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my REAL kitchen walls


As 2011 draws to a close, Andy and Elena want to wish all the readers and contributors to my REAL wall a HAPPY 2012!

Lately, my artistic output has ground to a halt as I've taken time to settle in to the new place. Since Dewi came over in October, I've taken up cooking, hence why this shot is taken in the kitchen. Elena kindly decorated the kitchen for me with her favourite postcards, which are classics, rather than the new ones that we've been receiving.

Hope you can all join me in the new year. See you in the post!

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my REAL wall - First wall in Kingston


my REAL wall has been keeping a pretty low profile lately. The reason we've been out of action is because me and Elena have been moving house!

Now, the best address to send your posts to to get onto my REAL wall is

53 Haygreen Close
Kingston-upon-Thames
KT2 7TS
United Kingdom

The new place is much more befitting of a newly married couple. It's much bigger, has 2 rooms and a conservatory where this picture was taken where we have an art table. Yes, you read that right. We have a table dedicated to making ART!

So much has happened since the last post. Notably, we have met up with 3 mailartists and been to Turkey. We met Dewi last month, who is a mailart365 artist. He popped over from Canada via Tuscany and showed us his sketchbook. It was great!

Katerina Nikltsou, another 365 artist, came over from Greece and stayed in Notting Hill, just around the corner from our old place. We popped in to see her, and she gave us that lovely acrylic painted piece that dominates todays wall.

Mim, the other 365 artist who is on track and whose piece is on the wall below Katerinas, came over earlier on in the year, so technically that means we've met every artist on the 365 who is set to complete the project on December 1st. Only 26 pieces left to go for those heroes!

Another notable artist on the Mailart 365 project that I've met is Postively Postal, who is currently running a project in conjunction with the Royal Mail called "The A-Z of the UK". Check out his site for details of how to pick up some exclusive stamp packs from the Royal Mail

One person who could easily be on 365, but isn't is the great Ruud Jansen, who runs IUOMA. He came over from Holland last month on business and I very nearly met up with him, but he ended up too busy, which was a shame. However he did send some mailart through, which you can see here.

That lovely cut out butterfly is from Spopod, the index card is a classic Lindsay Killin piece and there's a new piece from the Keep writing project by Hope, who's work keep making me smile. This time, I've got a recipe for chocolate cake from her, and I need to dig up a decent recipe of my own and send it back. If you've not seen the Keep writing project, check it out RIGHT NOW at www.keepwritingpostcards.tumblr.com

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Farewell Housey 3


The final REAL wall of my old flat belongs to a single person, who sent in 8 postcards in one single batch. There's no return address so if you want a return post, please get in touch and tell me what you signed your name as and I'll be more than happy to send you a return postcard!

This is the shower we used for 2 years. I'll be sad to not use it again, especially as the new shower is so weak.

Thanks to everyone for keeping the walls of our house decorated for over 2 years, and I'll be updating our address soon. Watch this space...

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Farewell housey 2


For the second to last REAL wall on the walls of our old flat, here are your postcards above our radiator, complete with a few pairs of my cruds in homage to the early days of my REAL wall, which early viewers will no doubt reminisce about.

As part of the move, Elena took apart the age old blue banner, saying it needs an update, so this is the last time you'll see it.

As far as I know, we hang our clothes outside in the new place and with central heating and stuff, we may not even have radiators, so perhaps it's the last time you'll see my cruds on such audacious display too!

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Farewell Housey


This weekend we moved house from our beloved little studio flat in Shepherds Bush, to Kingston Upon Thames. I had a whole heap of mailart to catch up on and post on my REAL wall and it had piled up in the REAL inbox, so I posted all of them in places around the house.

This is the last REAL wall you will see on this wall sadly :-(

We left the wall with loads of lovely blu-tac stains for our new tenant as a reminder of my REAL wall.

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my REAL wall - 04 September 2011


As September is here, this may be one of the last REAL walls you will see on this particular wall as me and Elena are moving house!

We've been extremely busy with projects and work and now house moving, so please excuse the delay in putting up all your splendid work. And of course there was carnival last week...

Today sees posts from some of our old favourites. including Mim and Katerina, Girlzootzilla, JJAlltheway and Ammy from Singapore! We've got some great letters on there (Thanks Ammy and Mim, it's great to hear from you in depth every time).

Girlzoot's piece is really appropriate. A wall with "How are you" written on it, which reminded her of my REAL wall.

Right now I'm loving the contributions from The Keep Writing project, which are always little packets of magic. As soon as I get a spare moment I'll try and reply to these as well as the numerous other projects I have on! Excellent story and picture about libraries, a subject close to my heart :-)

Also honourable mentions have to go out to my Canadian Secret Admirer (eek!) and Molly from Australia. Sorry you both had to wait so long for me to post!

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my REAL wall - 15 August 2011


More than 2 years have gone by since I launched my REAL wall and still the post keeps coming. When I met Elena just over 2 years ago, she mentioned that one day "you'll have so many posts coming in for the wall you won't be able to keep up" and i laughed. It seemed absurd that a REAL wall, not in REAL time complete with REAL posts would ever work, but somehow it has and I still absolutely love it!

It seems that Elena was right then. Here's the first REAL wall from a huge pile I have backlogged. Todays wall features art from Crisispanty, who seems to be making a mailart365 comeback, Heleen one of my favourite mailartists from Holland and a newcomer to the wall Winged Heart, whose beautiful little piece you can see top middle of the wall.

Lots more to come shortly, but I've currently injured my ankle (playing football) so i don't want to spend too long on my feet putting up walls.

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Featured artist: Benjamin Shaw designs

I first came to know about Benjamin Shaws envelopes when I got one through the post from Benjamin last year. I loved it, and made sure to send him some post back to say so. Next thing you know, I received a neat little package, lovingly wrapped of blank envelopes that I could send out myself!

Inside the package was a lovely handwritten letter too, in which Benjamin talks about his love of post and how by day his work leaves him yearning for a creative outlet and how he recently started making envelopes to fill this gap.

Intrigued, I took a look at Benjamins facebook page and saw some of the other envelopes too, and I decided to send the creator a quick message for an email interview. Here's what he had to say...


Receiving mail is such an intoxicating joy, and to get mail, I have needed to send it. As long as I have been old enough to write, a favourite past time of mine is to write letters and send notes. Anything postal, including stamps, postmarks, messages in bottles, parcels, postcards, greeting cards and letters have all interested me. I have had many pen friends over the years and have written so many letters. I think letters are so personal and make such intimate time capsules, and personal letters also bring lots of pleasure and happiness to the recipients.

For the people I really cared about, I started making and decorating my own envelopes and being creative with the letters themselves. Cutting out images and making a collage or just making an envelope from a page taken from a magazine. Sketching something or painting something here and there. When I saw some mail art at an exhibition once, I immediately hit upon the idea of drawing pictures on envelopes that made the address interesting, or putting it differently, writing the address on something interesting that had been drawn on the envelope.

It was only a matter of time before this idea transitioned from one off, hand drawn envelopes, sent on their way, to drawing on the computer, so I could start sharing them with other people. All the subject matter comes from my personal experiences, travels, hopes and dreams. My desk has a typewriter and a red phone so makes for easy inspiration. I have an orange alarm clock on my beside table. Many of my friends have young children and so dinosaurs and octopus scenes always go down well. Everywhere I go I am thinking of an odd perspective for a new design. I actually have 100s in my sketch books. I just haven't translated all them onto the computer - give me time.

The best thing about my envelopes is that they are sent easily and mean that not only one's thoughts can travel, but so do the envelopes themselves.

Check out Benjamins envelopes on his facebook page

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My REAL wall - 9 July 2011


Todays REAL wall features my first ever audio post. You'd think that in an age of multimedia that these "wall" things would be a little more media-rich, so I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get my first audio posting, and thanks to Hackman for this and the great Ska Man envelope it came in too!

Also on the wall is a number of pieces from I'm a superhero and can like fly and shit, from his Free Art Foundation and Zombie angles, and the first piece from Mabb.

Other mailart365ers on the wall include Katerina Nikoltsou, whose daring pencil shaving landscape made it through intact somehow all the way from Greece and excited me and Elena no end. Even more exciting, is the fact that we may be meeting Katerina later this year, as it looks like she may be paying us a visit, making her the 5th mailartist we'd have meeten this year!

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My Extraordinary Imagination opens at The Penny School Gallery, Kingston

IYAF - My Extraordinary Imagination, on the walls of the Penny School Gallery in Kingston

On Wednesday 29th June, 2011 The Penny School Gallery in Kingston had a special preview of our postcard show, My Extraordinary Imagination as part of the Kingston International Youth Arts Festival. This show was the first to be put on with the educational wing of my REAL wall, which is called Schoolswaps.

The turnout was good, with invited guests from the local area including Robin Hutchinson, the director of Creative Arts, who are the lovely people responsible for putting on the Kingston International Youth Arts festival. He's the one below gesturing, and he's gesturing at Zoe Thomas, the person responsible for coming up with the idea of the show and getting the team together to make it happen with me, Andy Hoang of Schoolswaps.

Opening Night 3

The postcards were mounted on boards and hanging strings, roughly in age order around the gallery starting from the 4 year olds in one corner and going up in age to include some work from 17 year olds and included work from as far away as Australia, Germany and Korea among others. There are still artworks coming in to the IYAF offices every day, and the postbox remains open to entry for another week. We will try and get as many of the later entries on the wall as we can, but can't promise anything. However, I've heard a rumour that there is interest from abroad to show the cards on a wall in another show, so watch this space!

For those of you not able to come to Kingston who have contributed from far off countries, I've taken quite a few pictures for you to see. OK, I got a little excited, and actually took a LOT of pictures for you to see, but with more than 600 cards on display, make sure that if you can get to the gallery you do, as this is by no means all of them!



And here's me and Zoe with the address for you one more time...

My Extraordinary Imagination postcard at Kingston Penny School Gallery

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my REAL wall - 2 July 2011


What an exciting year this is turning out to be for me and for mailart in London. I can hardly believe that this project that I started off just over 2 years ago has grown so big!

This week, Elena and I attended the opening of our THIRD mailart show in 2011, in Kingston. I'll write more about this in my next post, but we've been working hard on the show and on the website at http://iyaf.schoolswaps.net/ as well as on the huge school swapping project I set up at http://schoolswaps.net/ so I'm falling behind a little on sending and posting here on my REAL wall.

That's not to say that I'm not still hugely excited about the stuff I've received. Far from it, and it's seeing stuff in my mailbox every day that fires me up to get others sending mailart.

This week we've seen some wonderful stuff in the REAL wall inbox, including a great big card from Elena's best friend and some ATCs that have come in for her from Swapbot pals. Elena is going through a huge Swapbot phase at the moment, and is signed up for about 15 so if you're on Swapbot and involved in papercrafts, watch out!

Mailart has come in from mailartists from far and wide. Some names on the wall this week are Farmageddon from Petaluma, Pierpaolo from Italy, who is a fellow 365er, Strenikov, Maygirl from Sendsomething, Mary England, Madmadge, mabb, Molly from Australia and Hope.

There are some great mailart projects in there, do click on some of the links and see them. I love Hopes project, The instant storybook at http://keepwritingpostcards.tumblr.com - it's an 8 picture story done in collaboration with someone else on a postcard. Take a look at her site and see for yourself, as she explains it a whole lot better than me!

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IYAF mailart outside Kingston Market Square


Some of the received postards for the IYAF show, My Extraordinary Imagination, taking a tour around the historic town of Kingston upon Thames before going on display at the Penny School Gallery for the show, which runs from 1-18 July 2011.

The show was coordinated by IYAF in collaboration with my REAL wall's educational postcard offshoot Schoolswaps and has collected in over 600 postcards drawn by students all over the world.

Before going into the gallery, we thought it would be nice to show the postcards a little bit of the local area. Here they are briefly on display in Kingston Market Square, where there's usually a fruit and veg market and some great food and entertainment.

We can see post here on the sign from Germany and the UK among others. If you took part in the show and sent us something can you see yours? If not, keep watching the site and maybe your piece will be up soon!

If you are aged under 26, and wondering how to get your mailart into the show it's not too late to enter your piece! If you send it quickly to us we may be able to fit you in! Full details of how to get involved are at our website but do hurry as time is running out!

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Mailart in AD Magazine, June 2011


AD Magazine is the official magazine of The National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD).

This month, issue 2 is out and my REAL wall makes an appearance, complete with a pic by me of Elena browsing some postcards!

The write up is by a student on the course and is about the mailart project I helped run in my university for the Art and Design secondary PGCE.

You can read more about the project here


(Apologies for the scan quality, I'll try and get hold of a better one, this was sent to me by email and is horrible)

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my REAL wall - 18 June 2011


Look at that LOVELY Kiera Pannell Ray on Map. I am so in love with her artwork!

Ali's colourful zentangle is great too, as is Nadine's piece in the middle, which makes a repeat appearance.

One piece that really stands out here though is one that you can't really appreciate unless you were to come over to my house and smell it. Gabby has sent me some doodles done on the back of a Dove soap packet. When I opened it I was hit with a lovely detergent smell - it was great!

Many of us are now more than halfway through Mailart365 and many of the pieces we're getting here at my REAL wall HQ are still from participants on this project, including #200 from Katerina Nikoltsou. TWO HUNDRED! EEEEK! What have I unleashed!

This week, me and Elena got back on the mailart wagon ourselves, bashing out mailart every single night. It's been great! So keep your heads up folk, some mailart could be heading your way soon!

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River Thames with IYAF postcards


Kingston upon Thames is the main town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in London.

Having been sent over 400 postcards from all over the world, it seemed a little sad to just put them in a gallery, so here they are around town as a little preview of what's going to be on display in the Penny School Gallery from July 1st to 18th, 2011

We also thought it would be nice for everyone who sent in to see a little of Kingston too, so what better way to show you both a preview of the postcards and a little of Kingston all in one go!

Here are your postcards next to the River Thames, just minutes away from the gallery.

Make sure you make your way down to the gallery to see all of the postcards in all their full glory, and if you haven't sent one in yet, why not! It's not too late, just get over to iyaf.schoolswaps.net for more information on how to get involved.

Full details of the whole International Youth Arts Festival, which this exhibition is a part of, can be found at www.iyafestival.org.uk/

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The phone boxes of Kingston get a REAL wall makeover


As part of my continuing quest to get people writing and connecting in the post, I've started my REAL wall's educational wing, www.schoolswaps.net, designed to make it easy for teachers to arrange postal swaps for their classes.

The first major project of schoolswaps is a collaboration with the Kingston International Youth Arts Festival (IYAF), who called me when they saw the work I'd done with art students at my university and asked if I could help them work out how to get young people making art and sending it to their show.

Perfect.

Now, after a few months of tireless work, the team at IYAF have deservedly received 429 postcards, with a while left to get more.

With all the postcards just sitting around in an office, I figured that it would be a good idea to get them out there, out and about in Kingston, and this is the first "my REAL wall"-inspired outing for the postcards of IYAF, showing the organiser, Zoe Thomas, putting the postcards up on an iconic Kingston sculpture

"Out of Order" by David Mach, is in the centre of the town and shows a load of the old iconic red telephone boxes tumbling into one another.

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Superheros Undead Wall

Superheros Undead Wall

The mailart365 artist I'm a superhero and I can like fly and shit has been running the Mail of the Living Dead mailart call. Here's the undead creations he's received so far on his REAL wall!

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my REAL wall - 10 June 2011


I'm lagging hugely at the moment with my REAL wall posts and on mailart365. falling about 100 posts behind. It's quite demoralising actually, but I've taken my eye off the ball there, and have been trying to focus on getting even MORE people sending postcards on Twitter, linkedin and my new project schoolswaps

The aim of schoolswaps is to try and bring my worklife, which is teaching together with my passion for postcards and link teachers together in the post.

It seems to be going pretty well so far, with our first show already scheduled and I'm arranging a big swap called (rather unimaginitively I admit) The Great Big School Swap where I'm going to connect up as many classes as I can for a big postcard swap with classes from other countries. So far I have over 50 classes involved from 17 countries! By my calculations, that should amount to over 1,500 postcards going in the post on June 25, 2011!

So, my apologies for not posting your awesome postcards up as frequently as I used to!

Todays gems come from a number of new sources, which is really refreshing. One new contributor, Jose Day, found my REAL wall on flickr. Nastya and Kate from Eastern Europe and Erika all found me via Postcrossing and I sent postcards back out to the them earlier this month.

Mailart today comes from Dewi, Nadine Mojica, Farstarr and The Snailmailer B. Thanks to all of you and I hope to get things back to you soon!

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my REAL wall presents - The first ever joint mailart talk by Andy and Elena at Pimlico library!


On 27th April 2011, Andy and Elena gave their first ever public mailart lecture at Pimlico library together. As part of the graphic novels season, we put together the Little Big Stories show, and the librarians thought it would be a good idea to include a talk about mailart in the season as it is a relatively unknown artform.

We agreed to run the talk together and the library bought the stamps and postcards for the participants.

Pimlico Mailart Workshops (3)

The talk was modestly attended but those who turned up were treated to a feast of mailart. We talked about the history of mailart, how it came about and how my REAL wall came into existence. After a look through some of the gems that have appeared on my REAL wall, we got the participants making their own, which they addressed to some of the people who had sent some to us in the past

Pimlico Mailart Workshops (2)

By the end of the session, everyone had made at least one piece and put a stamp on it to post. I've since heard that some of the pieces have been received.

If there's anything more satisfying than making a piece of mailart, I think it's watching those first pieces of mailart go out from people who have just discovered the medium. It's just great!

Pimlico Mailart Workshops (5)

The Graphic novels season was a huge success for Pimlico and I want to take a moment to say thanks to them for putting on such a great programme of events and for including us in there (I would never have ever thought i'd have my name on the programme with Helen McCarthy and Paul Gravett! Wow! fanboy geekness heaven!). You can read a writeup of the night on their blog. It has been excellent and I can't wait to get involved again next year!

Thanks to everyone for sending in your pieces for Little Big Stories. Keep your eyes on this site to hear what happens next with those, you've not heard the end of these yet...

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Archived favourites wall for May 2011


This wall is the one just over our bed. The stuff on here usually comes off the main wall, but are pieces that we both don't want to put away yet. A living archive of mailart!

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Elenas favourites for May 2011


The ever changing and expanding Elenas favourites wall for May 2011, still populated by lots of Postmuse, Ubon and Dumpsterdiver, but now includes some quilling from Box652 and some cool JJalltheway. Notably, Elena has recently become a HUGE fan of Dewi Johan, who has been experimenting with more landscapes and drawing styles. Elena is not really a portrait fan, so much of Dewis work has passed her by, but the landscapes are really up her street.

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my REAL wall commemorates the Wedding of the year 2011!


It's taken us a while, what with all the catching up on received mailart, but we finally got around to putting up a REAL wall commemorating the years BIGGEST wedding...OURS!

Thanks to all for your cards, bought, handmade or whatever, it was humbling to receive so many wishes of good luck and presents. There's nowhere near enough space on the server to thank you all, so me and Elena are going to work from this wall and send out as many personal mailart thank yous as possible.

Watch your mailboxes..

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my REAL wall - May 21, 2011


Not a hugely busy mail week this week, but I'm still catching up on the mail from before we went on honeymoon. Robert Graham, who teaches in Canada sent the large collaged piece and I'll be sending something back to him shortly about a swap i'll be arranging on my sister site schoolswaps

Also on the wall this time are Dumpsterdiversanonymous one of our favourite mailartists, who has written the most lovely letter, Superhero's squeezy puck, Mims rubber stamp (sent in December) and L-plate, who includes the plasters right off her blisters! Sweet!

In the bottom right you can see the third in the series of the The Swarm, by Cornpone. While in Vietnam, I got stung by a bee, who landed on my neck. He stung me on the neck and the hand, so I'm not a huge fan, but I am a huge fan of Cornpone!

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your REAL walls from i'm a superhero i can like fly and shit (yes that's his name)

Here are the first REAL wall submissions from another Mailart365 member, the awesomely named i'm a superhero i can like fly and shit.

The first is the regular mail received. I can spot one from Shitbot! I'm so happy about that because I have one from the same mysterious sender, complete with alien skulls! It seems shitbot is sending stickers and mailart out to a few people on the mailart scene, but who is the Shitbot I wonder. Answers on a postcard please...

I love "Messy is good" too - who was that from superhero?

The second photo shows some of the submissions for i'm a superhero i can like fly and shit's new mailart call Mail of the living dead zombie mail art call. The call only opened recently, so hurry up and send your zombies, or as Superhero puts it - "There's lots of whitespace still!! SEND MORE MAIL!"

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my REAL wall - 16 May 2011


Look at all that lovely mailart! This evening, when I got home, I walked through the door with one of my neighbours. Being London, I've never spoken to him or even seen his face (not that I can remember), so to make small talk he said "Any good post?"

Of course I had good post! Today we got a lovely piece from Dewi (it will be up on the next wall) and he said "Oh you're the guy who gets all the awesome post"

Yeah I do get a little kick out of it!

On the wall today are 2 pieces from a mystery Canadian sender, who has been sending cool, really childlike post for a few months. There's no return address or message, so I can only wonder. Any takers? There's also a little birthday card from Francis and Nisha, who put together the Little Big Stories at Pimlico library and a belated Little Big Story from Louise Kiner, which got sent back to her and finally arrived 2 weeks after the show ended! Never mind Louise, when I get a chance I'll be putting together a book to raise funds for the library.

Check out that beauty from Ryosuke Cohen, and the Chicken from @RejinL and the Royal Wedding stamp set from Laura Podob.

I'm the one who gets all the awesome post you say? You bet your ass I am!

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my REAL wall presents...Little Big Stories at Pimlico Library

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that this year has seen my REAL wall getting involved in a number of mailart shows in London. In February, I put out a call for a mailart call for my local library, called Little Big Stories, where we asked for postcard sized graphic novels in the post to display in Pimlico library.

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The idea was to collect in a few stories on the walls to get people interested in the graphic storytelling medium and to draw attention to Westminster library's awesome stock of graphics. I worked with one of the librarians from the comics buying team on the show from start to finish, and the show came together through the Westminster libraries blog and here on my REAL wall.

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Being the first major public mailart call I've run, I must confess I didn't know what to expect. Initially we set our target at 30 pieces, and after a couple of weeks, we thought we'd be lucky to even get to this. This is the very first story that came in from Conor Donegan in the USA.

Untitled - Conor Donegan (USA)

About 2 weeks in, something happened. Suddenly the blog started to fill up with comments from people saying that they'd be sending in stories! Me and Francis couldn't believe it! Within a week we had shot over 30 and set our sites at 50 pieces. That target proved far short of our final number too.

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By the time the deadline of March 12th arrived, we had collected in 150 Little Big Stories, with 20 arriving after the deadline, which went in anyway. Another 3 arrived after me and Elena had left for our honeymoon.

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Sadly, me and Elena were not there to help them put the stories up, but Francis and Nisha done an excellent job of mounting the works and putting them on the walls and the exhibition has been really well received by visitors, with some even asking at the desk for the artists details and if they had books out on the shelves!

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The show ran from 4th April to 4th May 2011 and has only just come down, but it's been a huge success. I'd like to say thanks to everyone who took part who made this happen and thanks to everyone for your comments and feedback too. The library were really surprised to find that their blog had so many hits during the time of the call - they'd never had that many comments or Retweets from a blog post before, so congratulations to us on that too!

There's not enough room here for all the photos, but you can check out some more on my flickr site, and below are all the received pieces.



But just because the show is over at Pimlico, don't think this is the end for Little Big Stories just yet. Me and Elena are looking to make a book to put on the shelves containing all the pieces received and more! The idea is to sell copies of it to raise some extra money for the library in these lean financial times so that they can buy even more great graphic novels for their shelves.

I'll keep you all posted about that, just watch this space.

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my REAL wall - 7 May 2011


Finally after months of waiting, we seem to have come out of winter and the spring is here in London. mini-Andy has left his scarf on the REAL wall and is back from Vietnam, where he's been honeymooning with maxi-Andy and Elena.

There's some great stuff on the wall today, including wedding good tidings from Prettylily, and some older pieces sent by Camel and friends. No 51/365 by Robayre is up on the wall next to 78/365 by Lindsay Stewart and above that is a landmark #100 from Okami

JJ's QUASAR is the other 365 on the wall today and the zombie mailart comes from I'm a Superhero and I can like fly and shit (I always love saying that) as part of his latest call - Mail of the Living Dead - Send that man some zombies!

The non-mailart pieces come hand delivered from Brugge by Elena's best friend and from Jose Day in Holland who found my REAL wall via flickr as well as one from Varanasi in India where Shazhan Lin, from China is currently on holiday.

Thanks to all of you for making my REAL wall look so cool!

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your REAL wall by Katerina Nikoltsou from Greece

Katerina Nikolstou is one of themost prolific mailartists on the scene at the moment, and one of the many mailartists on Mailart 365 who are on track, with over 150 posts since December 1st, 2010. Here's her first REAL wall, including 2 pieces by me and loads of received pieces from Mailart 365ers. What a stunning wall this is! 



Katerina has been a real inspiration for many people, and last year she ran a great mailart show in her home city of Thessaloniki which I contributed to. It's nice to see more of my work up on walls in Greece, and if you have sent mailart out that way too, perhaps you too are on her wall today. 

If you see your piece on the wall, leave a comment below and tell us which one it is!

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my REAL wall - 4 May 2011


Still playing catchup with our backlog of recieved post after a month away - @Grthink you were so right!

These must have been in my REAL wall towers for at least a month, so here goes...

Top left is from JJalltheway - you've already seen this a few times, both here and on the sand in Phu Quoc island, Vietnam. What can I say, we like it, so it's travelled all over, and will probably pop up all over the place. Thanks so much for the wedding gift too JJ, that was so thoughtful. Finally I can see the works of Shaun Tan for myself.

The lovely vibrant pinks and greens is a piece called "Horizon 2 January 2009" and has come from Whimsy and Colour, who is based in Calgary. Little known fact - I'm related to a politician in Calgary and will always go there when I'm in Canada.

Martha Miller makes her second appearance on the wall, with her mailart 365 head theme still going strong 60 heads in!

There are 3 Little Big Stories on the wall today, which arrived well after the deadline, so sadly didn't make it on to the walls of Pimlico. The show has been awesome, and I spoke to the librarian about the possibility of making a book from the pieces. I am thinking of extending the call to include new artists, and artists who were gutted that they missed the deadline for the show, and I intend to make the book available for purchase with all profits going to the library book buying fund.

2 new mailartists on the wall today are the Spanish speakers Cernjul Viviana from Argentina and Mute Sound from Spain. Cernjul sent in the Carnival piece with mask. Check out Cernjul's mailart blog for some great stuff coming out of Argentina.

Mute Sound sent 2 intriguing pieces, with circular motifs - Help Mute Sound out with his project "1 minute hypnosis" by sending 1 minute of sound in any system by mail or email. Check out his website for more details.

Thanks to Merdoc Robotics for your block print, which takes pride of place in the calendar, alongside one of Elenas new quilling contacts, Catherine.

What a day! Loads more to come!

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my REAL wall 27 April 2011


After a month away, we've come back to a pile of mailart about 3 inches high and lots of emails and other virtual stuff to catch up on.

Todays wall was really daunting to make as there was just so much to do! But once I got started it was great fun as always.

We got some lovely congratulations cards and welcome home post. Thanks Paula for such a warm sentiment on our return and it was great to come home to some Mim too.

Mim came over from Richmond, VA for our wedding and stood by this very wall about a month ago. It was such a pleasure to have one of our mailart friends come over and see the wall and she even repaired one of her earlier mailart pieces while she was here! I have to say it was such an honour for both of us to meet the other - we were mutually star struck! Hopefully, we'll be heading over to the US in the near future to return the visit.

Also on the wall are some new faces, including Cara, who loves dancing. Check out her Etsy shop, she's got some great block prints.

Thanks to Jessica from Canada for the Where's Waldo (we call him Wally here) and your little bit of Canadian charm ;-) and to Gabby for your random dog.

Scott, I would have loved to see some of your kids work on the wall, and I'll get the contents of the envelope out next time.

Prettylily, you may have received our postcard to you from Vietnam by now. If so, do tell us we love to know about these things!

Stephanie Blake from IUOMA created a wonderful piece from squares that were sewed together. I think this is the first piece I've got from Stephanie but it looks awesome!

Thanks to everyone as always for sending and keep your eyes on the site for more soon, there's still a lot more to come!

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your REAL wall from 100 days of snail mail

The 100 Days, 100 Mails Project

Starting on January 5th 2011, “snailmailfan” decided to mail something – postcard, letter, package, or puppy, through the postal systems of the world – every day for 100 days. To add to the challenge, at least ten different “sources” for addresses were to be used, and no repeat addresses were to be knowingly counted towards the completion of the project.

This challenge was completed on April 14th, 2011. 100 mails were sent, no repeat addresses were knowingly counted, a little over $300 Canadian was spent, and a whole new world of internet-community supported snail mail correspondence and mail art was discovered.



The Snailmailfan

Snailmailfan is a girl in her mid-twenties living in Winnipeg, Canada. When she’s not sending out mail or blogging, she could be reading, participating in an online social strategy game called eRepublik , cooking or baking, watching old (and sometimes new) movies, listening to radio, cheering for the Twins baseball team, playing with her teeny dog, rummaging through thrift shops, taking long walks through the city, imagining long travels across the country and the world, or fixing up her home, in which she hopes to manage a bed and breakfast operation in the mid-term future.

Snailmailfan likes bumblebees, prarie dogs and dragonflies, street cars, and purple coneflowers. Her favourite “tea” is rooibos. She wishes her French was better, wants to learn a third language, and how to play her guitar.

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your REAL wall from ETStudio


ArtyEm from ETstudio is a member of mailart365 and sends and receives loads of mailart. Here's her REAL wall, which was sent to me while me and Elena were on honeymoon. 

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#300 - my REAL wall on honeymoon


Wondering why your post hasn't been appearing on my REAL wall for a month? It's because me and Elena have just got married and been on our honeymoon in Vietnam!

We did however, bring a few of your postcards with us, and here they are on the beach in Phu Quoc island, the southernmost island of Vietnam, where we spent a week of our honeymoon, relaxing, snorkelling and catching up on some mailart!

Look at those beauties from Farstarr, Okami, Dumpster, Felicity Lingle, JJ, Okadascat and more!

It just so happens that this is also post number 300 stats fans, what better way to celebrate than getting married! Eeeks!

Via Flickr:
Wondering why your post hasn't been appearing on my REAL wall for a month? It's because me and Elena have just got married and been on our honeymoon in Vietnam!

We did however, bring a few of your postcards with us, and here they are on the beach in Phu Quoc island, the southernmost island of Vietnam, where we spent a week of our honeymoon, relaxing, snorkelling and catching up on some mailart!

Look at those beauties from Farstarr, Okami, Dumpster, Felicity Lingle, JJ, Okadascat and more!

It just so happens that this is also post number 300 stats fans, what better way to celebrate than getting married! Eeeks!

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my REAL wall - mini-Andy returns


Behold! It's the return of mini-Andy!

This cute remake of the mini-Adventurer was done by Okadascat, our favourite yarnbombing mailartist. mini-Andy 2.0 has already had his first adventure, to the O2 arena in Greenwich, and is going to go on our honeymoon with us, then he's all yours! The new mini-Andy is now safe to travel on his own, and if you want to take him on an adventure, then just drop a comment somewhere and make your case!

Also on my REAL wall today is a new mailartist I encountered on Twitter, called Kiyotei, who produces some very awesome stuff!

Already the wedding mailart is coming in, and you can see the 4 piece commemorative skeleton piece from Camel there in the centre. More 365 pieces from Dewi, Sue Bowen and I'm a superhero and can like fly and shit, and a welcome return to the wall for Felicity Lingle and Rejin Leys!

Big thanks to Robert Graham too, who I think is set to become a regular fixture on my REAL wall.

The excellent watercolour (?) lady in bikini is by Jenny England from Australia. It's really stunning and I believe it's a first appearance for this artist on the wall.

Also, if you're watching, could whoever it was who sent the piece in the bottom left hand corner come out and say so please! No return address it's a mystery!

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Box 652's REAL wall - 11 March 2011


This came in from Sue from Box652 today. Sue is an active mailart365er, and REAL wall fan.

Here's what she has to say

My REAL wall as of today. Going to refresh it with the 'objects-in-waiting' so I'll have a different real WALL tomorrow. Virtual living is loveliness. Thanks to all of you who sent things. Some are on this episode. Some in the queue. I need a bigger wall... :-)

[Andy - I love the graffiti!]