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Today when I was cleaning I came across a really cute black diary with a red spider on the front and opened the first page. It belonged to C, nearly ten years ago, and he'd only written one short entry basically trying to ask himself why he should keep a diary. It included a quote from Marilyn Manson's diary (published in The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell) that read "People don't keep journals for themselves, they keep them for other people. Like a secret they don't want to tell but they want everyone to know," which I thought held a lot of truth. I guess that's where blogs are the ultimate diary, they're as personal as you choose, but you're choosing to share it with an audience of people, often whom you don't know are reading it. I asked him why he didn't keep writing in it and he said that he'd had a lot of ill fated diaries.


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I brought a whole lot of things in from the shed today I'd been storing out there. After the dust storm and a week of rain I knew the items in there probably weren't faring well and a lot of it needed to be thrown away, so I went through it and was pretty impressed with the amount I was able to throw out. I also came across a few of my own old diaries and packed them into a box as quickly as I could. I have this long running problem with reading anything I've written that isn't current. I don't know why I keep them when they make me feel so uncomfortable. I suppose I think one day I will look back on them with fondness and nostalgia, be able to laugh at them and refresh my memory of things I've forgotten, but for the moment, they're packed safely away where I won't accidentally read them, rehash the past and hate my(former)self, haha.


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I have the same feeling for old blogs. I revisited an old Livejournal recently (which had the gorgeous title of "I Just Can't Relate To 99% of Humanity") and felt so uncomfortable about my poor hope-filled musings about an ill-fated long winded relationship, the trials of grade 8 and my dissatisfaction with my home life, that I fumbled desperately to find the function that allowed me to quickly make all entries private. It felt like I was lurking the Livejournal entries of a stranger or reading somebody else's diary (I was amused by my constant over usage of the phrase "that kicks ass" though). It's not what I wrote that makes me uncomfortable, it's the way I wrote, or melodramatically, the 'person I was when I wrote them'. As it turns out, without a premium account you literally have to open each entry one by one and change the privacy settings, a long arduous task I am currently obsessively compulsively embarking upon, haha. Again, although these entries make me cringe and squirm, I can't bring myself to delete them completely and so I'm wasting a good hour going through hiding these stupid naive rants of a fourteen year old, for a time when I might feel better about reading them. I think the thing I hate the most about the things I used to write is that I wasn't being honest with myself, I was constantly trying to conform to some kind of ideal or stereotype, even in things I wrote privately. I guess it's one of those moments you often have in life wherein you desperately wish you could go back and tell your younger self to wise up. It is strange to want to hold myself back from writing because I might hate it later, but I guess I'm probably always going to hate it later. I try to make myself think about how lovely it is that I kept a record of those times and experiences and how it allows for some self reflection and record of personal growth, but I just can't help but want to hate that old timid, doe-eyed, easily led person.


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A while ago I came across an old exercise book my mum wrote in for about 6 months when I was really small. It wasn't so much a 'diary', she just wrote a paragraph recounting what happened each day - one entry I read went something like, "Bianca and I weeded the garden today, got a call from Donald at 3, had to go pick him up from Gloucester, had a fight on the way home, cooked pasta for tea". Even though they weren't overly descriptive or recounting the most pleasant times in our lives, I was absolutely fascinated by each entry and wished she'd written more. I find remnants from the past that other people have written absolutely fascinating, I just wish I could foster the same feelings for my own.


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Of course, rereading these old diaries and entries made me think about this blog and how I might feel about it in the future. The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts and so I'm going to try to be more accepting of those 'awkward years', the choices I've made and try to recount on moments from the past fondly. I guess sometimes I just wish I hadn't documented it! If you're reading this 29 year old Bianca, I'm sorry!


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Maybe in ten years the internet will be an entirely different realm and all of the information I've stored here won't exist any more! When I said this to C he said "...and there will be cars that fly, and robots that do your homework and jet packs!".

Do you ever feel uncomfortable about reading things you've written from a long time ago?

^ I found this on Tumblr today and thought it was sweet.

I woke up this morning to a knock on the door from the parcel post deliverer who was holding a large, stamp covered yellow envelope (which is too large for me to even scan!) from the lovely Melinda from GirlZootZilla. I love the quotes on the back of the envelope. It contained a beautiful sunflower card and a letter in a kind of '20 questions' format on twenty pieces of paper. I am very excited about responding to it. Melinda blogged the envelope here I believe. I scanned a few of the questions, but my scanner is having a bad week and they were barely readable. They included things like; Would you want to have hair that you could change to any colour ever day? Cake, cookie, ice cream or bacon & toast? If you were to make a tourist brochure for your life, what would you include, exclude, photograph? What was for breakfast? If you could be a crayon, what colour would you choose to be and why? I thought it was a great idea and definitely worth getting up early for :)


^ from girlzoot's flickr.

Today I made C help me put curtains up in all of the rooms so it's all mysterious and dark and substantially cooler, it's 34 degrees today! We said that if C finishes his uni essay by the end of the day we might go for a walk around the beach. Only 500 words to go! ...I spoke too soon and he got called into work straight after I wrote this! Boo.

Last night my friend Manneh made an impromptu visit and we ate delicious pasta watched Orgazmo, both of which were very enjoyable, and the day before my (recently engaged) friends Andrew and Natalie stopped by for a few hours. I like that we often receive compliments from people about our little house. I think we definitely make the most of the space; it's always full of colours and things to look at and light and nice scents and breezes.

I'm sure this is old mail news to most people, but I just stumbled upon the mail art of Riitta Ikonen; From 2004 to 2006 Riitta Ikonen mailed around 100 postcards to Margaret Huber from Japan, Spain, Finland, Russia, and England. “Hair, fish, a sachet of white powder, a piece of broken record etc. were sent to test the postal system. Only three cards never reached their destination.” Here are some of my favouites;



And how about the mail art of John Fellows? (via Booooooom);





Lots of envelope making inspiration.

+ a gorgeous print by Skippy Designs.

I've been trying out our printer's abilities printing onto envelopes. C has a big box of brown recycled paper envelopes just waiting to be beautified, so I tried printing some different graphics on them. Sadly, only one of the ten envelopes I printed was a real success, but I'll use the others for something else anyway. Here's one I made with a picture I've always liked showing the anatomy of godzilla, and some birds on a wire;





The set of alphabet rubber stamps I bought last week have gotten a massive workout lately and I adore them, even if they did come missing the letter 'a'. I have to use the letter 'q' instead and smudge out the bottom half, frustrating, but worth it!

The above letter is getting mailed off today as part of a swap involved writing a list of '100 Things That Make You Happy'. I wrote and rubber stamped the list on pink index cards and they were all taped together and folded up. Don't feel obligated to read them all, most of them are kind of lame :P It was fun to make though. It's a pretty comprehensive list. These scans aren't awesome, but you get the idea;



Letter Writer's Alliance posted a link to this awesome Storque blog post titled Seller How-To: Pretty as a Package by Danielle Thompson from Kitschy Designs who gives lots of lovely tips and hints on how to pretty up envelopes and packages and also lists some of her sources for supplies. Awesome.

Ps. The mail man just delivered me some wonderful mail; a very sweet letter I can't wait to reply to from Stephanie from Lunsh;



And an envelope full of goodies (from a Mail Art themed swap) from Nicole and Jason from Gocco*boom! Contents; a lovely letter, two handmade envelopes, a little booklet they made showing where they live, two matchbook notepads and a whole heap of handmade stickers;





I ♡ good mail days :)

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I'm eating pfeffernusse, drinking rooibos, listening to The Vaselines and wishing desperately that I had a cursive typewriter, or any typewriter for that matter. I'm going to dedicate tomorrow entirely to zine making and learning how to make my own pfeffernusse.

Here's another envelope I sent out recently. It was hard to part with. Made from an old record cover, isn't she beatiful?;



I bought some metallic silver envelopes for about $2 at a bargain shop a year or two and I think they're lovely, of course the scans don't do them justice. I got a paper miscellanea lucky dip at the zine fair a few weeks ago and it contained half a dozen beautiful green photographs of things I can't quite make out. I stuck one on here;





And a Postcrossing postcard I received today from Italy that I find particularly dreamy;



I've been using some of the beautiful recycled paper envelopes and writing paper C bought for me from the Oxfam shop in Launceston lately. It's so lovely and soft to write on and pen won't smudge, and it's all in a beautiful bound cover. I'll have to make a scan of it soon.