Mail art - Incoming and outgoing

I get so much good mail these days but I have to admit that I work pretty hard at sending good mail out too. It goes both ways - give good mail, get good mail. Right? I wanted to share some photos of incoming and outgoing mail art that has been crossing my desk lately. I haven't included everything, and I'm sorry if I've left some great mail out of what I'm sharing here. It's not intentional.

Incoming

Once you've set aside some great contents to put in a letter, it takes extra effort to decorate the envelope. I don't always take the time to do it, so I definitely appreciate it when someone else does it. I got some lovely mail from Alice in Italy that included some book pages and a zine. I think my favorite was the envelope, though.

Here's another great envelope from my friend Val. There's so much to find interesting.

Inside, she included a treasure trove of vintage papers in little pockets on the pages of an accordion folio. So cool!

I couldn't take a picture of the whole thing. It was so long. Also, there are pockets on both sides, on the back where you can't see in the picture. I want to make one of these. 

From Australia came an extra long envelope from Melanie with zines, postcards, and bookmarks from her local library. I immediately started adding postage stamps to one of the postcards. The colors are just so inspiring.

Now here's an interesting envelope. Can you believe this came through the mail? It came from my friend Yvete who stuffed it full of papers and then after she zipped it closed, she put some packing tape over the zipper so that it wouldn't open. It worked because I received it just fine. There was another label of paid postage, but it was torn so I had to pull it off.

Here is some of what was inside. I'm going to enjoy working with these tags and forms. Also, the receipts are fabulous! So grungy and smudged.

From my friend Pamela I got these beauties. I love them one and all. 

Outgoing

With all this good mail coming in, I've been busy creating things to mail back. This collage has been sent to a penpal in Russia. I wanted to experiment using paper from mid century, and this is what I came up with. Of course, the highlight is the row of 1970s postage stamps in honor of postal workers. Those are classics.

Next, I too, worked on making a lovely decorated envelope. I took a page from my vintage stamp catalogue and put a beautiful floral on top of it. That, and some pretty washi tape and a postmark stamp or two, and you're all set. 

I had a small stack of letters that I mailed out at the beginning of the week.

I've been saving my energy for going through 200+ mail art postcards from the January swap. Our theme was "love" and boy, participants did not disappoint! More on that, with plenty of pictures, coming soon! I can't resist sharing just one picture though.