Snowflakes for Starters

Surprise! The first piece of mail art to land in my mail box for 2019. Nothing fancy but two little Snowflake themed ATC's all the way from Norway.

I love them and am now collecting together a brand new folder for my collection to nest in. However Im not a huge fan of glitter, being vaguely aware that most glitter is not environmentally safe.  That said these sparkle but they are quite sturdy, there is no shedding. They feel really chunky and thats really quite nice to have a bit of weight in my hand when I hold them. I love the layering involved in their creation. They came with a little card too, which was great. Nothing is better than having a note or something from the person who made them, feels more personal than two random cards appearing with nothing else.

 -Steff

More Match boxes than Fingers to Count

Sometimes its really cool to get to a peek at the treasures that are destined to arrive with other swappers. I thought it would be really nice to start the year off by looking at something like this.
As if on que I found this photo.
It validates the claim that you do not need nessisarily to be the greatest at hand making every individual piece of a swap, but a good eye for colour and great taste in picking out the tiny objects to fit inside your match boxes can be just as invaluable.
I think the part that especially caught my eye with these mini match boxes was the fact that while they are all essentially the same. Keeping each partner equal. They are all ever so slightly different, the tiny bottles too make me squee a little bit inside with the tiny beads they contain - at least I think they are beads. (I suspect there were some very happy swap partners who recieved these match boxes).

These were made by Missstamper and can be found here.

Collage 339: The Crafters Challenge

We all set ourselves challenges from time to time when we're crafting. Which for me genuinely falls into me wanting to make intricate little things with fiddly pockets for my swap partners to explore and have an little adventure finding out all the content.
But there are some swappers out there who go that extra mile beyond even that, in this case perhaps thousand miles- No wait. 339 miles?

Thats right. This crafter has not just made the collage in the picture here that caught my eye. They've made 339 other collages with the intent to try and make 365 collages I suspect before the year ends. While they confess that they wont get all of them done in the next few days, It amazes me that they have made 339! That's an intense amount of work and quite a considerable commitment to keep the standards up for too.
The artist explains whats been used in this collage as:  'one of my ghost monotype prints with gingko leaf stencils, washi tape, magazine photo, laser cut stickers, my Frosted Flake arti-stamp, Sharpie white paint pen'

I can safely say thats alot more effort than I have made in any collage I have ever made. No wonder this frosty coloured picture (with a tiny hint of green sneaking in) caught my eye.
It was made by GinaVisione and can be found on their Flicker gallery here.

A Little Bit of Sunshine Kindness

Did I mention there was a reason long ago that I stopped doing RAK type mail and it wasnt postage increases. When that happened I switched to European only RAK's. It had more to do with swappers taking advantage of really really nice people and generally being uncurteous when they didnt nessisarily get everything they expected. (which I might add, was stuff for free).

Some frustrating arguments later about it being a  RAK - which stands for Random Act of Kindness. I was completely frustrated with the arrangement and stopped soon after.
However I am always happy to see those who still put them out into the world, because there are some genuine people out there who those RAK's make a difference for, people who for example spend the long days in winter alone, people who need that extra reaching out of human contact for whatever reasons and folks who've generally been stitched up too many times by the swapping world and need the faith restoreing.

I found this picture today on the main Swap-bot page where I find most of the images I comment on and I had to draw attention to it. While yes it is alot of stuff and the person I last RAK'd would proberbly have loved it. They were clearly after stuff. Ignore that. It could be half the content here and still be brilliant. Its well thought out. Bright and varied. Imagine if you were down in the dumps and got this. How ossum would that be?
Its not about the loot inside the envelope sometimes, but the thought behind it.

Visit BigHillGoddess's Flickr Gallery
and view this package being finished and wrapped here.

Rocket Ships

I sat looking at the main swap-bot group feed and thinking about this blog, what could I talk about. Then I caught a glimpse of this image. In small for a moment I believed it was a rocket ship, then on closer look I realised it was a bird, a Gannet viewed from an unusual angle, the ring of stars and the ticket stubs however didnt change my mind though. I had to look twice.

I am not certain if this was for a swap or just an random act of crafting by a very talented swap-botter. It was totally worthy of an mention here among my mail box ramblings. It has a very clever use of a very small selection of carfully cut out pieces. Good proof you do not need to build up hundreds of layers to get an collage image right.

Please do go and have a visit to Mandy Fariello's Flickr Gallery here for a closer look at this collage.

He Didn't Melt Along the Way

Because we moved house, all of my post had to be delivered to my Mr's work place, this meant a great deal of my post arrived with him and he accidentally opened it to find out what it was.
This was the only packet that seemed to avoid such treatment.

The things in the photo are what I recived for a recent winter swap to help get some newbie swap-botters ratings. I occasionally like to support these swaps because I think it always attracts an interesting group of new swappers to the ATC community and I enjoy making things for them.
I love the fact my swap came from Canada and that the lady who sent me my card was so proud, she even sent me a little Canada card, I dont think its an ATC, im not sure what it is, it is the same size as an ATC so I shall add it to my collection anyways, along side the card I received. Which I especially treasure because its a hand drawn card and regardless of the skill level I will always like them more than some of the sticker slapped cards some folks try to pass on.

About A Swap? Today in an Envelope.

I have in the past written mostly about art ive seen and swaps that I have received, this time though I figured I would comment about an idea for a swap that I am taking part in. Its rare that I find a swap that I think is pretty inspired thinking but I found one.

A Day in an Envelope

The host was really content to suggest ideas for things but didnt set a minimum commitment or a maximum, that meant the sky was the limit. Theres a healthy compete date too, which gives folks a great chance to find the right day to write about.
For me I chose Sunday 22nd December. Why? because that sunday seemed to have a roller coaster of things come out of the blue. We had our usual Roleplay table top game cancelled, someone had family commitments, I was very sad for a time then out of the blue my Mr. said I could host a game for everyone. I love story telling. So a surprize game happened instead.
We had our Christmas shop, which we were supposed to do on the Saturday but failed to do because the city center was hell. Lots of folk this year left it while the last moment-

But enough about how I completed this swap, I just wanted to comment on the creative idea.
The host suggests things like adding a candy wrapper, talking about the last song you heard and writing a letter about what happened etc. they gave lots of options to the participants.
I think having seen this. Day in an envelope is something that will sit in my mind as a great idea swaps in future and I heartily encourage other swaps to consider it too.