Signed, Sealed, Delivered

It's 40˚C/104˚F today. I'm meltinggggg. Just a quick post to show you the mail themed CD I included in the journal. Can you think of any other mail themed songs?;



Tracklisting:
1. Return to Sender - Elvis Presley
2. A Letter to Elise - The Cure
3. I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter - Fats Waller
4. A Postcard to Nina - Jens Lekman
5. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours - Stevie Wonder
6. Lost In The Post - The Wombats
7. Please Mr. Postman - The Marvelettes
8. Elevator Love Letter - Stars
9. To Sir With Love - Lulu
10. (Letter from Home) - DJ Shadow
11. Please Read The Letter - Jimmy Page & Robert Plant
12. Tear Stained Letter - Johnny Cash
13. Stealing People's Mail - Dead Kennedys
14. All My Loving - The Beatles
15. Death Letter Blues - Leadbelly
16. The Letter - PJ Harvey
17. Death Letter (Son House) - The White Stripes
18. Love Letter - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
19. Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis - Tom Waits
20. Letter to My Son - Bloc Party
21. Send Me Some Loving - Little Richard
22. Why Don't You Write Me - Simon & Garfunkel
23. PS. I Love You - Nellie McKay

You can download the mix here.

ALSO, one of my favourite little Newcaslte haunts, Bird In the Hand Distro, is running a letter writing club on the first Friday of each month at 6pm. Pretty sweet, huh? Here's the run down on what will occur:

We welcome you in through our bright red front door and you find a comfy place to sit down for a little while. You gather some supplies: a pen, some paper, a typewriter, a cup of tea, a biscuit. You write a friend or a relative or your crush a letter using that somewhat anachronistic art of letterwriting. You probably have fond memories of using this skill a little when you were younger and maybe you haven’t used it in awhile. Writing some a personalised letter is one of the most heartwarming, communicative experiences & we’d like to get you back into the routine of letterwriting (it’s way funner if you’re part of a club!). Please come to this first meeting of the Letter Writing Club…

The first Letter Writing Club meet will be on the 4th of December, though sadly I will be in cold comfortable Tasmania at that time. If you happen to be in Newcastle (I know a lot of you are far far away from here), you should pop in;



I hope it's a lot cooler wherever you are today!

Flavour

I spent several hours last night putting together my pages for the mail themed Travelling Journal. When I went to buy the journal I wandered around in Borders for about an hour going backward and forward between three different journals I came across. I found a travel diary that had a cover with stamps and postmarks all over it, which I thought was perfect and appropriate, but the pages were lined and it was really thick and heavy. I also tossed up between buying a two-pack of bright green Moleskines but decided $25 was too much and so I ended up buying this gorgeous little understated, craft paper paged book by Paperchase for $10. I'm sending it out tomorrow to the Phillippines to its next recipient. I'm sad to have it leave my hands, but I'm sure each person along the way will add something amazing to it. Here are some of my pages. My scanner hates life, so I apologise for the quality. If you'd like to see larger, more detailed versions go to my mail art Flickr :);


^The front and back covers.


^ The inner cover and the first page, the envelope (which is actually silver doesn't look smudged like that in real life) contains the 'rules' of the journal.


^ My first two mail collage pages.


^ My second two mail collage pages, the first contains a list of some facts about mail, if you can't read my tiny little writing go here for the larger image.

C is making me a mail-themed mix cd to pop in the back sleeve of the journal. I'll post the tracklisting here later to show you. There are so many songs written about mail and letters and things, it was hard to make a shortlist.

Of course, if you're interested there are two still spaces to join up, so you're very welcome to join, and If those spaces fill up you're welcome to email me and I'll open another space for you.

♡ I couldn't help myself but post this here. MmmVelopes; Bacon flavoured envelopes... who would've thought... I'm a vegetarian, though they do have a kosher verification (via Incredible Things);


♡ There are still two days left to sign up to Missive Maven's cat postcard swap. I've been saving some cat postcards especially for the occasion.

♡ I think this stamp is pretty sweet and the note cards are dreamy. Both from Hygge & West Holiday;


I've smothered my desk entirely with bits and pieces for the journal and I should probably spend the rest of my night cleaning it all up! :(

Also, I think you should definitely go to Sylvia's blog and tell her how lovely her new glasses look!

Contrary

^ Contrary Mary.

To anyone from the UK I imagine you might be familiar with Harriet Russell. I've only just come across her, and as I can gather she basically sent a whole lot of envelopes and postcards through the Royal Mail with the addresses of these missives written in ways that the postal workers would have to decipher, of course not all of them reached their destinations. She also released a book full of these postcards. Here are some of my favourites;




Today C and I are going out to the mall for a browse. I'm going to Borders to see if I can find an appropriate journal for the travelling journal, C is probably going to come home with a handful of things from JB Hi-Fi.

I also wanted to point out how to sign up to the travelling journal mentioned yesterday, as I've had a few emails of people asking me how -
- Go to the journal page (link)
- You'll need to become a member if you haven't already
- On the right hand side of my journal page there is a link that says 'Get In Line'
- Then you just need to email me your postal address to teacup_teacup[at]hotmail.com and you're in! Yay!

I am quite in love with the wares of the Etsy store Chupchik. Look at these;



And I'd really like to get my hands on the Wonderful World of Fashion colouring book by Nina Chakrabarti;



Also in my want want wanting I am very smitten by these satchels by Cambridge Satchel, I think the purple is the one for me. I'm pretty sure the UK price equates to about an AU $115, so I can only dream about it for the moment;

1001

^ BY ANNA RUSAKOVA.

I have been quite fascinated by the 1001 Journals Project lately. I have joined up to receive a few of these travelling journals and thought it would be fun to start one up with a 'mail' theme and see if you'd like to play :) Basically you fill in one two-page spread with anything you like within the theme of 'mail'. I've given it an open sign up list and up to 11 people can join at the moment, though I can increase the number if more people are interested. I'd love it if you'd like to participate :) Of course, by signing up you commit to filling in your two pages when the journal comes to you and sending it on to the next participant when you're finished. Postage shouldn't be enormous as the book isn't very heavy, though it will get slightly heavier as each person adds to it.

Within this theme you could choose to use some of the following: postage stamps, airmail stickers, envelopes, writing paper, drawings, rubber stamps, handwriting, typewriters, date stamps, stickers, old letters, etc.

Here is the link to the journal.
Eeeee! I'm quite excited :)

Exist

^ unknown >:(

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
- ERICH FROMM

Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?
- RICHARD DAWKINS

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- ALBERT SCHWEITZER

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately and it has been getting in the way of my doing anything lately. In all honesty I feel depressed, with great highs and lows, I have difficulty verbalising these feelings or doing anything aside from them and feel that it is inappropriate to display them in a public forum. I have decided I am just going to do things that make me feel good, and I'll keep doing those things until they don't. I suppose blogging is one of the things under consideration.

On a entirely different note... I just submitted a drawing of a giraffe to OneMillionGiraffes.com. This guy needs one million hand-drawn pictures of giraffes by 2011 so he can prove his friend wrong that collecting one million drawings of giraffes is impossible. Here is the drawing I did. I kind of screwed up the legs, so I decided he/she was an awkward ballet-dancing scarf-wearing giraffe instead ;




And here is the drawing I made C do;



I wholeheartedly encourage you to submit your own giraffe :)

Remember that site I was desperately trying to find last week? Well the lovely miss Robyn (which is also my middle name) from Robayre commented me and told me what it was! I am so so grateful and have spent the whole evening on the blog; The Scribble Project. Robyn if there is any way I can repay you let me know :)

The day before yesterday my sister and her friend Rokia came to stay and we went to the Hamilton markets and looked around for a while. I bought a letter "B" badge and um-ed and ah-ed over a red striped hugely ruffled shirt that I decided to get without trying on and which ended up being ridiculous looking and over the top. I'm deciding what to do with it at the moment and unhappily trying and retrying it on thinking I might eventually like the ridiculous ruffles.

Tonight I went for a trip to Dungog with my friends Manneh and Dan for a few hours. They had a footy game to play (all but two of their team is made up of soccer players who are learning how to play football in their soccer off-season) and I thought I'd go visit la famiglia. I got to (re)meet my little sister's boyfriend. He seems lovely and appears to endure a great deal of (good humoured) abuse and violence from my sister, though I can't say it is too much removed from the way that I lovingly treat C :P After their game the boys came to pick me up and we went to the 'top pub' and had non-alcoholic fire engines and later the power went out and there was green lightning and a whole lot of wind and we had to head home quickly before the hail hit. Driving over the hills home through the lightening was a pretty amazing show. Along the way home we stopped at a bridge where there were a lot of cars and lights and noise and the sad news that a seventeen year old boy had jumped off the bridge into the water, likely hit something on the descent and still hadn't been found. We had seen that same group of boys jumping off into the river when we drove past earlier. So sad.

I'm thinking of making the trip to Dungog with the boys every Monday afternoon when they go, hopefully without the ridiculous weather and sad accident along the way.

C wasn't expecting me home tonight as I had said I would stay at my parents, but decided to come home, and when I got in I started making myself a sandwich, then I heard him coming through the gate, so I left my sandwich on the kitchen bench and hid in the cupboard for him to open the back door. He saw the sandwich, looked puzzled and then I jumped out and scared him and he looked very frightened. I don't think I've ever scared him before, so it was very satisfying.

Here are some letters I'm sending out early this week. I feel like I'm forever behind in the letter writing stakes;

Arm In Arm We Are The Harmless Sociopaths

(via you will never waste my time)

The past two days have consisted mostly of honey on bread, too many games of Facebook Scrabble with strangers, "Oh No" by Andrew Bird, catch up conversation, fish and chips, considering and reconsidering my own mortality, a game called "Plants Vs Zombies" (you need it), scratching my head, pizza, poking a baby and a toothache.

I met my newborn niece yesterday and she is the epitome of all things beautiful and perfect. Meeting her made me think a lot about life and death and humanity and the miracles and mundanities of life. I hope to visit her again soon. It was a delight spending the day with my brother and his wife and little Rose Alex Wade.

5 Bits:

♡ Mark Jenkins (it's a sculpture);


♡ Long Live Analogue / Collages by Chad Kouri;


♡ Kate Doodles;


♡ Alastair Levy - This reminds me of one time when I was a kid, my brother had come to stay for Christmas and he found a dirty shrivelled old carrot in the bottom of our fridge shaped perfectly like two legs and a penis and intended to send it through the post to a friend, but a few days later it was missing and we can only assume it was cooked and eaten.


♡ Keri Smith - I'm fairly certain I love everything this woman has ever done.


My friend Jackson came over after C went off to work this afternoon and we sat out on the couch on my verandah and watched traffic, quite pleasant. Tomorrow I'm thinking about going to the zine library cataloguing session at the Octapod and then heading to the Cambridge later to see some of my best friends make mewsick, for their EP launch; Caleb Skips Chemistry.

A very lovely postcard arrived today from Rachel Greig. At first I wasn't sure if it was an envelope or a postcard as it's quite thick and textured. C said it's one of his favourite postcards I've received. I think it's gorgeous. I shall reply asap!;



I also received a lovely little note in a Suessy envelope from Madam Ilona;


I received this cute envelope from Singapore from a Swap-botter;


I thought I'd post some of my all time favourite stamps I have received on mail, both from Postcrossers, the former from Lithuania and the latter from Finland. I envy countries that offer such beautiful stamps, Australia seems to be so limited in it's varieties!;





And a very meagre outgoing today, a make-shift postcard I made out of a scrap of cardboard and unearthed my paints from their hiding places;


If you've emailed me lately requesting mail I will be getting right onto that over the weekend :) Of course, you're always welcome to write me and request mail. C laughed at me today when we were walking home from the shops and I saw an envelope on the footpath outside somebody's house that had been all trodden on and weather damaged and I made a whimpery sad noise at it.

Suffer In Silence

^ So sad, from Learn Something Every Day.

Listening to: Three Wishes by The Pierces.
Eating: Peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
Drinking: Five fruits juice.

Don't you hate it when you're trying to remember something you found on the internet, but you didn't bookmark it, you have no key words you can Google, or they're too broad, and you have no idea how you came across it? Arghhh. I just want to plug my brain into the internet and make it find it. I can barely even describe it. I'm basically looking for a website I saw some time ago, wherein you download and print out a black and white template of a drawing and you fill it in and decorate the different sections, all I can remember is that on one particular sheet there was a section for what you'd been listening to lately and it had the shape of a tape cassette, and then you scanned it back in and submitted it to the website. That's not a very good description of it I'll admit. I can't even begin to think what I should Google to find it. It's driving me crazy, I have to find it now, I think I shall cry if I don't! Haha. Any clues? If you can find this phantom website I promise you a medium-sized reward in return!


^ Frank Chimero.

Today C took me to Office Works with the aim that he would "buy me a new pen", ha. I got two pens, three big yellow pads, printer ink, Frankie, post it notes shaped like speech bubbles, green staples and a new very pretty folder for containing my mail. I have filled it up with the received mail that was previously stored in drawers that I am now cleaning out for uni work, and it is already full. Hmpf. Tomorrow I'm going to visit my brother for the first time in several months (he lives about 2km from my house) and meet his month old baby. I'm nervous and excited.

Strangely, I have been getting an influx of cat-related postcards of late. Four have arrived in the past three days;




Speaking of cats, one of our cats, Mesca, has been quite sick lately and it sitting beside me, with her back to me looking very solemn. I'm feeling a bit the same way tonight.

Alarm Bells

+ Uncredited images on the internet make me weep.

Listening to: Walking After Midnight - Patsy Cline.
Eating: Homemade pfeffernüsse (not quite as good as the bought stuff, but still good).
Drinking: Aldi brand lemon soft drink.

I have been a busy letter writer over the weekend. I got to cross off a whole bunch of 'needs reply's in my correspondence book, from 15 letters owing to 5. Phew. I don't usually write letters all in one go like that as I like to put as much effort into each letter and I think it can detract from them being personalised, but I think they were all okay and I really enjoyed writing them all. I am totally out of writing paper now though, ick. This morning before C was up I walked to the post office and stopped at the little opshop near my house on the way home. There are two men who work there, one is nice and one is not so nice. The nice man charges me only 20 cents for a record, whereas the not so nice man charges a dollar each. Sadly the nice man was nowhere to be found today and I only came home with four records to chop up their covers and make into envelopes.

Some of the envelopes are addressed but don't have letters in them yet, so I won't put those up just yet. Here's some of the outgoing;





(close your eyes Belen :P)




And this one doesn't have a home yet. If you'd like me to send you something email me your address :P


C is at work tonight and I'm not sure what I should do with the evening - I'm thinking some singing and guitar playing, watching Carnivale and folding washing >:(

I think I successfully convinced my friend Lauren that she should move to Australia today :P

After being asked a couple of times of the origin of the snail-tape-dispenser mug pictured in the last post I Googled around and found a place you can purchase it here.

I have a bit of a fascination with names, I often browse through the Victorian Births Deaths and Marriages database of the top 100 male and female names each year since 1929, just because I find it interesting -

In 1929 the top 10 male and female names were;

John	Margaret
William	Patricia
Ronald	Betty
Robert	Dorothy
James	Joan
Kenneth	Shirley
Kevin	Mary
Keith	Elizabeth
Raymond	Norma
Donald	June

In 1969;

David	Michelle
Andrew	Lisa
Paul	Karen
Michael	Sharon
Mark	Nicole
Peter	Julie
Darren	Susan
Craig	Maria
John	Joanne
Christopher	Jennifer

In 1990 (the year I was born);

Matthew	Jessica
Daniel	Sarah
Michael	Stephanie
James	Rebecca
Christopher	Emma
Joshua	Samantha
Andrew	Emily
Thomas	Lauren
Benjamin	Melissa
David	Laura

And 2008;

William	Mia
Jack	Olivia
Thomas	Chloe
Joshua	Isabella
James	Charlotte
Lachlan	Ava
Oliver	Sienna
Riley	Emily
Cooper	Ella
Noah	Sophie

I also am very amused by the website; Baby's Named A Bad Bad Thing which features some of the most unique names, and the Wikipedia entry detailing the top 10 names in every country.
It seems a whole bunch of girls I went to school with are having babies lately. In the last month I have heard of the births of two little girls named Willow and yesterday a girl who was a few years above me gave birth to a baby boy named Lyric. I thought that was a very original, interesting name. I have a little cousin called Domino (a girl). Have you heard any interesting names lately?

I would like your advice; two to three times a day the securing alarm of the business across the road from my house sounds really loudly for about five minutes, often this is in the wee hours of the morning. After the thing has been going for five to ten minutes somebody from the business, who lives next door, comes over and turns the alarm off. I'm certain it's not just me in our neighbourhood that is a little bothered by it, but I'm unsure as to what sort of action to take, if any. This has been going on for several months, several times a day. Hmmf.

The Two Paths

^ purchase this beauty here.

This week I had four letters to write to four different Stephanies. Here are two letters I finished this morning;



It's 1pm and C is still asleep and our neighbours at the back seem to be having some sort of party. I've been eavesdropping, but the conversation has been very dull.

I'm starving and the cupboards and fridge are bare!

The wedding I attended yesterday was such a delight. My old drama teacher, Lou, asked me several months ago if I'd like to sing at her commitment ceremony and I was so honoured she let me. I got up ridiculously early, caught two buses there and sang my song while a pair of each of the bride's hiking boots (they're very outdoorsy) got passed around the crowd and you had to pull a pair of rainbow laces out of the boots that you gt to keep. Both of the brides were originally from South Africa, and a whole bunch of Mari's friends and family had flown over for the occasion and I loved hearing them speak Aficana. The food was marvellous, the company was lovely and at the end of the ceremony the two brides hopped into specially decorated kayaks that had kids blow-up toys hanging off the back and paddled away into the bay. An interesting exit. My old music teacher gave me a lift back home. I kind of wished I had stayed and partaken in more of the festivities, but I'm going to mail them a thank you card sometime next week. I had a ball.

C just got up and we're having an argument about him wanting to call one of our hypothetical future children 'Mountifort', as it is apparently a 'family name'. I'm vehemently against it. I did concede that the middle name of one of our hypothetical children could be Morrissey though.

Neither C or I are very Christmassy and apart from going to visit my parents on Christmas day, we probably won't be partaking in anything very Christmas-related, buuuuut... I couldn't resist this not-quite-Christmas-tree and I'm thinking of attempting my own version of it today on one of our walls;


+ (via design is mine)

I am in lust with this tote by Gemma Correll, her blog is lovely too;


This doll house made from a hollowed out tree trunk is awesome.

I found this amusing. I'm not sure where it came from originally (via make do and mend);



I hope you're having a lovely weekend. It's a nice overcast Sunday here today. I'm going to write more letters, watch the latest episodes of Dexter and The Vampire Diaries (I feel as though every time I say that I watch this show I have to write a disclaimer in brackets to make sure nobody thinks I usually watch this kind of thing, haha. It's my crappy tv indulgence) and make C go do our grocery shopping.

Paris Is Burning

+ The lovely Ladyhawke.

I just gothome from seeing Ladyhawke with my friend Laura and her friend Amy. I caught the bus into town and before, during and afterward I just couldn't stop sneezing - by the time I caught up with Laura and Amy I looked so out of it, my eyes were all smudged and watery and wouldn't stay open. Beautiful I was. Once we got in we stood way too close to the speakers and stayed there for the duration of the evening and got blasted. It was the kind of bass so loud that your throat and your eyeballs vibrate, and the vibrations through my face only caused more of a sneezure. I should have count them, though I feel that it only encourages them. I estimate 40+ sneezes in the night. I find occasions like these most interesting not only for the musical delights, but for the people-watching. So many people so self conscious. So many women in way too high heels, falling over and spilling drinks. I saw about ten women fall over, and a few of them, if they saw that you'd seen them fall and you made eye contact with them, had to come over and tell you "The floor is so slippery tonight!" or "I'm sooooooo drunnnnnk". I loved it. I think I'm making this sound like I didn't have a good time, I actually really did. Ladyhawke herself (Pip Brown) was pretty gorgeous. She does this funny thing when she sings when she wants the sound to kind of warble, where she shakes her head from side to side. Very cute. The crowd loved her and it was packed out, and she seemed to be a bit embarrassed by it, saying "Thankyou" awkwardly after each song in her New Zealand tongue. So, I am now deafened. I have to get up early tomorrow and catch a bus, aaaaaaargh. I haven't practised and I always sing the words all backwards. I have no idea how I'm getting home! Wish me luck :P