Merry Christmas! [25.12.2021]

     Even though I have zero time lately to write on the blog [I hope the coming New Year ten days of holidays will give me some of that sweet time], I wish everybody who celebrates Christmas today to have all the associated fun! Be healthy and happy! [The card is one of the many-many of Christmas and New Year themed postcards I've received last year - with adorable toddler and cute stickers decorations, and it was funny to get all the holiday cards from USA and Canada in February or later - your chimney, North-American postal Santa, was definitely very blocked! xD]

front (left) and back (right) of CA-1061579, from leewatchman, Canada

Collaboration with toddler intensifies!

     First backsides which I made in collaboration with my boy consisted from washi tapes he picked and I attached them, from the markers he picked and we drew with them [1 and 2]. Now all my process of decorating the backsides is 'supervised' by a very bossy toddler! 😁 He puts the washi himself, I only cut the pieces, same goes for the stickers. And the density of them really increased! [he fully exhausted all my stock utilizing everything for his colouring art book] Then he usually holds all my pens and gives me the colour he wants me to write with, hence many of my postcards recently have text which colour changes every half a sentence 😂

two backsides of the artistic duo [me and my toddler], sent in random forum tags

One quiet day of my mailbox [November 12, 2021]

     On some days I take out a whole pile of postcards/envelopes from my postbox, sometimes it's just a couple, but it never means they are less awesome! On the palindrome date [12.11.21 - I was too busy to send anything though =(] I received two beauties: the first is a Dracula postcard from my favourites from JoF [she was actually JoinHanoi before and I received a wonderful Vietnamese card from her on some tag before, on the old forum]. The backside says 'Taken from an original by Rob Dunn' [his IG, his page @advocate-art - I hope I found the correct Robert Dunn xD He's also an illustrator for 'Delicious' book], and the bat stamps are absolutely adorable, as well as cat stickers.

the front (left) and the stamps (right), received from JoF, United Kingdom (Russia - rest of the World tag)

     The second card is a vintage photo of Hamburg harbour [the backside says 'Printed in Western Germany', but without a year - somewhere between 1949 and 1990 then], and sent from Germany - which became typical for todays' postcrossers from Poland, Denmark, and even the Netherlands sometimes, who live close to German border - travel to a country with cheaper postage rates. I really love the cut edges of the postcard - we had the same paper cutter machine when I was a child for photos [I think it was connected with a fact that most Russians in Soviet times processed the photos from slide films themselves] - here it was either used for decorating the sides or to hide the wear and tear damage of the sides. Besides long and thought-provoking message on the back with history and family history, I really love the little details of Ludek's postcards - the top left corner always has a number. I checked with previous cards I received from him in tags - it seems it's a outgoing number of the sent postcard - it was 8533 on this card [wow! I almost regret I didn't think of that, I wonder what my outgoing number would be]. The bottom of the card has zip-code and country name printed as well as a round drawing with avatar and nickname.

the front (top) and the backside bottom (bottom), received from Ludek, Poland (Nautical tag)

Long-awaited arrival from Finland [and Patu stamps]

     From July to October the mail delivery from Finland to Russia was a bit wonky - even though there was no official statement about closing the route. But the cards from Russia to Finland sent from the very first week of July stopped arriving and in the early September official postcrossing suspended the route temporarily based on their own statistics. Some of the postcards sent within Handmade RR stuck in the void because of that, but couple days ago they finally arrived, and completely intact! The right one is a polar bear [my favourite because of his Nordic attitude!] from 'We bare bears', with wonderful yellow background and simple enough not to be too intimidating to recreate for beginner, and the left one is a half-face take on Finnish guitar player Mikko Kosonen.

both received from Kanerva, Finland (left - HandmadeRR#768; right - HandmadeRR#733)

     Another treat on the postcards were two playful stamps with a child destroying [and fixing] the stamps. I love this "breaking-the-4th-wall" style of the stamps [full set], and it appears, that this adorable mischievous boy is Patu from 'Tatu and Patu' children books by Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen. Me would not be me, always on a quest for good children books [my toddler is quite into books and reading, so I even had to hide 'Stick Man' by Julia Donaldson, otherwise I'd be reading it all day long in a never-ending cycle], checking these especially after Kanerva mentioned they were translated to Russian too. And coincidentally they were not only having good reviews, like 'I never expected these books, recommended randomly to me, being THAT good' [which also means that translation of the books is done well, compared to translation of Julia Donaldson's books, where I can 'feel' foreign language in them], but were on 50-70% discount. No wonder I bought four, well done, I guess, - accidental perks of doing postcrossing xD

the stamps, both received from Kanerva, Finland (HandmadeRR#733&768)

Halloween themed postcards - October, 31 2021

     This Halloween I participated a thematic round robin first time in my life [I've never had enough of spooky cards - but with handmade ones it was easier - I repeated and developed the dancing skeletons idea, making nine different postcards]. Since now I have plenty more of Halloween postcards, it's nice to clear up the drafts writing about all other postcards about this weird and exciting holiday before.

left - NL-3759604, from Missstuive, Netherlands; right - BY-2537121, from An4ydilka, Belarus

     Mostly I received the Halloween themed postcards, three of them on the #barbarian profile, and not only on Halloween, probably, it's one of the few scary and gnarly postcards most postcrossers have. The vintage cat-pumpkin postcard from the Netherlands is a reprint of 'A Merry Hallowe'en' postcard from early 20th century, from the collection of Gabriella Oldham [seems the card was a part of a 1988 edition of the 24 postcards set Oldham, 'Old-fashioned Halloween Postcards' by Dover Publications, Inc.]. The Belarusian postcard seems a Taiwanese postcard originally, printed by coolcard.com.tw, and I'm oblivious about what it says besides Happy Halloween. The postcard from mosaika at the first glance already looks like a reprint from the same vintage set as the Dutch one - and indeed, same credentials on the back, 'Spooks and witches are busy to-night... (early 20th century). From the collection of Gabriella Oldham' [also funny rhyming poem-riddle on the back about ghosts who are as annoying as flies].

left - received from mosaika, Russia (direct swap); right - received from na_talie, Russia (Riddle RR, direct swap)

     The postcard from na_talie with 'Witch Astrid' illustration by LiaSelina [liaselina@instagram, liaselina@deviantart] was a part of the riddle swaps, where postcard's picture and stamps and message is a wholesome riddle [used stamp was the 3rd one from Riding habit for ladies’. Side-saddle riding, 2004]. The riddle was: "There are a lot of us, and all of us are very different. Some from us are called like kitchenwares, others like geometrical shape. In one very famous fantasy saga meeting me was a beginning for each study year. There are people who think if they choose and match me correctly the effect from me is comparable to the one from plastic surgery. Who am I?" [the riddle is easy, so I will not write the answer xD]. And to finish the post - adorable Halloween postcard from USA with amazing stamps and backside.

front (left) and back (right) of US-7062570, from FredRydr, USA [yes, I know that the white strip can be easily removed, I prefer to keep it to have a postcard in the intact 'traveled state', because I am not a collector of pretty pictures]

My forum cakeday!

      When you have a birthday on the official postcrossing forum for a day you have a big cake 🎂 next to your nickname [and this year couple of random users congratulated me, it was so fun and weird - now I also write hurray to anyone I accidentally see the cake next to their name]. But also there is a second occasion when you have a slice of cake 🍰 next to your name...

     To quote reddit: Cakeday, aka cake day: The annual 24 hours which start the EXACT SECOND a user signed up for the forum. NOT your birthday. You will not have a cakeday if you are not signed up.

     My forum experience in the past year was absolutely magnificent! If I look into my google spreadsheet with addresses for 2021: the swap page has 168 lines, and the tags/RRs page has 487 [!!!] lines. Well, hmm, I'm slightly addicted to some tags and RRs, it seems xD In comparison previous three years the amount of lines in the single swap sheet were triple as less [but comparable with 2015-2017 when the Russian postcrossing LJ community was active and kicking; and of course with the beginning of my postcrossing journey when I was active on the old forum], and the tags/RRs page was not there for a long time, on other hand, now I barely do official postcrossing. I always 'complain' that I would never write about all received postcards in the blog, because the quantity of good postcards is overwhelming, well, this year adds -- about 700+ postcards [it's a conservative estimate, if I look at the amount of files in my scanned folders for 2021 it's about 4000+ images, but it includes backsides, images of the backsides with removed personal data for future blog posts, occasional sent backsides etc.] -- each postcard was perfect in image, message, stamps, and decoration!

     Besides sending postcards part of the official forum I really enjoy showing my handmades and sharing tips/'inventions' of decorating sent backsides. And also - sharing mine and seeing other's achievements in gardening!

top - using the narrow Van Gogh tapes for regular decoration and the washi-gradient; bottom - closed loop decoration of the postcards in one envelope

Potatoes - What not to love about them?

     After writing with incomprehensible efforts fifteen posts in a row to top it up till 1000th, I got stuck for a little bit to find the next one which would measure up to be the 1001th post. Now I know what it will be about - potatoes! I think potato is a very special root vegetable, both historically and by the share it takes in most people's diet around the world [not in mine currently but I miss it, but in husband's it's absolutely allowed including the potato chips even]. The heart-shaped potato photo below is made by Paul Schäfer [www.psfotos.de]. Before meeting my husband [and Dutch are serious about their fried potato - fritjes] I didn't even think about different varieties of potatoes being better for different recipes, like frying or boiling, and that potatoes can have significantly different tastes.

DE-8572433, from Munzijoy, Germany

     The perfect weird card above was staying in my drafts till I received something special to paired it with - the issued-on-demand potato stamps from Czechia! Apparently it's a thing in Czech Republic to order personalized stamps, for example, for a company, which can be full postal miniature sheet [as an opposite to personalized Dutch stamps I received before, or stamps with your own image printed by a machine, which you receive a lot from UK and Ireland]. There were two stamps issues for Brop potatoes company in 2013 and in 2021, and I got some of them from each of the issues - both with potatoes and with company logos.

top and bottom - stamps, received from Drakie, Czech Republic (direct swap)

     I found both potatoes varieties at European cultivated potato database [who would have known it's a thing!]: Sissi and Cartagena, both of them are multi-purpose potatoes, and you can even look into a pedigree of each variety.

top and bottom - stamps, received from Drakie, Czech Republic (direct swap)

Perks of memory loss [part #14 - Down Memory Lane]

<It's the 1000th post of the Blog! 🎊🎊🎊🎉🎉🎉🎂🎂🎂💥💥💥🎈🎈🎈
And my 10 years postcrossing anniversary! Also apparently first week of October is International Postcard Week, what are the odds!>

     I wrote recently [3 years ago xD] about most favorited postcards on my profiles, time to go into ye old postcrosser's reminiscence again. I present you the five first postcards I received. As a postcrosser you probably remember that excitement of waiting, and you want to receive a postcard, any. You don't understand the rules yet fully, and still worry a bit that the postcards you sent - you did something wrong with writing address or stamps. Sadly, my very first received postcard was with virtually no text on the backside, not even happy-postcrossing, just an ID and that's it [okay, okay, there was a drawing of sort of a sign post around the ID and a little bird]. The left one shows the famous mill "Molen de Weert", from a painting by Hugo van Schaik. The center one I failed to find the backside, because during the first half a year of postcrossing I didn't take the backside scans [could it be because they were not all that good yet?], but I'm sure it shows traditional costume of one of the regions of Ukraine. The right one is the 'Spectacular Night View of Taipei City', the sender says she lives in the city famous for its turkey rice and that it takes only one minute and forty-five seconds to the 89 floor of this tower.

left - NL-848533, from Henk1, the Netherlands; center - UA-163820, from PlanetaMJJ, Ukraine; right - TW-399943, from loxa2326, Taiwan

     Maybe that I received five first postcards which didn't match any of my wishes drove me to the direct swaps and to the official forum faster. But to this day if I send a postcard to someone who has all chances to be the first ever postcard to be received by this person, I try to choose the nice one, and put pretty stamps, and write a lot of text. Left one is the South Harbour of Helsinki -- here you can look at it through live webcam [I always was a bit puzzled why 'Helsingfors' is always paired with Helsinki, it's just Finnish and Swedish names of the city, silly me]. The right one is the Bathing Beach in the Victoria Bay (now known as No. 1 Bathing Beach), sent from QingDao, China. The backside has a marvelous stamp with sea slugs [Gymnodoris ceylonica]. Let's say from this not very fascinating start -- I laughed and felt warmth from messages received, was amazed by the stamps or decoration or image of the card countless times, and it has never stopped!

left - FI-1254910, from Aureus, Finland; right - CN-469961, from kkts123, China

[T-02] Wild strawberry

     Maybe I'm not that shy at least in initiating direct swaps, so when PatriciaOH showed her marvelous watercolours in the Show us your handmade postcards and Mail Art topic, I was contemplating whether it's polite to write and ask for a swap for couple days [many people have 'not interested' on their profile but then agree to swap on the forum anyway], then wrote to her and never regretted! She asked for one of my herbarium handmades in return, and the randomly chosen watercolour appeared the one I loved the most - Fragaria vesca, wild strawberry, because it looked the most 'scientific', like a botanical illustration.

received from PatriciaOH, Spain (direct swap)

     I really love how all the used colours are on the side, with their names! And the strawberry itself has a very long berry, here I saw it more at garden strawberries, but in Spain -- who knows? As a special treat - the right stamp is Margarita Salas, Spanish female scientist, researcher in the fields of biochemistry and molecular genetics.

stamps of a postcard, received from PatriciaOH, Spain (direct swap)

[T-03] Handmade: Animal people

     When I looked at the name of the group - animal people - I immediately wanted to make that sort of Hermitage cats paintings, everybody likes so much [see the last one here]. I am used to seeing that everyone in the Handmade RR having collages with cats flying around, cat heads, and everything. And I only had the cat head stickers I've already exhausted the use of. I ruffled through my journals and checked whether any cat magazines are sold here - nothing! So it had to be a mole and a parrot.

both made and sent to Nadjafee, Germany, and CocoMillah, Netherlands, in the Handmade RR group #765 (Animal people)

     With the style of the clothes there was much less struggle - I know I love ruffs, so my only task was to find the references to base my drawings on. Weirdly enough, I completely ignored most of paintings on the ruff wikipedia page, which would be most obvious path, and found couple of paintings through some other search it seems.

1.                      2.                      3.                      4.

reference paintings I used for inspiration: 1 -- Italian School 16th Century - Portrait of a Gentleman; 2 -- Hermann tom Ring Portrait of Katharina von Hatzfeld, 1587; 3 -- Hermann Tom Ring - Portrait of Ermengard von Rietberg, 1564; 4 -- Fray Juan Batista Maino or Mayno - Portrait of a Gentleman, 1618-23

[T-04] Is there something weird about theater?

     I notice quite a while ago that in 99% of the cases when you ask a 'normal' [in terms of acquittance and liking of weird postcards] postcrosser to send you a weird postcard you will get something connected with modern art and/or performance art [I guess this is one of the reasons why I have #art through postcrossing tag in my blog, another reason - I like 'normal' art too]. And that's how I got two theater related postcards in last Surprise RR group ^___^

the front (left) and backside (right), received from Xeniyya, Czechia (SurpriseRR#539)

     The Czech card is from experimental theater [www.ufftenzivot.cz] - 'This is not a love song' and suddenly all the lovesongs were about you... The backside has wonderful animal stamps - with wild cat and with black-crowned night heron. The Singapore card shows a scene from Chinese opera [only now I realized that I received cards with traditional Chinese opera before - 1 and 2] and another set of interesting stamps.

the front (top) and backside (bottom), received from janice_girl, Singapore (SurpriseRR#539)

[T-05] Vintage scissors and cutlery

     Checking on Scavenger Hunt Offer Tags #1 and #2 became my morning coffee activity [and afternoon, and evening, and... if I could check it during sleep I totally would since at night all the pretty American and Asian postcards appear!], and I feel I'm not alone. Sometimes you get the private message of 'thank you for the morning laugh, your card...' or just chat a bit and find out you were buying postcards on your vacation in the same place just years apart or get/write messages of 'you suggested two cards there, is the second one still available -- swap?'.
     And receiving all the scavenger hunt postcards is like having an official website flow with exclusively postcards you like accompanied with proper stamps and nice message [since I usually concentrating on the challenge to find the next card, I forget the postcard which is going to me easily]. The left one is 'Bonjour Ma Sher', artwork by Barbara Edwards, printed by freshfish postcards, Switzerland, -- rare since market is flooded with German and French postcards. The right one is 'Dessert' by Michel Granger [www.granger-michel.com].

left - received from LindaJ, Switzerland (Scavenger Hunt Offer Tag#1); right - received from holeanta, Sweden (Uno offer tag)

[T-06] Draw one of your French girls for me?

     Sometimes you see a piece of art in the Show us your handmade postcards and Mail Art and think: 'gosh, I wonder whether I can ask for a direct swap for one of these goodies'. But then it appeared that Agneau and me have intersecting taste in postcards and a lot to talk about, so one tag after another in the scavenger hunt - I'm a proud received of two [for a start xD] exceptional drawings! Agneau wrote about the left lady: 'She's not as stoic as she looks -- you can tell by the tiny quirk of the corner of her mouth -- she's trying not to smile. She'd like to stay angry, but -- she sees the funny side of everything, and can't maintain her wrath. At least, that's what I intended. What do you see?' I see -- she's not looking that angry, maybe more of a resting-bitch face? Like 'oh my, that's deserves a smile, but I can't stand having these wrinkles on my cheeks'. She also looks a bit tired to me [maybe with my 1.5 years sleep deprivation everyone around looks tired though], but also trying to hide an emotion indeed, like your child did something incredibly stupid and you should show disappointment and anger, but it's also hilarious and you are trying not to laugh out loud.

both received from Agneau, USA (direct swap)

     The gentleman on the right is an experiment with different medium [coloured pencil rather than marker and ink like the first lady], it was laminated to prevent smudging. I think I like it even more, it feels warmer indeed, and even a bit unfinished, like you stole it from the artist on the last stage of drawing and run away while it's still warm xD

[T-07] Recent treasures from mondschein and azuregosa, Russia

     At first I was planning mostly forum tags posts for the countdown, but I think it's unfair not to mention couple of Russian penpals, who deliver goodies to my postbox way more regularly than I do to them xD Interesting that both of them apparently like one of my favourite postcards shops, amelie-cards [amelie-cards.ru, the owner of which wrote a book about postcrossing], too. The two from mondschein are cool and weird collages by Irina Se_Se Sevostyanova [her page on Russian collage society, her instagram]. On the backside - super useful tips for the entertainment with children: ethno-park 'Nomad' [ethno-park.ru], 17th century rural life reenactment village [gorodec.ru], and adventure walk-among-the-trees park [adventure-park.ru].

both received from mondschein, Russia (direct swap)

     The two from azuregosa are both illustrations: Margarita [from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov] by Magic Illustrator Sveta [seriously, it's her 'name' on instagram - nuttyaleks.art] and 'Where the forest starts' by Tatiana Kasyanova [her profile@illustrators.ru, her flickr]. The backside texts are hilarious as always: on the first one 'Facts about broom flight from internet: -Maximum distance - 500 km for night flights, 400 km for evening flights; -Broom with uncomfortable handle can be a reason for back ache; -Flight in the new places should be handled by magical maps only; -Broom for flights should be made from eco materials; -Don't fly too high, it's cold out there'. About the second one: 'It's the wolf Sköll who chases the sun and catches it during Ragnarök. It's known with details who will eat what, kill what and whatnot. Unless Loki will screw everything up again'.

both received from azuregosa, Russia (direct swap)

     P.S. Happy World Postcard Day - 2021, everybody! I sent some post today, including seven official postcards from both profiles [there were supposed to be five, but the postcrossing website was under extreme load, so I got three instead of one at one occasion], I hope the stamps will be cancelled today! And also - what are the odds - pulled out the address of a second profile of one of the Handmade RR/Scavenger Hunt forum buddies xD