Vintage Postcards I and Incoming Mail

As promised, here's a couple of the vintage psotcards I picked up from Saturdays auction in Milton, ON. I scanned a bunch of them, but I'm only going to post a couple for today - I've got loads more to scan, but they're mostly all casino postcards from the 60's to 70's that will probably wind up on e-bay. I'm just not into the whole casino thing - postcards or not. They were hard to get - people were bidding pretty high on them. Hopefully tomorrow's auction will yield something else fun and exciting. Without further ado, here they are:

^ I really like the cartoonishness of this. It reminds me a lot of Betty and Ms. Grundy from the Archie comics.

^ I like the art in this one that mixes the cartoon with a vintage photo - a cute saying to go with the picture, as well.

^ Again, the artwork of the 50's/60's wows me. You can kind of get an idea of what the guy was like who's estate the auction was for. He definately liked the ladies.

^ I like this one because it's so true. A woman will walk around in the tiniest things on the beach and no one cares, but as soon as the same thing happens in town, it's a different story. Again with the pervy-ness of the former owner. lol. This is the last one for today. Hopefully before we leave to go to the auction tomorrow I'll get a chance to scan some more in - there's some old cityscapes that are pretty cool as well that I nabbed.

Today I feel like I got nothing done because I only managed to get one letter written. Yesterday and today I've been so blessed with mail, I was jumping up and down with giddy-ness, I kid you not. Let me share some of them with you:

                                   

I got this postcard from Sibylle who I met through Suicide Girls on the penpals forum there. I love the raving rabbids on the postcard - has anyone else played Rayman? The rabbids are awesome :)

Also from Sibylle was this beatiful envelope of loveliness:

                           

     ^ I love stamps from Germany, they're so colourful and pretty - she did an awesome job on the envelope, as well. I love it.

^ And this lovely artwork arrived today from a new penpal and blog reader Courtenay. She read how to make her own envelopes and put the how-to to good use, as you can see. Beautiful map envelope and awesome Christmas stamps. Seasonal or not, they rock - and so does she!

^This cute little postcard came from my best friend Insa in Germany as a promise to write more soon. She's been super busy lately, and I can relate. A sign of life from her is great, though - I tend to worry. And look at that cute calf and that dress is adorable. Woot.

^ This one is from my penpal Hyunji in Korea - she always sends the prettiest things, I swear. And those dinosaur stamps are wicked. My husband saw them and yoinked the letter right out of my hand. He swears he's not addicted to stamps, but I know differently ;) She also has the neatest little handwriting ever. So cute.

^ I have yet to open this huge package of awesomeness from my new penpal Sara - I'm so excited just looking at the time she spent on the envelope itself, but I'm not going to have time to sit down and write until tomorrow or Thursday and I don't want to lose anything.

I need an outgoing mailbox by the door. I just need to find a nice one that I can screw to the wall. I'm paranoid of losing letters with the dogs about. Tails have a tendancy to knock things on the floor and I may never see them again. Boo urns. Maybe I'll make one. I'll keep you guys posted.

That's all for today - happy thoughts, everyone!

Would you or wouldn't you?

This post is rated for parental guidance and is meant as a gag. I do not advocate the webpage listed, nor have I ever sent anything in this regard to anyone.

Well I had an amazing weekend and it's going to take some time for me to scan everything in so I can show you what I managed to snag at the auction.

However, for today, I pose this question: Would you or wouldn't you? Now, in this blog, I focus strictly on snail mail. This includes postcards, letters, packages and anything you can send through the mail.

Thusly, I give you Poop Senders. http://www.poopsenders.com/ where you can send cow, elephant and gorilla poop to anyone for literally any reason, anonymously.

Some of the reasons the give for sending poop are: a gag, or a gift for someone who has everything.

I have to honestly say that I wouldn't send poop to any of my penpals. Possibly my husband, but that's because he has a twisted sense of humour and would understand it as a gag.

I remember someone on swap-bot posted in the forum once that someone sent her poop. That just blew my mind - who would do that to a swap partner? Or anyone, for that matter - as anything other than a joke between friends? Sending poop out of angry is just...really really mean.

I'm not sure what I think of sites that promote this. Poop Senders is not alone. There are actually a lot of websites out there that will do this for you. I just keep picturing myself being on the receiving end of a poop package and unless it was from someone within my immediate circle of friends and/or family, I would get pretty upset about it.

I guess it has to be anonymous because if not, they could get their butts sued every hour on the hour. So...would you? Would you send poop to someone? If you would - who would you send it to and why? And if not, same questions.

A Contest, Some Post Cards and Outgoing

Good evening, all!

To begin with - a contest! We need more followers around these parts, so what I'm going to do is hold a month long contest, beginning tonight and ending Monday, April 26th. For every person you get to "Follow Me" here on the blog, you will get a point. I'll add up everyones points and at the end of the contest, the winner will get a package from me that will include:

* A Magnetic notepad
* A spring-themed journal
* 10 sheets of stickers
* A set of 20 recipe cards

Make sure that the people you get to sign up post a comment on the blog, preferably on this post in perticular OR they can e-mail me at: eveoftheworld@gmail.com and that they tell me YOU referred them. It's that simple :)

So get the word out - get people into the snail-mailing mood!

Yesterday my husband, mother in law and I went to the Toronto Zoo and I was ecstatic about getting some postcards for swapping. The gift shop only had generic postcards of animals, but they were a great price, so I nabbed them anyways - I may host an animal related postcard swap on swap-bot sometime this weekend, so look for it next week.

And on the outgoing, a package and letter waaaay over-due to my penpal Amy:

And that's it for today - everyone have a great weekend! Hubby and I are going to a collectibles auction on Saturday morning and I'm excited about it - I doubt we'll come home with anything, though. Looks like a pricey one ;)

Mary and Max - A fictional movie about penpals!

A couple months ago, I stumbled upon an amazing movie called "Mary and Max" and upon the opening words of the introduction, it skyrocketed to being my favourite movie.

The movie begins with a description of Mary, an 8 year old Australian girl as the narrator says: "She is a bit on the chubby side, with eyes the color of muddy puddles and a birthmark the color of poo."

It's a claymation film, done mostly in brown tones with cartoonish characters, each with unique characteristics.

Mary's mother takes her to the bank where Mary rips out a page from a US phone book that has the address of a man named Max listed in it. She plans to write him to find out how babies are made in America, as she is told that in Australia, they are found at the bottom of beer mugs.

The story goes back and forth between Australia and America, as 8 year old Mary and middle aged Max, who has aspergers syndrome, write to each other throughout their lives.

It's a touching story of friendship, writing snail mail, and chocolate hot dogs (Max's own recipe!) and I highly recommend it to anyone with a love of writing and adorable characters.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mary-Blu-ray-Philip-Seymour-Hoffman/dp/B002LIZWOS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1269573526&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Max-Toni-Collette/dp/B00366E1E6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1269573579&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.ca/Mary-and-Max/dp/B002TRE9AY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1269573614&sr=8-1

Postal Stamp Magnets - A How-to

The other day I was going through all the various extra stamps my husband had put aside for trading on swap-bot when I thought to myself: "These would look awesome on the fridge!" And thus I went bonkers creating "postal stamp magnets".

What you need:
*Magnet sheet, preferably the adhesive kind.
*Extra stamps you think are cool.
*scissors

What to do:

Peel off the entire white sheet from the adhesive magnet.

Arrange postage stamps as space consciouly as possible on the whole sheet. Then cut them out carefully, making sure you leave the perforated edges. It's seriously that simple - and they look awesome.

Here's some of the ones I just made:

I bought two different kinds of magnetic backing - one was a sheet from the dollar store, and one was a stack of several from Michaels. The Michaels magnets were $5.00 CAD and the magnets from the dollar store were...well, a dollar. The dollar store magnets were better for arranging large amounts of the stamps, were thicker and were of equal strength magnetics as the expensive brand. I highly recommend looking for a cheaper version of magnet if you're going to tackle this simple project. Why not save money, if you can?

I'm pondering putting some of the nicer ones up on Etsy in bundles - what do you guys think? My husband already stole a bunch of them - haha ;)

Crazy About Envelopes

This past weekend, my brother in law went to an anime convention and picked up some old 2007 calendars for my envelope making needs - I was so happy! So I made 4 calendars worth of envelopes from a new template I made, that I quite like. Previously, I was using a huge template and had to put it on an angle to fit it on calendars and scrapbooking paper, so the images were always skewed and weren't always recognizable as to what they really were - this way, you see eeeeeverything!

I also got some business cards made for the blog. I'm trying to get more followers and visitors so that I can start hosting contests and give-aways. So please, by all means, tell other people about this blog. You are the ones who give me inspiration to make, create, and write!

I was off to the post office today to put a bunch of swaps in the mail and dropped this off for one of my penpals in France:

It's a stationary set I picked up from last years FanExpo in Toronto featuring Penny Dreadful. It's the same sort of stationary package you can get from Things From Another World (http://www.tfaw.com/More-Products/Stationery) for $4.49 USD plus shipping. Not bad, when you think about it.

When I go to Chinatown in Toronto, I always make sure I go to Dragon City, a tiny little mall on Spadina that has a store called "Rainbow Gifts" upstairs. She has so much stuff packed into that store, I honestly don't know how she does it. The place is kawaii heaven and is where I get the majority of my stationary from. She also has Nintendo plushies and Hello Kitty coming out the wazoo.

I generally pay $3.00 CAD for a letter set with envelopes and $6.50 - $7.00 for a letter pad - so Things From Another World has it square in the middle, which is pretty nice considering the character selection they have - great if you're gothy/geeky and anything in between.

First Day Covers (FDC's) And Swapping

The other day while at a post office on the main street of town, they had an awesome little section of old First Day Covers.

If you're unsure what I'm referring to, please check this wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firstdayof_issue

Essentially, it's a sealed envelope with some sort of history or picture on the front, with a franked (cancelled) stamp (or several stamps, depending). Usually very pretty and/or decorative.

I'm wondering if anyone else collects these. My husband does, and these are doubles I've picked up for trading/swapping purposes. I don't know how to do a swap-bot swap for them, as I'm afraid people would end up getting the same thing they send out. Does anyone have any ideas? I posted in the swap-bot forum here: http://www.swap-bot.com/forums/topic/53227

I can get more of them, if needed. There are others available at the small post office, but I may not be able to get the same ones. I tried to pick out the nicer ones. Great if you're a stamp collector, or if you just want something really cool from Canada :)

They're from different years, each of them and each has its own historical or informatory signifigance.