DECORATIVE ENVIE: MUSIC

I am so enjoying the Yahoo! group "Decorative Envies". It's a small group, with a simple aim: Make its members' mailboxes happier by sending pretty and/or interesting mail to each other. Real mail. Snail mail, if you will.

Each month a theme is announced for each of two categories, Decorated Envelopes (Envies) and Postcards. You can sign up, or not; there's no requirement to be in all the swaps, just the ones you're interested in and have time for.

This month's theme for the envelope was Music, and included not just the envelope, but a note card and tag. I had a great time creating the set I sent!

The front of the envelope

The back of the envie

The note care

The tag front

First inside tag page

Close up

Second set of pages of tag

These were made for my dear friend Miz Mollye, who has already emailed me to say she loves them! YAY!!!

Now I have to admit I haven't done the postcard yet, which has a book theme. I know what I'm going to do though, I think....

If this sounds like fun to you, too, search the Yahoo! Groups for Decorative Envies. I know they'd welcome you!

BOTTLE SWAP

MizMollye has been busy again, this time organizing a Bottle Swap! Before I say what a Bottle Swap is, I'm going to tell you it was so much fun I think I'll need to host one myself, to keep the fun rolling, lol.

Bottle Swap: Each swap partner takes a plastic bottle (we used 2-liter pop bottles), cuts a trap door in it, and stuffs it with as many goodies that match the theme of the swap as possible, seals up the flap, addresses the bottle and mails it. Simple!

This swap had a Mother's Day theme. The idea was to stuff our bottles with things our own moms would love, and send them to our swap partners, including a bit of explanation and tribute to our moms.

My swap partner was Ragamuffin Gal. I had a great time choosing the things to send her, and she obviously had a good time, too, selecting the things she'd send me, because my first question was...

How on earth did she get all that in there?!

Just look at all those goodies! My daughter was looking over my shoulder when I opened the bottle, and I think she had a serious case of envy going on, especially when she saw this:


It was all I could do to get her to relinquish that bracelet, once she'd put it on. I Am Mama, though, and that is my wrist the bracelet is on. Oddly ESPish: I was wearing a tee shirt just exactly that color when the bottle arrived, and it is not one I wear frequently.

I adored these lovelies:



The little girl by herself is a tile pendant I can hardly wait to wear, she's so sweetly pretty and pensive.

And I think stickers are so wonderful, I have to force myself to actually use them, so the sight of these plastic packets drew an excited, "Stickers!" from me.



Other items you might not have noticed in that tray--tea bags, ribbons, a number of small adornments, a delicate hankie, and a gift card for Michael's craft store, which I plan to use indulging a guilty pleasure, magazines. Oh, I am such a sucker for a good magazine.

Last photo is of Ragamuffin Gal's (Katie's) moo card, which I consider a treasure in and of itself:

Now I'm going to reprint the note Katie wrote about her mom. She sounds and looks like such a fun and adventurous woman, and Katie clearly knows how special she is!

Last Mother’s Day On her 80^th Birthday at 18 when she married dad

Introducing ~ My Mother ~ Millie

I am so fortunate to not only have the best mother in the world but also to still have her a daily part of my life. She is 81 years young and she has truly taught me that “the best is yet to come.”

She has a very full and active life, still lives on her own, drives, and has a very full social calendar. She loves to play Bridge and all sorts of card games. She works out at a fitness facility 3 days each week. She belongs to several Bridge Groups and has season tickets to the Symphony and several Theatres. She has traveled and cruised to many exciting places, including Spain, Italy, The Cayman Islands, and most recently Ireland. She loves to read and go to the movies. She is very stylish and likes lots of bling (totally opposite of her daughter on the bling part).

Despite having Lupus, and having endured cancer and a heart attack, she has faced and overcome these obstacles with grace and dignity. She nursed my father during his last days in such a loving, humane, and compassionate way that it was a lesson to all of those around her on tender loving devotion . She has taught me many other great lessons, but this one is probably the most important one!

Much Love to you Anitra and many blessings ~ Katie

If I sound like I love my mom then I have succeeded because I really really do! I am looking forward to this summer when we will have lots of ''Girls' Days Out''!

What a lovely tribute Katie wrote!

Happy Mother's Day to both my mom and Katie's!

Meet MizMollye. Shezadoozey!

Ever run across someone online that you just HAVE to share? I have, and her name is MizMollye! I've been reading her blog and emailing back and forth, and exchanging comments, and now it's just time I stopped hogging her and let everyone else meet her.

I'm going to start by telling you MizMollye's having a give-away, to celebrate her upcoming 100th post, right here.


I asked MizMollye some questions:

1. I know you're coming up on 100 entries at your blog. What got you started blogging, and what do you most enjoy about it?

In Jan. 2007 I had gone to Arkansas to visit my daughter Lori and she excitedly showed me my birthday present which was a domain for me to have my own website to write little stories and memories etc of my childhood and people in my life no longer here as a way of leaving it for my grandchildren. Also at that time she was on Etsy constantly buying ACEO's for her collection of original mini art and being the first time I'd ever seen them I was enthralled and in love.

I had never done anything of the computer other than spreadsheets at work and MS Word, so I had much to learn. I began looking at the world of today's art with a new set of eyes and before you knew it I was cranking out ATC's by the hundreds and had joined up with every dang Yahoo Group possible dealing with ATC's, Collage, Mixed Media, Assemblage, etc. and outgrew my kitchen table so had to then create a studio and my website was called Shezadoozey and it grew and grew and was something else!

But this past summer, I realized that while providing me with a great forum to be used as an art/writing gallery, it was not interactive and I had become a regular reader to so many blogs and made such good friends through swapping but they could not communicate with me. I could leave them comments but they could not do so on my website, so I decided to give it up and go to a blog and I am loving all the communication with other bloggers, but am finding that I am spending way less time on my art itself, so as with anything new, I have to find that balance.

2. You do so many kinds of art; do you have a favorite form or medium? What makes it your favorite, if you do?

I have been involved in dollmaking off and on for more than 40 years and it is just evolving into so many forms of creativity that I am re-entering my love for it, but the actual form of art which gives me more pleasure and awe in the creation of is Collage and especially something small as the ATC's or the Moo size cards. I love them because there is no limit to the layering I can do and have no idea when starting a project how it will actually turn out and probably the biggest reason is that there are no rules and they can be completed in record time and they're something you do not have to think about while doing. Your hands do all the work and when you are finished you think "WOW, I love this, did I DO this because my mind was completely somewhere else and how did this happen?"

3. What would you say is the difference between Art and Craft?

The age old question here much like the chicken and the egg. However my opinion only is that for me when I see a funky hat I'd like to make or one of the trendy little handbags, I grab some yarn and a hook, or some fabric and a snap, print out the directions and begin making it all the time thinking Oh these are cute, bet they would go great on Etsy and in my mind I can see me turning them out by the dozens, and when it is finished I think ok that's cute and it is put away and I never try to make more! To me I just made a "craft".

But when I see something that just squeezes the part of my heart and brain and won't let go, I just know I have got to go in and experiment with that technique. I never try to duplicate or copy someone's work, but I try to learn from them and I put my own spin on a technique and add my own twists and turns and make whatever I am drawn to make, sometimes taking weeks or days to finish and I never forget what I learned and I use the techniques as part of my very being and nature always. To me at those times I have created Art.

The question of whether it is art or craft depending on if you sell it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Your heart is not as affected on a longterm basis with craft as it is with art.

4. Can we see your work area/shop?

Yep. We bought the old house where my hubby grew up and it was only two bedrooms and since our nest had been empty for many years, decided to make one of the bedrooms for my studio and then built another room for DH to use for his gun hobbies.


5. What do you see as your strongest personality traits? (They don't have to be the "good" ones!)

I think my strongest personality trait is that since I've gotten to be one of those quirky senior citizens I see all the women in the world as my sisters that I've yet to meet so that when I dialog with them they easily slip from people unknown to people I feel very comfortable with as in an actual sister and when I was young, I always viewed people I didn't know as just that and I think it all comes down to a place in our lives where we cease to view immortality issues as abstract. And a weakness although you did not ask that one!, is the undesirable trait of changing my mind back and forth. I believe it is called vascillating? In other words I can be convinced to jump from one side of the fence to the other by smooth talking characters. I just hate that about me! Wish I could be more firm and stick with it!

And there you have it, the good, the bad and maybe the downright ugly! whoah nellie I'm on a roll. Hugs, Mollye

Couldn't resist putting her whole answer in, cuz that's the way she always talks, and I love it!

Here are a few of my favorites from her shop. Just click on any of them to go see MizMollye's Etsy store:

PIECES OF PUZZLES

I just saw the coolest thing on Miz Mollye's blog! She'd seen one of these


on Art in Red Wagons, from a puzzle piece art swap, but missed the swap. So she created her own solo version, doing all the pieces for it herself:


I thought the puzzle piece art was so cool, I did a Google search. Turns out the things are all over the place, with swaps going on pretty regularly. I still haven't run across an entry that tells how the swaps actually work, but there's sure to be one out there somewhere. Anyway, here's another one from Alcoholinky:


And another from Art Chicks, featuring Cindy McMath:

I can't help it. I think these are totally cool. Oddly, although they're closely related to ATC (Art Trading Cards), they appeal to me more strongly. It has to be the shape, because I can't think of any other real difference--both are small artworks created to trade or give away, both often feature collaged images and words, but the ATC are always the size and shape of a playing card.

It just hit me: The only thing missing from this blog is a picture of my own puzzle piece art. That most likely is the result of my not having done one yet, an omission I do believe I will take care of immediately.