A Great Mail Day

Sometimes the mail carrier brings me bills, and sometimes he makes my heart sing!  Today, my heart was belting out an entire soundtrack.

The photo above is the end result of a several months long progressive swap masterminded by my friend Liz in the ATT group.  Liz sent out nine plain unfinished frames, about 5x5", and the same number of those vials used in drawing blood.  That was it!  Each of the nine people in the swap added something and the little masterpiece you see above is what we came up with.  The pieces traveled a total of 16, 344 miles, and crisscrossed the country several times, going from Liz in Arizona to Allie in Oklahoma, to Jason in Texas, to Nancy in California, to me in New York, to Pam back in California, to Peggy in Ohio, to Barbara in Oregon, to Julie in Montana, and finally, back to Liz in Arizona.  Liz finished them off and then mailed one to each of us.
I doubt if the photo does this justice, but click on it to see the details.  I don't know how it happened, (and I have to credit the final participants here) but it became a wonderful and cohesive work of art!  Thanks Liz and everyone else for this great experience and unique and beautiful piece that I will cherish forever!

As if that wasn't enough, also in the mail was a totally unexpected package from Japan.  Jessica, a military wife from my ArtHaven group sent me this cool RAK:

 

I just love that the package of pink lace has a label in Japanese!  Trust me, the label will find its way into a project.

Speaking of ArtHaven, I was lucky enough to win the February Lottery there, and everyone who submitted a piece (the theme was Happiness) will be sending theirs to me.  Today I received this beauty from my dear friend Angie:

 

I love the sentiment, and would you believe that the base started out as one of those coffee cup sleeves you slide over the cup to keep from getting burned?  Angie is an amazing artist and just loves to find interesting uses for what most folks would toss in the trash.

No photo for these, but there was also a new journal to work on.  Yea!  This one is from my Journal of Dreams group, and it belongs to Sarah, who lives in Australia.  

And the new idea book by Wendy Vecchi was in the mail too.

Like I said, a great mail day.   My email brought me a few surprises as well.  Several of my very kind cyber friends decided to pass along various blog awards to me.  I would like to acknowledge them and thank them for thinking of me.

Lori sent me this one:

 

Valerie sent me this:

 

And Celeste sent:

 

I decided a while back not to do this blog award thing any more.  I absolutely can't think of any more interesting things about myself to share and I love too many people and too many blogs to try to pick out the five or seven or ten to pass them on to.  So, I'm not adding these to my sidebar or passing them forward, just saying thanks to those who gave them to me, and hope this doesn't offend anyone.