I've become totally enamored with mail art. At night while Alan and I are lounging in the living room watching mindless TV blah-blah, I have a lap tray straddling my chair. The lap tray is a hot mess of trimmings from "mazagine" pictures, scattered colored pencils, my "good" scissors, and a pot of rubber cement.
I've just about consumed all of my copies of Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetite, and The Baylor Line. They now look like the remains of a paper doll chain cutout. Last night, I decided that I need to head to some estate sales in search of interesting old coffee table books and piles of frayed National Geographics.
From the estate sale expedition, I need to spend an hour lolling around in a scrapbooking store picking out interesting paper for making envelopes.
Then, I shall sail the Seven Seas in search of exotic, artistic pen pals with a goodly amount of leisure time during which they can write long, chatty missives detailing their strolls along pristine beaches in search of pirate treasure chests that frequently wash up on the shore alongside exotic seashells generally only found in souvenir stores. I can't wait to see their cleverly sketched envelopes with deliciously foreign stamps! In turn, I will feverishly be jotting down all of the compelling drama that unfolds here in Lubbock, TX, doodling on envelopes, and sticking them with Liberty Bell Forever Stamps.
This is a thank you note to my dear friend, Dallie, who is proposing a doctoral thesis on the lost art of the handwritten letter. She sent me a beautiful book of illustrated letters from the Smithsonian's archives. It's called More Than Words. Thanks, Dallie!!! The front juxtaposes the difference between my loop-de-loop, la-ti-da, unmedicated ADD personality and Dallie's elegant, smooth, peaceful, brilliant demeanor. Actually, the "cartoon" me should have a smile on her face. I'm in a pretty good mood 96.3% of the time - a genetic trait that I attribute to my mother.
This is a little sumthin-sumthin that I sent to my firstborn a couple of weeks ago. He has yet to receive it. He told me that it might have accidentally got mixed in with junk mail and tossed out. I'm going with the theory that there's a postal worker in Chicago who collects... It would make total sense. The handwritten letter IS almost extinct.
I posted the back of this letter to my brother-in-law last week. Today I figured out how to blur the address, so I posted the front and back. It's all about the wrap around eyes.
For my little niece, Kelly, who is Kathy's daughter. Kelly is 17. She's taller than me.
Sincerely yours,
Carolyn E. Lackey
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