Sneak peek inside the April Snail Mail Toolkit

This is a sneak peek at the mail-art templates I'll be sending out in my Snail Mail Toolkit newsletter on Saturday morning. Would you like to make this mail? It's a gift from me to you!

I'm on a mission to bring back old-fashioned hand-written correspondence. Why? Answer these questions in your head: 

1. When was the last time you received an email? How did it make you feel? 
2. When was the last time you received a hand-written letter in the mail? How did that make you feel?  

The practice of writing a letter is nostalgia, crafts, slow-living and community all rolled into one. And that's just for the sender. Imagine how it makes the recipient feel! 

I launched my newsletter at the start of this year because I wanted to make it as easy and inspiring as possible for you to send somebody a letter... and to make it special with mail-art. 

Every month there are templates with designs like the three above. All you have to do is print them out, follow the fold-lines to create the envelope, and add in the address. If you want to get more creative and have the time, you can do more, painting the designs as I have done, or colouring them, collaging over them, creating a washi-tape border around them, or any other crafty idea you have. 

I also include ideas for what to write, or who to write to, or what else to include in your mail. And to help you get started, I send a copy of my e-book, "Making Mail: 10 steps to writing letters that become keepsakes," to newsletter subscribers, with some more detailed guidance to making mail. 

If you like the look of the envelopes above, I'd love to see you make them too! I send new designs every month and once you download the templates, you can print them off as many times as you like (I used a slightly heavier recycled paper here, but normal copy-paper works fine). It's like having a never-ending stationery supply at your fingertips! 

This blog post sounds like an ad doesn't it, but I promise it's all free (no strings!), so how I'd really like it to read is as an opportunity. Or an invitation. I just really want to see you feeling encouraged, inspired and empowered to write a letter to someone and to have a bit of creative fun with it. 

You can subscribe to the Snail Mail Toolkit right here. Be sure to subscribe before 9am Saturday Melbourne time (heads up northern hemisphere readers that's your Friday) for these designs. 

Finally (oh hi! thanks for still reading!) if you could help me spread the word about the Snail Mail Toolkit newsletter by sharing this post on your social media, that would be SO WONDERFUL of you. Maybe together we can make snail-mail mainstream again. (I think they call that the #snailmailrevolution)

ps. If you're on Instagram, pop on over to visit me later this morning, because I will be launching a lovely little giveaway to win some beautiful Boots Paper stationery (remember the post I wrote about Boots Paper last year?). You can find me on Instagram here. 

Thousand Postcard Project: welcome to the wild, wild west

These are some of the postcards from my ongoing Thousand Postcard Project for 2017. Aren't they wonderful? I am still a fan of all those blurry hotels and quarries, but these are true linen beauties! 

If you'd like a postcard, you can still ask for one here. 

Mail art - my strange imagination

There are no themes to this latest batch of mail-art, only the bizarre vagaries of my imagination. For example, that tent with the big moon and the undergarments hanging outside: what even, Naomi? I have no idea what I was thinking, but I hope Emily liked it anyway. 

ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course?

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here. 

Thousand Postcard Project: 116-158/1000

Here are some of my recent favourites from the ongoing Thousand Postcard Project. ΔΔ The postcard above just really appealed to me. At the time, I couldn't tell if it was the colours or composition but, later, I realised it was because it reminded me of the badly-drawn book covers on the old Mary Stewart novels I used to read. Mary Stewart was my guilty-pleasure airport-but-not-only-airport author: she wrote romance-thriller novels, often set in 'exotic' locations, with obscure literary references. I devoured them! A lot of the books were written in the 50s, 60s and 70s, so the cover-art involved this kind of upright, amply-bosomed heroine, generally among rocks or ruins or cliffs. 

ΔΔ I think this postcard is one of the best of the lot, because it is so gloriously BAD. Here is what I imagine happened:

The marketing minds behind the Howard Johnson's hotel decided that a postcard was needed in order to draw in more guests. They sent one of their junior staffers out with the company camera and a roll of film, and told him to capture the 'beauty' of the building at night, with the neon sign proudly lit. But the junior staffer forgot to bring the tripod, and when they had the film developed, every photo was blurry. Rather than do it all over again, they just picked the least blurry of the lot and went with it. 

I wrote something along these lines on the back of the postcard before I sent it and, last week, I received a reply in the form of another postcard, depicting... traffic. On the back was written, "I see your blurry hotel photo and I raise you Birmingham's round-about." I will TREASURE that postcard. I'm still giggling. Blurry hotels and round-abouts are why I love this Thousand Postcard Project so much. 

ΔΔ Here is another fabulously ugly postcard. An open quarry. WHYYYYY? Who came up with the idea that THIS was what would draw visitors to their town? 

ΔΔ This beach photo made my 'favourites' list because it doesn't even bother with a location. The caption on the back just says something along the lines of "enjoying the sand and clear water" (I can't remember the exact words). I like to imagine that this beach photo was used to promote at least six or seven locations. You could just pick a State famous for beaches (like Florida or California) and shove these postcards in every tourist stand up and down the coast, for people to send to their friends. 

ΔΔ Badly drawn illustrations are always my favourite. This one in particular because the man in the blue suit and hat at the bottom of the picture is carrying papers. What is written on them?? 

ΔΔ According to the information on the back of this postcard, this was the coastline where the pirate Blackbeard hid treasure. It's not the Cornish coastline I imagine when I think of pirates and smugglers and caves, but maybe I just read too many Famous Five books when I was little. Do you think there could still be treasure buried in all that sand? 

ΔΔ The biggest sponge exchange in the world. Who knew there were sponge exchanges!? I guess I should have known, sponges weren't always the synthetic bouncy things we use in our kitchens today, but still, wow!! 

ΔΔ Remember what I was saying about badly drawn picture? I think this postcard is GREAT because they have taken a weird rock formation and decided it would look more spooky by moonlight, and still managed to do a terrible job. Framed smack in the middle of the picture, with the best fake ghost-story-moon ever, and some pretty flowers all around for a softening effect. If you are going to draw rather than photograph a famous thing, surely you'd take the opportunity to give it a slightly more artistic composition? 

ΔΔ These vineyards were in upstate New York (from memory) and the person I was sending the postcard to just so happened to live in the same State, so I set her the challenge of finding this exact spot and taking a photograph of whatever is there now. 

ΔΔ Another brilliantly boring photograph. Clouds! Dear traveller, unless your friend lives in the desert and it has never rained ever in their whole life, odds are they have clouds at their place, too. Send them a picture of a quarry or a blurry hotel instead! I thought this postcard was so boring, I decided to find pictures in the clouds to liven them up for the recipient. 

Well folks, that's the end of this update. I'm still writing postcards so don't think I've forgotten you if you're still waiting. A thousand postcards is a LOT of postcards to write! And if you're reading this and you're thinking "A crappy vintage postcard is what I really need in my life right now," I'd LOVE to send one to you, too. Go to this page to give me your address, and keep an eye on your letterbox. 

Thousand postcards > 86/1000

The other day as I sat at my desk writing on old postcards (they smelled like old books), Scout sidled up to me. "Postcards, postcards, you are forever writing postcards," she said. Then she and Ralph began rifling through the box, pulling them out one at a time to look at all the pictures. I told them they could choose one each and I'd send them in the post just like all the others, so Scout chose an awful-looking yellow flower that looked like a weed, and Ralph chose a photograph of a replica of the Mayflower. The postcards are all numbered, so they will have 75/1000 and 76/1000 in their possession, once this entire collection goes out. In total I've sent out 86 postcards so far. This is fun! 

Here are some from the most recent collection that I've really been enjoying. The postcards above... I loved that 'bear visiting the picnic' picture, because, what even!? "Hey, tourists, come visit us and wild killer animals will invade your lunch!" Also I wanted to draw your attention to the reverse sides of the postcards with it - I just love the art deco lettering in the one on the top... and the one-cent stamp costs (if only!), including one with the one-cent stamp still on it. 

ΔΔ These ladies! This postcard makes me so happy

ΔΔ It's just funny. A bad drawing of a lonely room that once belonged to someone famous. And funny perspective, like those photographs real-estate agents take to try and make rooms look bigger than they are: why is the chair on the left so small compared to the other one? Is the room 100 metres wide?

ΔΔ Every time I look at this I hear music from Elvis movies in my head

ΔΔ Ok now while technically I can blame a respected artist (John Milton) rather than a middle-management postcard maker for the hilarity in this image, seriously, what? The pasty-white guy in Tarzan-style animal skins and a safari hat/ladies' bonnet, doing the Dolly magazine shhh-pose, is supposed to be Comus, the Greek god of revelry, known for his debauchery. You see the humour in this too, right?

ΔΔ Oh the glorious and over-the-top colour in these linen postcards! Recently I read an article about these postcards, which were apparently printed by the millions in America during the depression and war eras. They were created as a kind of panacea to the everyday challenges people were facing, in the same way that the movies of the time were so often full of joy and dancing and lighthearted fun. 

It said, "The America depicted on linen postcards was just about always surreal in color and exaggerated in perspective. It didn’t matter if the subject was a natural wonder, a cityscape at night, the exterior of a hotel, the interior of a restaurant, or a hulking industrial facility. Linen postcards made everything look larger than life."

I have been loving finding them in my box of vintage postcards. The texture is so lovely in the hand, and the colours are truly other-worldly, and so much fun. I totally get it! 

ps. Don't know what this is all about? I'm sending a thousand vintage postcards in one year. If you'd like one and you haven't already signed up, you can ask for one here. 

I like the thought of that

Thank you, anonymous person on Post Secret

Mail-art: picturing kindness

With everything going on in the world towards the end of last year, I got to thinking about kindness, and what it meant. Why did some people seem to have it in spades, while others could act with such coldness, such brutality, that surely all compassion, all empathy, must have been clinically removed from their souls? I find cruelty - not angry passion but callous cruelty - truly incomprehensible. 

In all this thinking, I started to wonder what "kindness" meant to people. Because I'm fairly sure that, aside from genuine psychopaths, the people who I believed were speaking or doing things of utmost horror probably believed that they were actually good people, at least some of the time. They are not all villains, retreating to their lairs and laughing "BWAHAHA" every time they commit an atrocity. Somewhere along the line, these human beings have either justified their actions due to their beliefs, or have become immune to the suffering of others, because the mind is frighteningly good at self preservation (and nobody wants to admit to themselves "I am evil.").

I refuse to believe that that people are black to the core. Small-minded, intolerant, cruel, yes. But maybe not evil through and through? I don't know. I hope not. If you think terrible things cannot be done within the pretext of noble intentions, just ask any religious extremist, ever. 

Where is the kindness in all this? How can a man murder in the morning and let the dog sleep on his lap in the evening? Torture someone one day, and buy his mother fudge the next? Show hatred to an entire race of human beings, but love his children? 

Mail-art isn't going to solve any global or existential problems just yet, but this was all at the front of my mind as I was painting these envelopes, so I decided to follow it through. I did a Google image-search on the word "kindness" to see what other people saw in their minds when they heard that word. These envelopes are my interpretations of some of the images at the top of that search. 

What does kindness look like to you? What would you draw, if you got "kindness" in a game of Pictionary? 

ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course?

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here. 

Quick reminder

Just a quick note to remind you that my Snail Mail Toolkit newsletter will land in folks' inboxes tonight. I've created the envelope template above, plus another, and will share them as printable downloads along with tips on how to personalise them and turn them into mail-art, writing prompts, and some other fun and useful snail-mail links. If this sounds like something you'd like and you haven't yet signed up to receive my emails, there's still time and you can do it here. 

Summer mail-art

The past month was ridiculously busy, as December usually is for most of us. In the midst of it all, I found just a little bit of time for mail-art, including a stack of envelopes made out of Christmas carol sheet-music, and one book with an address and stamps on the front cover. There will be more coming soon! 

ps. Do you know about my Snail Mail Toolkit e-newsletter? I have been busy creating templates that you can personalise into your own mail-art, which I send out in a monthly email. The next email will go out this Wednesday night, so if this sounds like something you'd like to try, you can sign up to receive the emails here. I'm currently also sending a free copy of my e-book Making Mail to everyone who joins up. 

Thousand Postcard Project: 1-25/1000

Last week a box of a thousand vintage postcards arrived for me in the mail. They are all between 40 and 110 years old, and most of them Americana - old postcards advertising hotels and stores, landmarks and movies. 

I decided they'd spent enough time tucked away gathering dust in boxes and drawers, and that it was time to give them life at last, so I launched the Thousand Postcard Project, with the goal of posting each and every one of them before the year is out. 

I've just popped the first 25 postcards into the post, to finally make their way out into the world. I'm numbering each of them, so that I can keep track of where I'm up to in this project.

Here are some of my favourites from that first batch: 

ΔΔ A good 50 or so years have passed since this photograph was taken. I like to imagine what all these people at the swimming pool are doing now, if they are still alive. I wonder what they remember about that day in the sun. (It's Camp Kanesatake at Spruce Creek, Pennsylvania. Did you happen to be there at some point in the 1960s or 70s? Is that YOU I see?)

ΔΔ Ghost towns of America. I've visited one like this, and it was fascinating! I call this guy "dude with donkey" and he makes me smile. The caption on the back of the postcard is deliciously kitsch: "The Old Prospector // Accompanied by his faithful burros, the grizzled Old Prospector stands in front of the entrance to the Gold Mine tunnel." 

ΔΔ Hand-drawn postcards are always sweet. But look at that car! It dates the card so perfectly. 

ΔΔ The back of this postcard tells us that this is the general store at the Deserted Village of Allaire in New Jersey. "Entering this store is like walking into the past," it says. Holding this postcard is ALSO like walking into the past. 

ΔΔ I love this because it is so fabulously dull. The good people of the Travel Lodge, Mt Vernon, Illinois, chose this photograph as the best way to advertise their hotel. On the back, it boasts all the latest amenities. "Direct Dial Telephones. Electric Heat." Take me there! 

Only 975 to go... 

Would you like to receive one of these postcards in the mail? I'd love to send you one. There's a form on this page for you to give me your mailing address (I'll never share it).