More Belated Incoming Outgoing

I spent the mid-month of December working on mail, slowly but surely catching up on my replies.  These will be going out in the mail tomorrow.

Got this great envelope and letter from Anne Elizabeth from Letter Love.  This was her first letter to me and my second to her.

I love the washi tape and the labels.

I also love the stationery.

I am also replying to this great note from Erin Fickert-Rowland.  Her mail art can be found here at Elysian Studios.  She's kind of awesome and very adventurous.

I loved this card so much.  The texture of the paint left on the smooth stock was great.

This is a returned correspondant card from Katherine, who I think I found over at Pen Pal of the Week.

She has great handwriting and is my only Canadian Pen Pal.  I like the postmarks on her envelopes.

On the outgoing side, I sent all three replies in these airmail envelopes I had bought from Amazon forever ago.  Not fancy, but better than a plain #10.

This is the international stamp for Katherine's letter.

Also outgoing tomorrow is the awesome Pneumatic Post.  This will be its third trip through the postal system.

The Pneumatic Post comes from the LWA and is awesome.  The best part is finding fun things to fill it with.  The first time I mailed it out, I sent out a bagel dog bone and addressed it to Kathy's dog.  When I got it back, I received some great beauty samples.  I am not going to mention what I am sending out this time in the event she reads this post.

The LWA does a great job of explaining how it all works so I won't re-hash it for you here, but it is a fun mail toy.  I thought I would have a hard time with the postage removal, and it did take some work, but it was not too bad.  I soaked it for a few hours yesterday in hot soapy water and got as much of the sticky stuff off with my nails as I could.  Then I hit it with the Goo-Gone and it was good as new.  Probably should have tried the Goo-Gone first.

My plan tomorrow is to go to the main RI post office to see if I can finally get my hands on some $2 Waves of Color Stamps and hopefully pop one on this thing.  Either way it's getting mailed, but I am having the worst time finding that series.  My local post office said the don't have them and won't be getting them.  They called a second post office in my city who said the same.  The third post office I tried had never even heard of them, I had to show them a photo on my phone.  So we shall see how tomorrow goes.

Merry Christmas

It's the end of a long day here at the Paul House.  I wanted to say Merry Christmas to all of my fellow pen friends and readers, I hope anyone who celebrates this day had a wonderful day.

If this were any other year, I would say I love Christmas Time because it's the most mail I get all year.  Not so for 2012 because now I have all of my new pen pals, who I very much appreciate.

1000 Cards for Patsy

Today over at the LWA Blog Donovan posted about a woman named Patsy.  Patsy lost, literally, a lifetime of correspondence in Hurricane Sandy.  She is 87 and she was saving them to read in her final hours.  Her son-in-law is trying to get her 1000 cards for Christmas.  I am sending four, because I don't know when to stop.  Click that link above to see the story.

Got this card at Papyrus, thought it was classy and elegant.

Also love the lined envelope.

Picked this card because it was glam.  At 87, you deserve some glam and expensive cards.  Also, I love purple and snow.  The envelope is a shimmering silver.  Also from Papyrus.

Matching lining!

Picked this card because aquamarine is my very favorite color, other than gray.  March is my birthday, aquamarine is my color.  From Papyrus.

This is the final card, from Hallmark.  I love what is says, because it's true.  I think of her receiving all of this mail and I can see her smiling and joyful.  This card has a stunning matte-finish gray envelope.

Patsy, Merry Christmas.  You are four cards richer and I thank you for the smile you brought to my face tonight.  I loved sending these to you.

Letters from Santa

This will be the last post on Christmas anything for 2012, I promise.  I wanted to post some more detailed photos of the Santa Mail and I also have some pics of my Christmas Card Envelopes.

This is one of the letters from my future-sister-in-law's students.  Jen was kind enough to decode them for me.

The top half.

This letter was mailed to me from Hailey. She thought she was sending it to Santa and she included her address on the bottom, just in case!

This weekend I did eight letters from Santa.  I did three for my family and 5 for my friends.  I wasn't satisfied with just making them for my family so I pestered people on Facebook until some people took me up on my offer.

This is the display with undecorated envelopes.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the paper is a shimmering gold from Staples called Buttercream and the a shimmering silver also from Staples.  The envelopes are white and cream resume envelopes I already had. 

This is the decorated array.

I put the white envelopes with the silver paper and used it for the girls.  The trim is silver and red, stamped twice.

I use the buttercream and ivory for the boys, stamped in gold and green trim.

I feel like I should know this, but I think the waves of the postmark should be going the other way, right?

This is the very first letter from Santa to Trevor, who was born on Monday, 12/10/12.  This letter is more for Preston's benefit, who is his big brother.  I thought it would only be appropriate for them to both be receiving mail from Santa.

This is a silver letter for Sylvia, who is the daughter of my favorite masseuse.  I don't get to see her {my masseuse} very often, but she is the only person I will see when I want a massage!  She sent me an email with what Sylvia asked for for Christmas and included that she always has Santa encourage her to eat new foods.

I don't think I mentioned it before, but the font in the letters and on the envelopes is called the King & Queen font.

The back of the envelopes from Santa.

Lastly, to feel like I am getting my money's worth out of the stamp sets, I used them to decorate my Christmas Card envelopes.  I printed the addresses on with my computer using a font called 1942 Report.

This is the stack of outgoing cards.  There are a few addressed to my pen pals in there!

"Official Nice Certificates" ~ from Santa

Here is another post on the Santa swag I have been working on.  I hope I am not boring you all with them.  I am having a really good time with it and I thought it was time I took some proper {read: not cell phone} photos of them.

Tonight I finished up all of the Nice Certificates for some students of my future-sister-in-law.  She is a special education teacher in a town near where I work.  I wasn't satisfied just making stuff for Preston & Hailey, so I asked her if she wanted to have her students write to Santa.  Each of her students got a personal reply letter and an Official Nice List Certificate.  I also opened it up to my friends on FaceBook.  Anyway...  here we go:

It's safe to say that I am adoring the stamp sets that I bought {blogged about here}.

The airmail stripes have to be done twice, once red and once green, but I like it so much better with the double detailing.  That stripe, and the postmark waves and the green stamp frame, all came from the postal-themed stamp set.

Looks legit, right?

I am using some Crane stationery and envelopes that a friend had bought me for Christmas two years ago now.

I wrote the name myself.  The letters are not perfect but calligraphy takes a lot of practice and I have not been practicing.  Over the summer, as some of you know, I took a calligraphy class from a wonderful fellow dog-lover by the name of Jane Parillo.  She has a shop called Scribe {website here}.  

This is the actual "certificate".  The center black text is all on one stamp and I wrote in Preson's name.  The bottom right is two separate stamps.  The Naughty / Nice boxes & text are one stamp, the checkmark is a second, and "You've been:" is a third.  You can actually make a note to Santa by changing to the stamp that says "I've been:"

On the top half, so that it didn't look so plain, I stamped Santa's face and what is intended to be the bottom of Santa's letterhead.  I still much prefer the letterhead by the LWA, so I used it this way instead.  To add some color, I rubbed in some chalk colors that I already had using a q-tip.  

So that's it on the certificates.  I will feature some "real" photos of the mail from Santa in the next few days.

Three More Outgoing

This past Saturday Morning I sent three more overdue pen-pal replies and one package of photos out.  Because the envelopes were lame, I didn't photograph the outgoing.  These are pictures of the letters I replied to.

I received this beautiful, hand-made envelope from the very crafty Laura DH over at the suburban pen pal.  

I love the wax seals and the barely visible washi tape.

I also very much love the use of the paint chip on the back and the giant numbers.  Here is the post where she included pictures of the envelope she made for me.  Scroll all the way down to the bottom.  I sent Laura a pretty long letter along with a stack of photos.

This hand made envelope is from the lovely Mrs. Duffy over at Letter Matters.  It was so thoughtful of her to include my initial on the back!  If you don't already write to Mrs. Duffy, you should know she has beautiful handwriting.

I finally replied to a letter from Anna of The Lettering that dated back to August.  Anna is the pen pal I have exchanged the most and longest letters with so far.  This was the back of the envelope.

She makes all of her envelopes and always puts on the cutest stickers.  She also typed my address out on a typewriter.

Another thing I like about Anna's letters, aside from the fact that they are legible, unlike my replies, is that she writes on different paper.  Anna got a 9 pager back plus a stack of photos.

She also includes really neat inserts.  This card from the Smithsonian was great.

I also sent a stack of photos to LR McArthur.  I had said I would include them in the letter but I couldn't get to the photo shop in a timely fashion and her letter was already so late I decided to mail them separately.

Letters from Santa

Here are two letters from Santa. These are in response to letters written by seven of my future sister in law's students. It's safe to say that I love the stamp sets that I purchased!