Smiles Sent Saturday~January 10, 2014

I have for sometime been fascinated by the idea of mailing things without a box.  One place I've enjoyed reading is The Giver's Log's Happy Mail.  She shares a number of things she's mailed just with first class postage as they were under 13 oz.  I haven't done much of that yet, but to celebrate the start of the year I mailed to some family members calendars that reminded me of them.  I doubted that the thing plastic film that held them would make it through the mail, so I taped around all the edges with packing tape, and for the full sized one I also wrapped a strip of tape around it both ways in a + pattern.  These didn't cost too much to mail as they were thing so qualified as non-machinable envelopes as opposed to packages.

I got this decorative tape for Christmas, and thought it went great with the hot-air balloon, so I used to tape on the card that held the postage and address (then reinforced it with packing tape)

The fronts of the smaller calendars after being reinforced with tape. 

The card I sent with this one pretty much covered the whole back, this new tape also went well with calendar and was covered with packing tape as well.

The card for the car one was a little smaller, but the car stamps coordinated well with the back

I have tried to mail a couple other things in the past, just attached to the back of a card I was already sending.  They were thicker, so it cost package prices, but still under 13 oz, so I could just check to see how much the postage would be on USPS.com and then attach stamps and mail

This was a Hot Wheels car that I just left in the package and securely taped around the edges with packing tape to attach it to the card as you can see from this photo below I share before.

Decorated with snow to match the snowmobile Hot Wheel.

This was an ornament if I recall correctly.  We just wrapped the box then attached to the envelope with a good deal of packing tape.

I believe that for all of these I heard that the safely arrived.  It just seems like a funner way to mail things then a boring box or envelope...although I find all mail fun!

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