January mystery package extraordinaire

I get a fair number of fancy letters and postcards, but I don't often get fancy packages - especially ones that are a total surprise!



This fantastic package, which is really sort of a triangular tube (is there a word for that? High-school geometry was long, long ago), came to me from the fabulous Melissa of Craftgasm, sender of tons of very good mail. (Lucky me, I'm the recipient of quite a bit of it!)



Because I was so tickled with it, I had to photograph it from every angle before I even opened it. I thought I should share the joy with my blog readers.



She did a truly excellent job with the tape. This was a big hit in the UPS store where I get my mail, with all the employees and a few of the customers standing around to admire it when they brought it out to me.



And, my personal favorite - all those glorious stamps! An air mail letter label! (The letter really was inside there.)

I am going to keep the contents a secret - they were a marvelous surprise, but they may show up later in a different form so for now, I just had to share the joy of the big weird surprise package itself.

A fancy package

This went out to a special acquaintance who moved on to another phase of her life. She never responded to the letter or gift, but I think she probably appreciated it anyway.



Sometimes you just gotta send something really special, even if you think you may never get a response.

DumpsterDiver's Tin of Wonders

Mail artist and exceptionally generous pen pal DumpsterDiver sent me this Mail Tin of Wonders. It is a tin that looks like an air mail letter, which she then further decorated with stickers and wonderful stamps.



The back/bottom of the tin looks like the back of an envelope. So meta! So love it!



Here you can see how thick it is, plus its essential metal nature. Not a light thing to begin with, it was packed chock-full of amazing-mail-ness.



The postcard featured a letter on the back, but those awesome rubber stamps are her own hand-carved handiwork. I am PLOTZING over all of them, most especially the mailbox.



Here are all the goodies spread out (except the letter opener - that's mine, it just crept into the photo). Stickers, labels, and even a fountain pen + cartridges! The pen is called Riviere, and although the sender rescued most of her items from a dumpster, the pen came from a Daiso, a west-coast Japanese stationery store. Nowhere does it say it is a Platinum pen, but those cartridges look like Platinums to me, and indeed my Platinum converter fits the pen. I guess I should do a full review elsewhere, but all things considered, this is a mighty fine pen. My only complaint is that the clip keeps coming off when I remove the cap, but it's very easy to click back into place. Good writer, if a bit on the dry side.

EDIT: Update from sender
She says:
"The Riviere fountain pen, ink cartridges, letter tin, and address labels are from the Japanese dollar store- Daiso. The Moleskine calendar letter started out as dumpster. Japanese stickers and San Francisco faux-postage sticker came from Pod Post and their lovely Mailart Bento box. I won the bento box at the raffle during the Good Mail Day Book Launch party!"


So WOW! I felt so spoiled when I opened this, and I still do... totally enjoying the labels, stickers, and pen... and I haven't figured out how to properly re-use the tin, but it's sitting on an embellishments shelf and I admire it occasionally.

HURRAH FOR GOOD MAIL DAYS!

A pretty package

Here's another recent use of the lace deco tape I got from orientalflea on etsy. This here is the silver glitter installment, which I foresee using even more than the rest. It was the first one that merited an "ooh, must have that" thought when I saw it. Oh yes, and this silver-outlined-in-purple writing on the package came from this Pentel deco outline marker. Fun stuff.



Gotta love how a slight change in angle will totally change the glitter of the bling. You can see that this is a larger version of the lady cat sticker I got from Janetstore that I featured in a blog entry last week; the stickers come in a bunch of different sizes on one sheet.



I love this sassy winkin' kitty. I took these closer photographs so you can get a better look at the design of the deco tape, too.



Here's the bottom bling.

The package's lovely recipient blogged about it recently, so you can get some more views of it (and of the contents, which I did not photograph but probably should have) there.

Pen packaging

I participated in a Pen Swap on Swap-bot recently, and I decorated the package to match the contents.



Well, okay, I didn't send an antique fountain pen like this, but I did send a fountain pen.

Brown paper packages tied up with string

I don't know which I love more, the package or what it contains. This came from India bearing fine Indian fountain pens. The package, emblematic of one of my favorite song lyrics, was so lovely I had to photograph it. (Haven't photographed the pens yet... too busy writing with them!)



It came all the way from India most expeditiously, and in fine condition.



The Pièce de résistance: this hard wax seal over the string.

I'm stuck on you

One of my correspondents is from New Zealand, and she sent me this surprise package covered with wonderful deco tape: awesome arrangement on the back!

It contained some very cute kawaii stationery, which I'll have to photograph to show to the Missive Maven readers. All in due time...

Package from Thailand

I bought a pen (a Pilot SP-100n EF fountain pen, for anyone who's wondering) from Thailand on eBay - good deal, free shipping. Fun in any case, but I never expected it to arrive in such an adorable package!

(Dig the little elephant on the postage meter stamp.)

Also, the pen was really well packaged inside a nearly-indestructible PVC pipe.