Snail Mail Fun

About a month back, when Sarah extended an invitation to fellow bloggers to join in her Good Mail Club, I emailed her excitedly, eager to participate.  Let's face it, with our mailboxes these days being filled more often than not with bills and advertising, the prospect of opening it to find something pretty and unexpected sounded wonderful.  However, as I sat down to actually create my own contributions, I must admit to feeling a tad stressed.

When would I find the time to write eight letters and create something to include in each envelope? What on earth would I make?  While I had a few trinkets from my own collections to add, I wanted to put together something I had made myself, something that was somewhat personalized and suited to its recipient.  

I found inspiration for this project one afternoon as Sophie's scalloped pattern birthday invitation jumped out at me from the fridge.  And so, as Grace worked away beside me on a collage picture, I ignored the ever growing washing pile and unswept floors and sat with her and crafted.  Using the same design that I came up with for Sophie's party, I chose 'words of wisdom' to suit each of my fellow bloggers, altered the colours to suit their tastes and came up with the simple quote cards above.  I was really happy with how they turned out and am even thinking of making up some of these to add to a few Christmas presents this year.

As for the envelopes that made their way into my letter box, I received some lovely notecards and ephemera which you can see a glimpse of above.  As chief 'mail box inspector', Grace was thrilled to find the colourful, postage stamp covered packages that were delivered to us.

After the initial stress subsided, in the end, the lesson I gained most out of this fun project was the importance of taking time out of the hectic pace of daily life more often to enjoy simple pleasures like crafting, a hobby which I can not only share with Grace, but one which encourages me to take time to 'be' and to relax... something I am going to try hard to take on board in these coming months... 

A Pile Of Postage Stamps

As a little girl, I went through a phase where I loved collecting stamps.  I can still picture that first stamp album of mine, a bright purple covered book, inside which I allocated several pages to Australian stamps as well as different pages for international ones.  I used to love cutting stamps off old envelopes, waiting patiently as they soaked before taking great care to arrange them neatly.

For as long as I remember, my Nanna always collected stamps.  She would buy a set of each new Australian design that came out and a stamp bulletin would arrive in her letterbox every month.  I used to love when she let me carefully browse through her collection. 

Over the years, my passion for this hobby disappeared and so too did that old purple stamp album of mine.  My Mum did however keep most of my old Australia stamps, and so recently, when I asked if she still had them for me to give Grace, she was able to pass on a nice little bundle to her.  Grace has been using them for some craft activities.  Some she glues into a little notebook I’ve given her, sorting and categorising them into pages of ‘bird stamps’ and ‘flower stamps’ and ‘Queen stamps’.  Others have become part of her play at letter writing and playing 'postie'.  

I’ve even kept a little bundle of these stamps aside myself, with the possibility of using some on a little craft project of my own.  I’m keen to try and cover a box with them decoupage-style or to even attempt something like the postage stamp artworks I've seen on Etsy by Butterfly Mind Vintage and Stamposaurus.

As for those albums of my Nanna’s, several years ago, they made their way to our home and into my possession.  I dragged them out again the other day for the first time since I’d been given them and let Grace sit with me as I looked over each page.  We picked out our favourite stamps and talked about all the designs and pictures.  This is one of the things I love about being a Mum – being able to share in past hobbies and passions with my girls and reliving those special moments from my own childhood.

Who knew something as simple as an old pile of postage stamps could bring so much joy to a three year old?