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| A beautiful card plus envelope by Marit Barentsen. Stitches combined with paint. |
So here's a post about how I want to do it and how you can join in on what I'm simply calling the Snail Mail List.
Above all I want this to be a fun arrangement for all of us with no real strings attached. As I've said before I'm no good at keeping up a steady correspondence with one person or just a few people and I don't do prompts and group exchanges. The way I have in mind keeps it free from stress for me and that really matters to me.
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| Some colourful mail by Nely de Jong. I love that tape on the envelope so much! |
The idea is like this:
- I will keep an ongoing list of people who would like to receive mail art made by me from time to time: the Snail Mail List.
- I will make mail art on a very irregular basis. Usually I make about eight cards at a time, but this can vary. I'm not a card producing machine!
- I will send the cards to the first people whose turn it is on the list.
- The next batch of cards will go to the next people on the list.
- At some point I will come to the end of the list and a new round will begin and I will move back to the first people on the list.
- And so on and so forth.
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| Beautiful mixed media by Jean Tomaso Moore. |
What this means for those who join:
- I make no promises on how often I will send out mail art.
- I make no promises on what this mail art will look like. Yes, I'm into collage cards right now, but in the future I might like to do doodles or sketches or lord knows what else. To me this is the fun part, but if you only like one type of card, just don't join. ;-)
- You will simply receive a card from me (maybe) a few times a year and I cannot tell you how many or how often.
- I make no promises on how long I will keep this up, but I do promise that if I grow tired of this concept in the future I will let you all know about it.
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| Gorgeous vintage style by Brenda Carter. |
Here are the 'rules' for joining:
- Send me an e-mail with your snail mail address at c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl to let me know you want to join. You may also use the contact form in the side bar or pm me on Facebook.
- This also goes for the people who already received mail art from me in the past weeks. Yes, I have your address, but no, I cannot automatically tell if you want to receive any more snail mail from me. I don't want to assume too much, haha.
- You are in no way obliged to return the favor of sending mail art back to me. This is a no pressure arrangement for both of us. I just like making these cards and I love the idea that somebody out there likes to receive them. I have no need to start a mail art collection myself and I don't believe in keeping scores.
- That being said, of course I do love love love to receive snail mail! So if you feel like sending me something every now and then that would of course make me really happy.
- If at some point you no longer want to be on the Snail Mail List please let me know.
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| A beautiful flower card by Dianna Malinao. And stickers that will definitely make it to my journal! |
And that's all there is to it. If you have any questions you can of course mail me about that too, or leave a comment so others can learn from it as well. Usually where one poses a question there's at least ten others who are wondering about the same thing. ;-)
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| A birthday card from my friend Monique Kemp. You don't even want to know the treasure box full of art supplies that came with this! |
Now a quick word about the pictures in this post: these are the cards and other wonderful things I have received in the mail recently. Some of them were in response to my outgoing mail and some were about other occasions. I just wanted to show them here so everybody can see how absolutely amazing my blogsy people are. So this is a big thank you to those of you who sent me mail.
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| Deborah Shoop made me this absolutely amazing little travel journal. I'm still beaming from this one! |
And just so you know that it's not just adults who are into mail art, here are two lovely snail mails I recently received from two lovely children:
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| My grand niece Fleur, who everybody says takes totally after me and I totally agree! |
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| Femke, the daughter of a friend, drew this cute cat for me and made a card with it. |
Doesn't that just make you smile? In a time where most people only communicate digitally, snail mail almost is becoming something magical. I really want to keep that magic alive!
I want to close off this post with one very special piece of mail art I received, because I still can't believe it and have this tendency to squeal whenever I see it or think of it.
Just. Look. At. This.
It's a fabric piece made after one of my morning paintings! Can you believe it? The wonderful Annet Spitteler made it and I'm absolutely in love with it. See? I told you my blogsy people are the best!
Well, if all this gorgeous stuff doesn't entice you to get to making and receiving some snail mail yourself then I don't know what will.
I very much look forward to your mails and comments and hope I will have a nice little Snail Mail List to send some cards to.
Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!