Today C and I went for a bike ride. My new bike arrived last week in a big box and we assembled it but had trouble with the brake tension and so when we I left the house today the brakes worked, but soon afterward - nothing! This would have been fine if I could touch the ground to stop - but my legs are too short! It was pretty scary to ride with no brakes and so I ended up walking it into the city and we stopped at the big old post box outside city park to post a letter to Lauren. The pretty pink bike is now being looked after by some nice men who fix bikes until Tuesday. Hopefully she doesn't cost me a small fortune. It will be nice to at least have everything properly adjusted. When I was able to ride it today, it was such a wonderful ride. Launceston is full of bike paths and I can't wait to explore them.

✍ Trevor Dickinson from my hometown is drawing 100 Newcastle mailboxes.


✍ Just Noey has a cute range of 'Post a Plates' at her Etsy, mail good enough to eat off! (via Milly)


✍ Have you discovered the wonders of Bad Postcards? It is a treasure trove of slightly unfortunate vintage American postal items.


✍ Map Envelope lets you print out a template for an envelope that is lined with your Google Maps location.

✍ Ever wanted to tweet by snail mail? Similarly, Dawdlr asks you to send them a postcard telling them "what are you doing, you know, more generally?".


✍ How would one Google without the internet? How about Snail Mail Google? Mail away your search and see if they write back.


✍ An oldie but a goodie - the ol' Postcarden - in Botanical, Allotment, City and Football varieties. It arrives as a card and you transform it into a tiny garden.


✍ I was never a Mr Bean fan as a kid, but this video of Mr Bean trying to post a letter did make me smile.

✍ My grandma makes hand-made quilted fabric postcards - though mine will never live up to her glory I'm thinking about trying my hand at it, I found a bit of a how-to here.


✍ Nutre Jewellers make a collection of wooden rings that you send as postcards and then assemble. Cute! Likewise, you can Build Your Own New York with constructible NY building postcards.

Milly aka Laura aka Make Do & Mend was kind enough to host a travelling journal and I am a participant. The theme is 'What I Did Today' and each participant decorates a couple of pages detailing what happened on the day the journal reached them. So far the journal has only ventured from Laura in the UK to Brodie in Melbourne and then to me and I will be sending it onward to Sharni in Victoria. At the very end Laura will post up pictures of everyone's pages. The majority of my art making tools are in storage, but it was kind of fun being limited for tools. Here are the pages I decorated;



The mail themed travelling journal I hosted back in November is about a third of the way through its 20 participants, hopefully it makes it back one day. Perhaps it's time to start another!

^ Using bits from Pugly Pixel and Graphics Fairy.

I've been keen to host a swap for a while and going through my music collection yesterday I decided I needed something fresh. Do you feel that way too? I thoroughly enjoyed participating in Kittycat's mix swap back in April and Swap-bot's old cd swaps and thought it might be time to share the music again.

The Mix Share Swap:
♡ You will send a mix cd to two different people, thus you will receive two mixes in return.
♡ Mixes should contain at least 10 songs and include a tracklisting.
♡ The people you send to are not necessarily the people you will receive a mix from.
♡ Mixes can have any theme you choose (ie. Songs from artists from your country, songs from your favourite movie soundtracks, songs that make you happy, your favourite acoustic songs, your favourite covers, songs with hand-claps/blistering guitar solos/tabourines, songs to drive to, songs with colours in the title, songs to go to sleep to, songs featuring place names, etc) or no theme.
♡ Decorate the packaging in whatever way takes your fancy - here is some mix cd inspiration I found today. Make sure the cd is safe and won't be easily damaged in transit.
♡ This swap is international and anyone can participate.

How to participate: Drop me an email at biancajagoe[at]gmail.com with 'Mix Share Swap' in the subject line with your;

Name:
Postal address:
Blog url: (if you have one)
+ indicate if you don't mind sending outside your country.
(you're also welcome to forward your LastFM profile or any other links to what kinds of music you dig - or you can write a few sentences about your music taste)

Sign ups will close on the Wednesday 11th of August (my ma's birthday!) and then I'll email you with your partners' details. After this you will have two weeks to mail out your mixes to your partners. Hope you're keen :)

SWAP IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED :)