Back in stock: I jump for joy over snail mail!

After being sold out of this postcard for over a year, I finally have it back in stock in my etsy shop.

"I jump for joy over snail mail!"

Does a good letter bring you joy? Do you jump up and down with excitement when you pull promising snail mail out of your mail box? Okay, maybe there aren't too many of us who are THAT geeky over mail, but you can show your love of good old fashioned snail mail with this vintage graphic of a girl dancing on a snail. What's not to love?

Along with "I jump for joy over snail mail!", I also have 10 other postcard designs for the postal enthusiast.

May your weekend be filled with good mail!

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.

Etsy letterpress love: Orange tabby press

I found out about Orange tabby press, a fantastic etsy shop, from one of PostMuse's tweets (@PostMuse). She was praising this Snail mail letterpress stationery set, and of course I fell in love with it and couldn't resist ordering some. It's a little hard to tell from the photo (though the description does say this on the etsy listing), but it's on light green paper. The paper itself is thick and of high quality, and takes fountain pen ink beautifully. I've only tried one ink on it, and in all honesty I can't even remember what ink it was right now... but it did not bleed through or show through at all, and I could write on both sides.



Also from Orange Tabby Press, I got this lovely set of Letterpress notebook paper, which really does come with the pencil. I haven't tried mine out yet, though I will assuredly do so with a fountain pen and not the pencil.

Crane & Co. wants pen pals

The Crane Insider, the blog of the venerable Crane & Co. paper company is looking for pen pals. Check out their blog post, Pen pals wanted, for the full details. They offer to write a letter back to anyone who writes them.

I would caution them about that promise, since I do not even make it myself anymore, but I am but one gal and not a company that employs quite a lot of people, and makes paper, to boot.

Oh yes, and the icing on the cake is that "every pen pal will be entered in a contest to win an assortment of Crane & Co. paper goodies." Hmm... I certainly don't need more pen pals, but I will most likely send a letter for that entry!

Pictured at the top of this post is some of my favorite Crane stationery, Snail mail correspondence cards, made in their Kate Spade line. I did a blog review of these cards way back in 2008.

3 more new postcard designs in my shop

The creative juices are flowing fast this summer, and I am having a ball creating the postcards I wish I could find. So I've got three new designs up in my etsy shop!



1. "Solitude and good company: Lord Byron letter-writing quote postcard". I have always adored this quote by Lord Byron -- in fact, it's the very first item I put on this website when I was designing it a few years ago! -- and decided it was high time to design a postcard that featured it. The quote is at the bottom in white script on black, below a photo I took of three wonderful vintage stamps from the 1974 "Letters Mingle Souls" issue.

The text reads:
Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.
-Lord Byron



2. I jump for joy over snail mail postcard. When I found this graphic of a girl dancing on a snail, I knew I had to put it to postal use.

Does a good letter bring you joy? Do you jump up and down with excitement when you pull promising snail mail out of your mail box? Okay, maybe there aren't too many of us who are THAT geeky over mail, but you can show your love of good old fashioned snail mail with this vintage graphic of a girl dancing on a snail. What's not to love?



3. NEW re-designed Postman postcard. I was unhappy with the red-bordered old design (which is now discounted at 7 for $5 in case you liked that design with the poem better), so I cleaned up the graphic and removed the poem, and placed it all on a soft cream background.

Reproduction of a beautiful vintage postman illustration. Meta mail, anyone? Look at his bountiful bundle of packages and letters - and he's offering a letter to you!




I've updated my very popular combination pack of postcards to include photos of all 6 designs together, too. In sum total, they are:
Snail mail: Not Dead Yet
Postman (new design on cream with no borders)
To get a letter... Write a letter.
Email: when you care enough to send the very least.
I jump for joy over SNAIL MAIL!
Solitude and good company: Lord Byron letter-writing quote

I hope some of you have as much fun with these as I did - I am certainly going to be sending some of them myself. :-)

Now, in other shop news -- I'm going on vacation next week. I will be in the woods again, my annual pilgrimage, and I'll be far away from my shop. I think I will probably put my shop "on vacation" so that no one orders items and then gets disappointed that they won't ship for a week. But when a shop goes on vacation, the items disappear until the shop returns. So if you're thinking of getting anything from my shop, do it before Monday, or wait until the shop and I come back online on July 18.

Snail mail may not be dead yet, but my postage idea is!

I tried to get some stamps printed, just for myself and my own correspondence, of my new "Snail Mail: Not Dead Yet" design. I thought they would have been pretty darn cute, to be honest.

But Zazzle won't let me print them. My order was canceled due to a "violation of the content guidelines," and when I asked for further explanation, I received this reasoning:

In this instance, your order contained products that references death and "snail mail" on customized postage, which violates the Zazzle User Agreement and content guidelines.

Go figure! I'm glad I could get them printed (from a different company), and bummed about the postage. Interesting rule. Just had to share my immediate frustration...

Snail Mail: Not Dead Yet!

I'm really excited about these two new updates to my etsy shop. First we have the creepy, skully, "Snail Mail: Not Dead Yet" design.

Don't you hate it when someone says "snail mail is dead" or "no one writes letters anymore" or something like that? I do! I put those sentiments to work in my slightly creepy, goth-inspired, Monty-Python-quoting design.



The postcard reads "Snail Mail: Not Dead Yet" alongside a black-and-white graphic of a skull holding a letter, accented with a red seal on the envelope. (The real postcard won't say "proof," of course.) This skull design has a high-gloss image side, and the writing side has a slight gloss but is still fountain-pen friendly...



...so I took a picture to prove it! This is a close zoom with two different inks (Noodler's Eternal Hunter Green and Legal Lapis, for those who are curious).



I also have a reprint of my Vintage postman illustration design. The original set from moo.com is almost sold out, and aside from being not terribly friendly to fountain pen ink (a bummer, in my book), they are also quite expensive. They cost lots more for me to print, so they cost more for you to buy. I decided to try out a different printer for this run, and I'm really happy with the results, as well as the fountain-pen friendliness. I chose a recycled, matte paper for this postcard.

I have to be honest and say the precision at moo is better. I am a little piffled that the trim on the Postman postcards is inconsistent; nearly always uneven, but sometimes moreso than others. I think I'll have to size the next batch in a more exacting fashion. I'm learning as I go...



If you're indecisive like I am, or you like variety, I'm also selling them in combination packs: 5 postcards, you choose how many of each design.



Here you see the backs of the postcards, with the matte Postman on the bottom and the glossy skull on the top. The matte color isn't quite as bright white.



The frame on the back is a perfect fit for the current design of 29-cent postcard rate stamps, the correct postage rate if you're sending domestically within the USA.

I'm really excited about these postcards! I'm sure I'll be using them for a lot of my own correspondence, too. I'd really, really love your input, though: my blog readers give me the most valuable feedback, and I cherish it. What do you think? Would you buy? Why or why not?

snaily mail

Quite a while back I did a swap on Swap-bot called "Snail Mail :]." I blogged about my own offerings at the time, but did end up responding to one of the swapped envelopes I got.



The idea was to decorate the envelope with many snails, and I was really touched by the hand-drawn snails on this one.



She obviously put some time into her snaily drawings...



...and I found them delightful.

Snail mail swap

Behold the fruit of another swapbot swap: Snail Mail :].



The idea was to decorate a snail mail envelope with snails - this I can do! (I even tried drawing a couple.)



The instructions directed, "just make sure it is snaily!"



I'm all over snaily... I've got quite a few snail stamps and stickers, but I'm always on the lookout for more.

Snail mail wax seal

I went "squeeeeeeee!", overwhelmed with the cuteness, when I saw this awesome wax seal on a letter. Lovely, meta, fabulous.

The day I wrote 9 letters

I do write a lot of letters, but 9 heading out on one day is prolific even for me. This is what I did with my spring break.



These babies all headed out on March 19, so yeah, I'm behind on this happy blog... but I think it's apropo of the timing of snail mail... you just gotta wait for it, and that's part of the joy. Plus, these letters have already arrived by now (I hope!); I hate to ruin the surprise of letting recipients know exactly what their letter is going to look like before it hits their hot little hands.

Fun with snail stamps

I seem to be developing a fetish for snail-themed rubber stamps, to complement the snail mail idea.

I had fun last night with this one finding a few spicy vintage stamps for Donovan of LWA fame.



On the back is one of my new cat stickers from MOO. Once my new camera arrives, I will take some more photos of this nifty personalized photo sticker book.

Kirsten Ulve's Snail Mail

I love this stationery, actually called Kirsten Ulve's Snail Mail. Each page has a different design. Here are 2 of the 8 that I used in a recent letter:



And the back of the envelope:


And one more envelope:


Love this stuff.

R&K Alt Bordeaux in Haolilai 601

The bottom of a letter, where I note the fountain pen ink color (IF the letter is to another fountain pen user who might want to know the color).

This is a pretty true representation of the R&K Alt Bordeaux, one of my favorite inks - best viewed large to see the shading and color variance properly.

The stationery is by Papyrus.

Kate Spade Snail Mail notecards

I finally splurged and ordered these Snail Mail notecards, which I've been coveting for ages. These are so luscious. Made by Kate Spade partnered with Crane, the paper quality is extremely high. I think they're cotton. They take fountain pen ink gorgeously with no smudging - and who can resist the adorable green and gold snail??

They're pricey for me, but you gotta have a little high-end "treat" stationery around for special letters.



I got mine from Paperstyle, which has the same price as everybody else but the service is really fantastic.