Silver Halloween letter

Yes yes, I am terribly behind in blog posts. I'm working my way through October letter photos now. So, here we have one of my more decorative and exciting Halloween letters! I do hope the metallic silver envelope went through with no problems, along with the day-glo green gel pen ink for the address. (That ink isn't totally waterproof, so I covered it with tape.) The envelope features some of my favorite Halloween stickers, and is being modeled by a cute bendy skeleton I got from one of the Letter Writers Alliance RSVP Halloween packages.



Naturally, Soda had to get in on the photographic action. I took a bunch of her with this letter - she seemed really to like this one especially - but in an effort not to barrage you with a million Soda pictures, I just picked my favorite.



And ta-daa! - the back. I love those stickers that make a play on words with favorite alcoholic beverages and spooky imagery... skin and tonic! Eyeball highball! HA!

More spooky Halloween letters and postcards to come in future posts... because I know a lot of you readers, just like me, love Halloween year 'round.

Best. Halloween Card. Ever.

I don't usually blog about mail before I respond to it, but this one must be an exception. This lovely Halloween card came on Friday, and I squee'd and squee'd and squee'd. Like a stuck little pig. This is the most amazing Halloween card ever! It's got everything: a bat, some wine, little silver dots, the bat is wearing a bowler hat...



..AND the envelope had a glow-in-the-dark spider secured in the corner! There was transparent tape over it which I removed for photographic, but I am amazed and delighted that the spider made its journey intact and unmangled. And how much do I love those Legend of Sleepy Hollow stamps? They are pretty amazing. The sender of this fantastic card, one of the amazing gals behind The Letter Writers Alliance, even wrote a great blog entry about these stamps; if you're itching to know more about them, this is the place to start.



The back of the envelope is graced with some pretty silver-tinged washi tape and a marvelous paper sticker of a running moon-man pumpkin-head man. You can see the legs of the spider on the front poking out from the corner there.

The letterpress on this card is particularly well-done; it comes from Greenwich Letterpress in NYC, a shop that I've actually visited in person on one of my Big City ventures, and I can attest that all of their work I've seen is really fine. I am sore tempted to order a set of cards now.

Anyway, I wish a Happy Halloween to those who celebrate this spooky holiday! Remember: anything can happen.

(Don't let a bat steal your wine.)

Elvis-worthy snazz

I jazzed up this already cool envelope from the Hammerpress Notecard Book (currently out of stock at Chronicle Books) with a little bit of mail-artsyness.

The silver border was already on the brown paper envelope, but I added some bling with Stickles glitter glue and a fountain pen rubber stamp. I thought the Elvis and Okefenokee swamp stamps went nicely together, too.

Dunno why I really love brown paper envelopes, but I do... Oh, and incidentally, the little blog icon (whatsitcalled, a favicon?) for my blog is taken from the back of one of these brown paper envelopes.

Midnight Rendezvous

One of my faithful blog readers sent me yet another gorgeous PaperNosh notecard. She sent me the first one last March, which I blogged about at the time, and this time she sent an extra card for me to use as well.



How apropo - it's a bat lady! This design is called Sorcière Femme d'allure Diabolique, "Midnight Rendezvous" (is that a direct translation? I think not).



The silver accents on the black envelope are the sender's own embellishment work, fitting bats around a cloudy moon.



Even the backs of these cards are lovely. The extra she sent was a joy to write on, though the price per card listed on the website puts them a bit too rich for my blood. It was a delightful special treat, though, and I feel so spoiled!

November Benevolent Postcard Society offering

Here's what I sent out for my November Benevolent Postcard Society offering. It came from Hammerpress in Kansas City; my mom sent me this postcard with a packet of some other fun things in a letter sometime earlier this year.



I liked the silver ink on brown postcard so much that I drew a little kitty face. Soda is featured on the stamp.

I sent this BPS November card out so late because they had some sort of gmail glitch where people with gmail emails weren't receiving the address info, which was supposed to have been sent on or before the first of the month (so postcards could go out the first of the month).

I think the Benevolent Postcard Society is a really wonderful idea, but especially since the membership is limited, I find it really frustrating that people joined up with a commitment to send a postcard every month, and then clearly so many of them aren't following through. I have sent a postcard each month, of course, but I have only received one for September. Whoever was supposed to send to me in October, November and December either didn't, or it's gotten supremely lost in the mail. I could accept those odds with one postcard, but I'm sure at least two of them just never bothered to send one. The gal behind BPS wrote a very tactful post reminding members of their commitment to send postcards, and asking them to be honest and just withdraw their names from the pool if they couldn't really send the postcards every month.

I've found this experience to be very typical of the idea-vs-reality ratio of letter-writing and snail mail. A lot of people really love the idea, but lack the follow-through. I certainly don't mind that for my pen pals - write when you can, and drop off if you must - but it makes me doubly appreciate the ones who have been writing faithfully for years. It's just a little microcosm of life, I guess - there are those who talk about it, and those who do it.

Be a doer.

Go write a letter, or a postcard.

(And if you're a member of the Benevolent Postcard Society - send your postcards when you should, or gracefully bow out!)

To end on a positive note, though, the recipient of this postcard wrote me back a really nice postcard, which included her own artwork that was delightfully modified by her kitty. I still owe her a response - so I guess I should quit talking and start doing, and go write a letter myself!

Bat punch fun

A friend gave me a gift of some autumn-themed paper punches last year. There's a cat, two different leaf shapes, and a bat (my favorite, of course). I like to use them on envelope flaps and color underneath for effect. I photographed this process for you...



...and Soda helped oversee the procedure. (The punch, with the envelope, is at her feet.)



First, I colored underneath the punch area with a silver gel pen.



Then I closed the flap without sealing it just to make sure I had the whole area covered.



Here's a photo of the punch itself on top of the envelope, before sealing - with Soda's paws in the upper right-hand corner. (See how helpful she is??)



Then, voila! A silvery bat window. (Alas, it's not quite centered, but hey, that adds to the charm, right?)



Soda thinks so.

Hammerpress card with UK Fairies stamp

So I read about the release of the fantastic UK Mythical Creatures stamps from the ever-informative and delightful Letter Writers Alliance blog. I have been in awe of these stamps since their release - even contemplating paying international shipping for the very expensive Stamp cards of these gorgeous images... and then one of my pen pals from Scotland sent me a gorgeous letter with one of them! I was so excited to see one of these up close:



But the loveliness doesn't end there. This Scottish gal often uses lovely stationery, and this letter was also my first glimpse of the Hammerpress cards from Chronicle Books. (Sorry for the general link - I'm not sure if these are the Correspondence Cards or the Notecards. Chronicle Books, if you're reading my blog posting - your descriptions and image varieties on your website leave much to be desired.)



This card included more of the silver-ink highlights of the envelope, and had a green theme with a fantastic owl.



Even the back of the envelope was lovely - I'm really charmed by the use of silver ink on the brown paper envelope.