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!