Postcrossing Flowers

This is the card I made by using ink and watercolor to a Postcrosser who said she likes flower paintings and Japanese style in the paintings.

To the envelope I used a stamp with a picture of a flower painting by the Finnish artist Eero Järnefelt (1863-1937)

Salvador Dali Cards from Ivana

These three folded Salvador Dali cards arrived from Ivana:

Again so beautiful Czech stamps! 

Also the non valued stamps are nice, especially the Czech Post stamp.

"Improved" Gustav Klimt to Ivana

Piece of artwork by Gustav Klimt was on one page of my last year Metropolitan Museum of Art calendar. 

I made a card of it to Ivana by attaching it on water color paper on which I had painted according to the idea and colors used by Gustav Klimt. 

Cat Art

I have had quite a long break in Postcrossing, but have now started again, and just received this wonderful cat card from Japan! Isn't it lovely?!

Christmas Letter to Bree

We still had the Christmas tree in our house when I wrote my latest letter to Bree. Our cat Killi was staring at the tree so I took ink and watercolors and made a sketch of what I saw, and used the right side of the paper as  a note paper to write the letter.

I used sea theme stamps and added some watercolor to the envelope to make it suitable for the stamps.

Glove Letter to Bruno

This is the letter I sent to Bruno. I like to use pictures of my old Metropolitan Museum of Art page-a-day calendars in envelopes and cards, and here I used a page with a picture of a glove. I added a piece of paper so that it looks like the glove is holding it, and used it for the address.

The note paper I decorated to suite to the decorations in the glove.

Bats with Postman Stamp

Ilona in http://www.missivemaven.com/ loves bats, and I just had to buy this card for her when I saw it in an art museum in Frankfurt, Germany in December.

On the last day to use old Finnish stamps I noticed that I hadn't used my favorite postman stamp which I had planned to use in mail to Ilona. - So the postman started to carry bats to USA for Ilona.

I had two of these postman stamps, so one is left for my collection. Collecting stamps is something I don't know if I do it or not. I really love stamps, and in a way I collect them, because I have a lot of them, and I even have several books where I keep them. Still I'm not active in collecting them, and I have several times changed the theme of what kind of stamps to collect: dogs, old buildings, statesmen,... This postman stamp made me to think that why wouldn't I start to collect mailing related stamps! This is such a new idea that I haven't even yet started to find out if these kind of stamps even exist so many that there would be something to collect. - Hints are welcome! 

Goodbye Old Stamps

Starting from the beginning of this year it is not possible any more to use old Finnish Mark valued stamps (we have had euro as currency since 2002) in mailing. For example this card sent on Friday couldn't have been sent today.

I have been a bit sad of loosing the possibility to use the old stamps, but actually now it's again lovely to start to wait for new stamps to be published without being stressed to remember to use the old ones as long as it is possible! :)