Smiles Sent Saturday~12/27/14

Mailing cookies to a few dear, but far off family members has become a tradition the past few years.  This year we went simple-flat rate boxes!  But we jazzed them up a bit with stencils.  We also packed the cookies in oatmeal boxes and cushioned them with pages from Christmas catalogs to make it more festive.

Last year we went all mail themed:

Card and matching tissue paper

This is the general idea of how the box was to look...

Nutcracker Themed Envelope

This is a recent envelope I did.  This stamp from the Vintage Circus Posters set reminded me of a ballerina and one of my aunts is fond of The Nutcracker, so I thought it was a perfect theme for this time of year.  I did a little research and discovered that there are three main sets/scenes, so I divided the envelope into three panes with "Stage curtains" to divide it.  I used highlighters, markers, colored pens, metallic & paint markers and colored pencils as well as a few stickers.  Not perfect, put quite cute I think.

I thought the part that turned out the best was the tree, I've played around with drawing pine trees this year, you may have seen my earlier version in my December 13 Smiles Sent post.  I finally settled on giving a light background with a highlighter, drawing random branch bases with a fine tipped brown marker, then came back with a green pen and added needles.  Rather easy yet a nice effect.

Also, as it's Christmas day, I thought I'd share a photo of my "mail-able" gifts!  I really like to get this kind of things, you can see from the photo at the bottom of this post from 2012!

Christmas 2014 decorations

Welcome to a quick tour of our house decorated for Christmas

Just inside the front door.

Greeting card display.

Smiles Sent Saturday~12/20/2014

Just some random envelopes I decorated this year.  Not quite as exciting/complex as other's I've done, but still fun!

This was the card for one of the two Christmas cards we sent this year.

Just a couple more.  It's fun how many different stamps work for Christmas!  Hope everyone got their cards out-happy mailing!


The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed made the people who got them smile.

Smiles Sent Saturday~December 13, 2014

Here's a recent envelope I did of a winter wonderland.  This is the first time I've really incorporated the stamp into the "scene" of the envelope.  I did the front with brown permanent markers, green pen, white paint marker and stickers, I used washi tape and a sticker on the back.

 I was trying to match a paper I have of a lighted tree in snow.   You can see some of the paper and another anther way I decorated an envelope for it in my old post Christmas Envelope.  You can see I was a bit of a rookie at decorating envelopes then, but I think it was still cute!

The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed made the people who got them smile.

Great mail month-November 2014

Well, last month was a great mail month!  Since I had a milestone birthday that month my family "invited" a lot of extended family and friends to a card party.  A handful of mail with many different stamps and postmarks was fun!
  Below is all the cards I received set up in our dining room!  I was so surprised by how many it was!  You can see it was way more birthday cards than last year, in my Monthly Mail ~ 2013.  I tend to send more mail than I get, so it was fun to be on the receiving side.  Plus some of the senders mentioned how much they liked getting mail from me.
Happy writing!

 

Smiles Sent Saturday~Thanksgiving Care Package~November 22, 2014

My cousin is currently serving in the armed forces, so I sent him a care package for Thanksgiving (which is not only my favorite holiday, but also the one I find hardest to not be with family).  I had been seeing about decorating the inside of the box, so decided to give it a try.  I got some colored paper , old magazines, ads, and catalogs to try to line it with.  I just picked the pictures I liked the look of, and cut them down to the size to fit/show well. I used glue sticks (although I think I may try something else next time, but it did okay)  to attach them.  The top edges I used washi tape to edge the tops to secure it, but it also gave a nice finishing touch.  Then, as they didn't reach the bottom on all sides I lined the bottom with yellow printer pages held in place with packing tape.  It looked better, and was easier to do than I expected!

I filed it with a container of pumpkin cookies from a recipe I found among some of my great-grandmother's recipes that he'd liked before.  A copy of a card game I'd gotten and liked earlier this year.  Then went to the store and tried to find items that mirrored a Thanksgiving dinner:

To topped it off with a card I made from an image I found at 521 Lake Street of a sailor home for Thanksgiving that I thought was just too cool

If you'd like toe see the Thanksgiving box I sent a couple years ago, my mom blogged about it with photos here:  Shoe Boxes for Sailors: Thanksgiving Dinner in a Shoe Box

The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed cause the people who receive them to smile.

Military Envelope

I was getting some Veterans Day cards together to send to some family and friends and was trying to figure out how to decorate the envelopes (if at all).  While the image on one of the cards included dog tags, and it hit me that would be a GREAT decoration to use, so I got on Microsoft Office Publisher and made this template from some shapes:

Then I just printed it off, traced it with a pencil, and went over it with a silver marker, and added some dots for the chain and this is how it turned out:

What to mail: Clutter

I recently was looking around the web for some things about what we call “dejunking” I.e. getting rid of the junk we have accumulated.  Well, I was presently surprised when this video referenced mailing something.  Actually this is a great idea!!!  He is discussing old photos we don’t need but others in the photos might enjoy seeing.  Recently a lady we went to church with decades ago came across a photo of me as a little girl in her class and sent it to my mom, and we really enjoyed seeing it.  In the digital age we may not have so many hard copies laying around, but we may have inherited one, or been saving a digital copy to share and not got around to doing it, well, this is a great encouragement to do so!

And, there’s no need to limit this to photos!  We recently cleaned out our cookbooks and decided we didn’t need the soup one anymore.  I’m not too fond of most soup, but my aunt is, so I stuck it in an envelope with a couple stamps and sent it off.  She had something she could enjoy & knew I was thinking of her and we pared down our possessions!  Obviously don’t send unwanted/needed things, but “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. 

Hand drawn envelopes

I haven’t been doing that well with decorating envelopes, the mood/inspiration just hasn’t struck me.  But this month I got a couple ideas that I think turned out kind of neat (considering I’m not that great at drawing) so I thought I’d blog them:

I did this one as a tribute to the flower show at a county fair

And this one was for a fall card.  The snowflakes in the winter quarter didn’t show up too well in this photo as they were in silver ink.