Since I’ve been back on a mail kick, I have a lot of recent posts that have to do with mail or that at least mention it in some form. I wanted to give everyone a break and make just ONE all-encompassing post of some highlights that have been sent out and received lately. I have been loving postcards and artist trading cards, but I recently did my first ever Zine swap!

All of the fun photos are below, so let’s get started.

Received

All of my postcards that I sent out in my last outgoing mail post have been well received, and I started receiving postcards back through Postcrossing shortly after.

I’ve started asking for cardboard chunk postcards on my Postcrossing profile, and this is my first one, from the USA! Also, check out those stamps, I love vintage postage.

I saw these space “Greetings From” postcards on the Postcrossing Subreddit and thought “Dang, I really want those to send out”, and then probably less than a week later one appeared in my mailbox! I was so excited, this style is so cool and it’s funny as well.

I am including the backs of these recieved cards in case anyone was wondering what people write.

I received a few more cards, but they have already joined my boyfriend’s fridge collection along with my World Postcard Day received cards and I forgot to photograph them individually, so here’s just a pic of the fridge lol.

Side note- I used Jetpack’s AI photo editor for the first time to blur my address on the backs of the cards and it blurred some and made a slurry of the others. So don’t send mail to BO Box 1891 you will not reach me XD.

Finally, here are the artist trading cards I have received from various swaps on SwapBot.com! For ATCs, there are no rules really, you can use whatever medium you like to create art on a card that is the size of a playing card, and then trade them.

Starting from left to right, the first card was a three prompt challenge, using the color blue, fruit, and dots or circles. This came from Cindy (@Cindiva) and I really like the gold buggy.

Second themed swap was “Rain”, and I received this beautiful collaged card from Sharon (@SharonParkerCox).

Third was just a free themed swap, and I received this great drawing of a girl from Kerri (@addicted2letters). The title on the back of the card said that her name is Katelyn as well, how cute!

Lastly, I received this adorable dumpling from another free themed swap. I love the color red, this is so cute as well. This was done by Bethany (@pinecone).

All tags are their users on Swapbot!

Sent

Here are the Postcrossing cards that are going out this month. We have 3 vintage cards and 3 modern cards. Of course there’s always a Buffalo National River card being sent out haha, but I am also sending out a postcard from the park that my pup Tori loves to walk. The croc card I received as a gift through a swap.

The other three range in dates from 70’s to the 90’s, Mississippi River card to someone who likes boats, an El Paso overview to someone who likes vintage cards, and a Trump Plaza card to someone who requested a political card. That hotel has long been demolished and was built in the 80’s, but it has been sitting in my vintage stash for a while because I have no idea who would want it, and I finally found the opportunity.

These cards are going out to South Korea, Germany, Pennsylvania USA, China, Japan, and Macao. I have never sent a card to Macao before so that was exciting!

Here is my own attempt at a “Rain” themed art card, and I am honestly not very happy with my thick white blobs of “rain”, but art cards are for playing and practicing so it’s okay. I sent one as part of the Rain swap and the other went out for a free theme swap.

Next, this was another experiment with colors and I do like how the unripe blueberries turned out. This was for the blue, fruit, and dots prompt.

The next craft I did was my first fully digitally designed Zine, and of course I had to make it about the dogs and their Easter adventure. I did the photos and layout in Canvas. It took a couple of tried to get the formatting right for printing, and I ended up cutting up the fails and making it into it’s own little Zine that I sent out in a free theme swap.

I think they turned out so cute, and I really like that I made it digital first, because I can print out as many as I want more easily than photocopying, which is how I usually do it. This was my first time ever swapping a Zine so I was nervous that it wasn’t going to be “good enough” but I think I did well.

Next, I joined an ATC swap and the them was “circles”, so I used circle stickers and watercolor and made a few different small sheets of backgrounds. It was a lot of fun, I think I was to make “backgrounds” more often because you will soon see that they have been incorporated to subsequent ATCs. Once the watercolor dried I went in with gold acrylic paint, and then used the bottom of a can to stamp on some blue acrylic paint circles.

Next was a 1960’s theme art card and I used a different color of the circle background papers I made and added a mod girl, a 3D flower sticker, and added some red flowers in the background with glitter pen.

My most recent ATC is another prompt challenge where I had to combine sheet music, thread/twine, and a sticker/washi. Once again I started with the watercolor background, and created the scene of a Jazz Dog, I imagine him snapping to poetry on Open Mic Night.

Lastly, here are my three cardboard chunk postcards for the Chunk o Cardboard swap on SwapBot.com. I didn’t want to leave them bare so I just added some failed or messed up ATCs to the back that I was going to toss in the trash otherwise.

And that is about a month’s worth of mail as someone who is on a roll, AKA me. There’s some received mail that I forgot to photograph, but this is a hefty post anyway. I want to paint more full scenes for my Art Trading Cards since that is what I prefer and feel the most happy with, but I really liked making the watercolor backgrounds too, so maybe I will practice more collaging.

See you all next time!