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.

Hong Kong flower

I got this delightful letter from a blog reader in Hong Kong. I am so in awe of this flower doodle on the envelope. It looks kind of effortless to me, but all those little scribbles just make up a beautiful flower. This is what amazes me about people who can draw. Anyway, I really dig the flower, and the sweet letter included.



Included was this funky gift of some Chinese papers, including this "Story of Children."

On another note, I'll apologize again for the scarcity of posting. Life is nuts for me right now. On the positive side, the other night I wrote 10 postcards instead of taking time to to a blog entry, so I suppose that's progress...

Lovely Rainbow, Happy Color

This rainbow kawaii stationery is the bomb. I love the various weird phrases...

"Happy?? This is new style."

"Oh!!"

"Cute!! Love Rock!"



Unfortunately for my friend who sent it, it got returned to him and he sent it again to me in a plain envelope... these foreign envelopes with different positioning of address and name, and return address, can be confusing - I always try to address them closer to USA convention, and hope that will make delivery less problematic.



My favorite sweet color... wtf??



And of course we mustn't forget the inside pages.

Forgive my clumsy swirling... it's not as elegant now that I'm using Gimp instead of Photoshop, but... it does the trick.

One more day for cat postcard swaps, round 2!

Okay, I really hope I'm not being too annoying with this Swap-Bot Cat Postcard Swap thing, but here's a little reminder that tomorrow, Sunday Nov. 29, is the last day to sign up for round #2 of the cat postcard swaps on Swap-Bot: the USA only swap for those of you that live in the USA and don't want to pay international postage, and the International swap open to any country.

GMD zine: the making of

It is entirely possible that my love-fest for Good Mail Day may never end. It certainly won't, if they keep sending me such lovelies!

In this fabulous meta mail art envelope, they sent me a zine about the making of the book.



It was delicious, and I probably should have taken more photos of it before I filed it away in the place where happy mail goes.



Of course it was chock-full of meta-mail goodness. Those PodPost Goddesses rock.

Envelope for GMD Faux Post Giveaway

When I saw this post on the Good Mail Day blog, I fell in love with the "special delivery every day" faux postage. And those awesome gals, they said they had a few to give away if you sent them a SASE! So I did, but of course I had to pretty up the envelope for them. We've seen this goatmail stamp recently, but I don't know if I've shown off this combination of vintage postage stamps yet.



On the back I used a vintage air mail POD label from 1957.

On another note, thanks to my laptop, I can blog from the road! I'm not at home to get my mail right now, but I'm with family in the Midwest for Thanksgiving. In fact, I'm writing this blog entry from a hotel lobby.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American blog readers!

Vintage stationery spotlight: Laff Letters

Tonight I'll share a few views of some of my favorite vintage stationery (a la eBay): the WWII-era Laff Letters.



As the box says, "letter and envelope in one," so pretty much a postalette or fold-and-mail concept.



The back of each design has a joke that tends to be racist or sexist or both... I guess they are a product of their time.



I love the return address space in this "bulletin from" design, and the "atoms for peace" vintage stamp is one of my favorites.



I sent the above "last minute news" design to my late grandfather about a year ago - I tried to use a WWII/veterans theme in the stamps, or at least stamps that made sense for his lifetime.

She's batty

A dear friend sent me this wonderful bat card from She's Batty Designs. You know I love that name! The skull-embossed paper was really fun, and of course the sparklebat was my favorite part.



Groovy logo.



It came in a black envelope.

Love it.