I started painting little postcards when this pandemic began, thinking I’d paint one a day and mail it out while we were all social distancing at home. Silly me, I figured I’d be painting for a couple months.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

I sent out 100 of them over the summer, figuring I was mailing smiles. But then I sort of petered out. Not only did I run out of people to mail them to, I sort of ran out of ideas too.

Oh there was the occasional sympathy card. A birthday here and there. But I haven’t done generic cards that just magically appeared in unsuspecting people’s mailboxes in a long time.

And now I realize that I didn’t share with you the last few batches that went out, so that’s what this post is about…showing you what got mailed up until…well…today.

I had to go dig through my file to see how many that is. The last time I posted about this was July 28. Looks like I’ve painted quite a few since then.

So many of these were fun to do. Quite a lot of them were really challenging.

I’ve learned a lot, working on this project. The most important thing I’ve learned is to try, even when it seems like an idea is beyond my talent.

Sure, during almost every painting I reached a point where I was sure I had ruined it. And every painting has something I wished I could change. But they all make me smile.

In fact I get attached to each one, making it hard to mail them off. But I try to keep in mind that they’re going to their new homes where I hope they will make someone smile, and that’s the whole point.

During these months, and maybe years, of the pandemic it’s becoming more and more important that we take the time to make someone smile.

I don’t know if I can keep painting little cards, I’m starting to think I want to try something larger, though that also feels a bit intimidating.

I mean, even if I paint something successfully…what in the world would I do with it? It’s not like I can just randomly mail 8x10s to unsuspecting recipients.

Can I?