first child journal page

Using up my old family pictures is very enjoyable. Most of them I'm just cutting up and putting on a journal page or a post card or an ATC. Not scanning them first. Not worrying about never having them again. Many of them go off into the world via the mail system of one or more countries and live out their lives far from home.

Altho they're far from home here with me, too, I guess. Home was mostly Ohio and Michigan. I'm in California.

Long ways. In distance as well as years. But it feels good, letting them go. No one to miss them but me, and I don't.

Gelli print background. Circles stamped from various circular items - empty scotch tape center, empty toilet paper roll, empty adding machine paper center. Hardly anything goes in the trash around here anymore lol. It's all in my studio.

Some pen work. A little machine stitching.

outgoing postcards

One to Terrie, often a swap partner in the MMSA swaps, in exchange for one of her very cool dangling doodles cards, which hasn't arrived yet but will any moment.

As previously mentioned, I'm using up old photos so I grabbed one of me partway up a palm tree in Florida around 1955. Background is a gelli print, collaged with old journal paper, book pages, and dress pattern, then rollered with this silly little stamp I found somewhere that I hardly ever use cause it takes like 3 days to dry.

The next one is to my cousin Dea in Ohio. It's from a 1991 newspaper clipping that I've been hauling around for 22 YEARS! She was being given an award. Gelli background, collaged with gellied papers, doodled with gel pen.

Love the bouffont pageboy, Dea.

Third one is going to as yet unknown recipient (if you'd like it to show up in your mailbox, leave a comment saying so and I'll draw a name next Sunday).

Not sure who/what I was channeling here. Old photo of small boy sticking his tongue out, the perfect caption from my box of bits, misc papers, orange feather from my African red-bellied parrot Winston, a whole lot of crazy free-motion stitching.

This last one is for Mandarin Orange Mondays.