idea of doing some scrapbooking, but seeing as all my other crafts have been on hold for the last 6-8 years whilst I have been growing my boys, and they are growing beautifully thanks to it, there was no way I was going to attempt to start something new. However this has not stopped me buying stickers and transfers when I see something I have liked.

So when planning the piece of snail mail I was going to send I decided I needed to decorate it.
So I went through the collection of stuff I already had, and oh man, was it ever a collection!
I have had to be organised and quickly find a folder to keep it all in so it is easy to find when needed for future mail art.

I even, whilst driving to Rotorua yesterday, thought about different things you could do for mail art. I saw so many things I would like to take pictures of to place on mail, different themes for mail. It was almost obsessive!
Although Ginger, did do a tutorial on her blog about this and mentioned about using maps etc to make envelopes. So whilst out today I raided the local tourist information place and walked away with all these free maps of places around New Zealand. Leaflets with interesting pictures of local places and lots of cool information.

No one said mail art had to be expensive, you just have to be creative and maybe think outside the square as to where you get your material from! So now I am on the alert to all things free and what else I could do with them, are they suitable for art, can I cut something out, will it fold leaving a nice design in a certain place?
Who knows, but I will have fun seeking.

Happy hunting all.

Mail and Children

Today I managed to get my first piece of snail mail sent off.

I even went so far as to use mail art on it, ok nothing too fancy, just a little decoration, stickers and transfers.
It was an acceptance card to our niece's upcoming wedding in the middle of November.

On the subject of children, well I am now 1 child down.
Yea that's right, I sold him to the gypsy's!
No he has gone to Grandma's, on his own and he was so excited.
He wanted to pack his bag before we had even left the house this morning at 8am to take Steve to work!
As it was, we needed to go and buy new bags for everyone so we all have our own space when going away for days to the caravan and for long weekends.
The boys are growing and even though we don't have to take half the stuff we use to, they do still have alot of stuff, so they now need their own bags.

So he is now all settled at Grandma's.