Letters, Gifts and Musings...

 

Hello from a sunny and hot Florida! Well, it was sunny earlier today and hot but here I am enjoying being in the warmer weather in November! I arrived her this past Tuesday and what a different scene it is from Western NY where I was!  I ☺had a nice little pile of post waiting for me when I arrived here from several places in the world. My dear friend and pal Jo from England had sent me a nice little gift (which included the little notebook and flowers pictured above) which she posted from Greece while she was visiting our mutual pal there, I received an intro from a new pal from the pen pal group I'm in on Facebook, a letter from a friend in Cardiff and a letter from a lady in Canada asking if I wanted to be pals. 

This lovely post was from my friend Ali in Cardiff! I love how all of my pals personalise things! Postcardsm paper bits and even a tea bag!

I think I may have to visit Cheddar Gorge and Glastonbury Tor when I am back in the UK! They look like fabulous places and Ali sure knows how to describe them enticingly enough! :)

Lovely gifts from Jo, my pen palling soul mate, full of loads of little goodies! 

I don't have a photo of the other letters but they were both quite lovely too! I have been re-discovering all the bits and stationery I'd left behind when I left for the UK earlier in April and decided that for now I am going to start using the cards that I have here to accompany my letters. I have so many cards and they are lovely but sometimes I forget to use them so I think I shall start putting them to good use! Today I wrote to my Finnish pen pal Maria on a lovely pink card which I added her name to on the front. I decorated the inside with hand-coloured round labels and other bits. I also answered her mail tag and added my own tag on the back of my business card.

Decorating the inside of the card with hand-coloured dots! Lovely aren't they?

I love mail tags because they are a great way of getting to know more about pals and also of sending things that your pal might like. To the left, on the Diddl paper, is the mail tag my friend sent me and I responded with some hand-drawn/coloured stickers, a little sticky note with something about my country, a list of 10 books that really moved/impressed me and a couple of bits of decorative paper as I sadly could not find a nice paper napkin to send this time.

Do any of you do mail tags and if so, what do you often ask for or include? I also received an intro letter from a new pal in Norway which I'm going to read tonight before sleeping with a cup of tea latte. 

Isn't this a cute envelope? I can't wait to read it with my warm drink all cosy up in my bed!

Anyway, thank you for stopping by and spending some time with me today. I hope you're all having an excellent week! 

Happy Snail Mailing!

Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.  ~Lord Byron

Decorated letters...

Hello again dear friends!

Sunday evenings are the best for blogging, letter writing and the like. I find that sitting down to write while listening to classical music soothes the soul and gets the creative juices flowing. I wanted to talk about decorating letters today. Like most of you, I adore trying to find the cutest and most decorative stationery out there but I must admit that I rather like decorating my own paper and making unique forms of stationery.

This is a postcard I made using papers and ephemera I had lying around...

The postcard above was hand-made for a postcrossing swap I had done. You can see another example of a hand-made postcard by clicking here for my blog Mes Petites Creations. That one in the link was for a fall swap. 

Another form of decorative stationery is hand-made cards and I have seen some really gorgeous ones out there! I have a limited amount of resources right now so I make cards with what I have on hand. Here is another example from my other blog:

I made this one a while ago using up scraps of paper I had
around. To see more images click here.

Besides making and printing my own cards (I print my own photography onto card stock and make my own blank note cards) I like to decorate my letters with stickers or hand-drawn embellishments. I have an enormous sticker collection and find so many uses for all those stickers in letter writing.

Here you can see that I've used stickers to decorate plain white envelopes. 

...

Here you can see a couple of the stickers I've used. These were actually
images I'd printed myself onto sticky full label paper. Aren't they lovely?
Home printed stickers!

...

Sometimes I decide to get even more creative and include drawings in my
letters...this one unfortunately never reached it's destination, it has been
lost in transit...hopefully someday it will reach it's intended recipient...sigh!

So, those are just samples of what I've done...how about you? How do you like to decorate your letters? Do you make your own cards? I'd love to hear from you! 

Lots of love,

Nadia Marie