my friend Ben is just finishing up his medical residency and will finally be getting started on his career.

just a little print gocco alien i had sitting around that i sent to a friend who mentioned her daughter loves getting mail.    it looks smeary in the scan, but it's actually a sparkly gold. 

paper weaving is super fun--i put some old maps through my shredder and i particularly like the way they look, but cutting the strips into different widths makes it more interesting looking, i think, plus it makes my sloppy self seem "arty" instead of messy...right? 
didn't cut the umbrella stamp myself, i'm sorry to say, but it did come from a local san francisco business, so i'm gonna assume someone in my fair city made it!

some more postcards for april...

another couple postcards from the same batch...

thanks!
i am currently repurposing some SAT prep postcards that were here at my library and never got sent out.  cereal boxes are the right weight, about, for sturdy postcards, though, and you can get several from a box. 
i have a mailing list of friends--i asked my friends on facebook who wanted to get occasional postcards.  i can't believe more people didn't take me up on it!  i would have been all over that magic. 

i made another chunk of postcards to mail out today--i'm not giving myself rules, just trying to send out a little pile every month or so.  here are a couple of the highlights...

thanks!  yeah, the parrot was my favorite, too, so i decided to keep him!  he was quite a mess, really, and i'm just lucky he came out at all.  i'd painted up some pages and then cut them up and wove them together...so i stuck that to the card for the background and i was using my brayer to flatten in out under a random sort of waxy looking envelope i had sitting around, thinking it would just peel off, and it totally stuck!  i tore away around the parrot and i think it looks really cool in person--interesting texture and very layered--but it was headed for the recycling at one point!

i decided that i'm going to do my part to keep the post office in business this year, and spent the weekend obsessively making 18 postcards for various friends out and about in the world.  i chose the project on a whim and then got a little...well, i already used the word "obsessively", so you get the picture.  every card was unique, but they fell into a couple themes, mostly vintage fashion, animals, insects and then some stamps and blocks i'd carved.  here are a couple examples.  i uploaded all the scans to my craftster gallery if you want to see any of the others...i'm hoping to keep the project up, though i don't intend to make 18 in a go every month!
here are some pics of a couple more...i hated to let them go in the mailbox today!

love those buzzards!  they are so awesome. 

the fact that you get to go IN PERSON to american sci and sur makes me so jealous!  love that catalog. 
great presentation on your gift!