Send Happy Snail Mail With Vintage Stamps & DIY Envelopes!

One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2019 is to make time to send more snail mail to my friends and penpals. Maybe that's something you'd like to do more of, too? In this post you'll find two fun and easy ways of making the snail mail you send extra special...

Did you know you can use old-but-not-used Royal Mail postage stamps for sending your post here in the UK? I recently bought a big bundle of old mint stamps for my letters, and using them is proving to be an absolute joy!

I bought a big bundle of stamps, giving me lots of different designs and values to choose from when making up the correct postage value and saving me money, too (always a good thing when you send a lot of post - snail mail is wonderful but stamps are rather pricey these days!). I bought my stamps from here.

Sorting through the bundle when it arrived was a huge amount of nerdy fun. So many lovely old stamps! And so many possibilities for getting creative with my letters!

Even if you just selected any old stamps to make up the correct postage the result would be pretty cool: a handful of quirky old stamps (some with ha'penny values!) are always going to be more exciting than just a single modern one. But of course (OF COURSE) I've been playing with colour and themes when putting together the stamp selections for my mail.

Carefully selecting the stamps can be rather a time suck but totally worth it, I think! I described this as "a bit of a waste of time" to a friend recently but, as he immediately pointed out, actually it's not a waste of time at all: I've been enjoying it as a relaxing task while watching TV in the evenings, and the end results can be rather wonderful.

This week I've been playing with colour, matching stamps to a set of fabulous notecards I got for Christmas.

 

In case you're admiring the notecards (and why wouldn't you be?), they're the "Pen to Paper Notecards" set by Present & Correct for Chronicle Books. Mine were bought from Waterstones here in the UK, but those of you in the US can buy them direct from Chronicle Books.

Here's a closer look at the cards and the stamps I've used:

All that lovely colour makes me very happy indeed.

The second thing I've been doing recently to jazz up my post is making my own handmade envelopes. I've made some from coloured paper, but I've also been making lots from a book of maps and a gorgeous book of British wildflowers.

When you use book pages to make envelopes the end results are so pretty, and totally unique! Oh, and the books only cost me about a quid each at my local charity shop so they're a bargain, too.

If you've never made an envelope before, don't worry: they're so easy to make that you'll wonder why you never tried it before.

Just unfold an envelope that's the size you need (or download and print a free template from the internet - there are loads available), stick it to a bit of card and trace the shape onto the back of whatever nice paper you want to use. Then cut, fold and stick (with glue or double-sided tape) the envelope together and add a plain label for the address when you're ready to send it. Remember to position your template so the paper will be the right way up on the front of the envelope!

Cheap second hand books are perfect for making envelopes, though you may need to use different size envelope templates depending on the size of the pages. If you need to make envelopes of a specific size, simply take the template with you when you go browsing for books to use.

I also love making envelopes from leftover gift wrap and colourful magazine pages. Sometimes my stamps used to fall off my letters en route when I sent "magelopes" as a teen, but with modern postage stamps being like stickers it's much easier to use shiny paper for making your envelopes without worrying about the stamps going AWOL.

I won't be combining these two happy post ideas and using a selection of vintage stamps with my book envelopes - I think the effect would be a little visually cluttered and I'd hate to cover up those lovely flowers and maps! Instead I'll be keeping my eye out for some suitably lovely Special Stamps, or using some of the pictorial definitives, either of which are much prettier options than standard 1st/2nd class stamps, if you care about that sort of thing (which, as you've probably gathered by now, I totally do). 

June in Pictures: Blanket Squares, Summer Sunshine, Packing Parcels, and Playing with Paint

How is it halfway through July already?? Eek!

I'd better blog about my June Instagram pics before we blink and it's August :)

At the start of June (when it was really rather chilly) I was spending lots of my evenings working on my mini patchwork squares blanket. Whenever I have any double-knit acrylic yarn left over from other projects, I use it to knit mini moss stitch squares (just 10 stitches across) to add to the blanket.

Once I've knitted the leftover yarn into squares, I sew them into blocks (one colour per block). I've been sticking to the same few shapes so the blanket is random but cohesive. This is a slow, labour-intensive process but a really relaxing one!

Once I've sewn the squares into the various shapes, it's time to find a space for them on the blanket. (Sometimes I lay the blanket out before sewing the shapes together so I can sew the squares into the perfect shape to fit a gap but not this time). I'm trying to get a nice mix of colours and shapes across the blanket - so, again, this is a controlled randomness.

As I add the squares, I mark them on the matching chart so I can track my progress. I'm up to 514 squares so far... 386 still to go! 

The finished blanket will have a sweep of colour down the middle and the rest will be white, so I've also been knitting lots of little white squares behind the scenes. Sadly, white squares do not make for very exciting photographs.

All those little squares take a long time to stitch together, and there are a lot of yarn ends to weave in. Every time I share pics of this project there's always someone who recoils in horror at the thought of all that boring stitching but honestly I find it very relaxing and almost meditative. This is definitely not a project I'd recommend embarking on if you can't bear weaving in ends!

It was my birthday at the beginning of the month (yay!), and I was gifted some excellent things including Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton and a book & comic by the always awesome John Allison.

Summer finally decided to show up, so I spent my lunch-breaks reading in the garden - enjoying the sunshine, the flowers and the chirping of birds and buzzing of bees.

What a contrast to later in the month when we had days of sudden thunder and rainstorms! Ah, England I love you but your weather is not reliable.

Back on the crafty front, I made a DIY envelope from an old map. It's so easy to make your own envelopes (you can cheat and use an existing envelope as a template!) and they add some extra specialness to a bit of snail mail.

 

I de-stressed by spending a few hours playing with paint (I am terrible at painting but this was so much fun!).

I continued to work on my felt flowers - these are old designs I used to sell in my shop that I'm giving a new life as sewing patterns (coming to my shop later this summer!). I've been getting the designs absolutely perfect and taking lots of notes so I can write detailed step-by-step instructions.

I also had a tidy up in my studio, adding last year's magazine features to my "archive" (a fancy word for a few folders on my bookshelf). I worked on lots of fun projects in 2015 but the partridge and pear wreath I designed for Mollie Makes was probably my favourite - not least because it ended up on the cover (very exciting).

During my studio tidy I got as far as writing a list of "things to photograph!" - including these colourful finished projects - but not as far as actually taking the photos. Hopefully I will have actually ticked these things off the list by the end of July! I do so adore these bright colours.

I cleared out lots of crafty supplies and other bits and pieces and held a destash and declutter sale. It takes a long time to sort and weigh and measure and photograph everything for a sale, but it's so good to have made some more space in my studio and to have found new homes for so many things that were sitting around in my home unused and unloved.

After my sale, I had lots of parcels to post! That fab parcel tape is by Hazel Nicholls - I love using decorative tape, it's such a simple way to cheer up the packages I send.

After my destash/declutter sale, I had another sale: this time of lots of samples I'd stitched for craft books.

(The projects pictured are from: Banners, Buntings, Garlands & Pennants; Super-Cute Felt Animals; Mollie Makes Woodland Friends; Mollie Makes Weddings; Tis the Season to be Felt-y; and Craft Camp)

Again, there was lots of weighing and measuring and photographing and parcel packing... but all the work was well worth it as lots of pieces found new homes and I have lots of space for new things in my studio (hurrah!).

I also love this photo I took of samples stitched when working on my second book, Super-Cute Felt Animals. You'll find some of these projects available as free tutorials here and (almost all of) the rest in the book itself.

 

Finally, no Instagram round-up is complete without our sleepy cat sneaking in somewhere. How he manages to sleep upside down with one leg in the air is a mystery!

You can follow along with all my creative adventures (with the occasional cat photo!) over on Instagram. 

#Crafting365 Days 16-23: Yarn Experiments, Festive Embroidery & Making Envelopes

Time for another #Crafting365 round-up!

It's slightly scary how quickly these photos are mounting up - but, of course, that's the whole point of this challenge, isn't it? The days zip by so fast and it's all too easy to let days and weeks go by without making space for creativity. But if you do make a bit of time each day to get your craft on it's amazing how much you can get done as the weeks roll by.

Day 16 was all about yarn. I did some more blanket square knitting (my current go-to project at the end of a long day) and had fun experimenting with leftover yarn scraps from previous projects. I love these colourful stripes!

On day 17, I looked in my box of "in progress" projects (a.k.a. a big box of half-finished stuff that has lain undisturbed for weeks, months and in a few cases years) to choose some projects to re-start. It was great to get this embroidered snowman finally finished about a year after starting it! If you want to stitch your own snowman, you'll find the pattern here.

On days 18 and 19, I worked on my floral cushion. The pale green thread in this photo is the thread I'm using to tack the felt flowers in place. They get pinned, then tacked with a few large stitches, then I remove the tacking threads once I've whip stitched the shape in position.

Here's how the cushion looked by the end of day 19:

I've now stitched flowers in each colour, and used up all the shapes I cut out at the start of my 365 challenge... but, as you can see, there's lots of space still to fill! So, I'll be cutting out a whole bunch more flowers soon.

Day 20 involved more simple knitting. I'm continuing to re-knit the wrong-sized squares for my happy rainbow blanket. The squares I made from this pink yarn were so big that I've got enough yarn left over from each re-knitted square to make a mini moss stitch square to add to my patchwork blanket. Knitting the moss stitch squares made a nice change from the endless knit knit knit of garter stitch!

On day 21, I stitched some more of the festive embroidery patterns I drew last year: a penguin and a Christmas pudding. These stitched motifs are going to become Christmas ornaments - fingers crossed they won't take me another year to complete.

I finished a letter to a friend on day 22 but realised I didn't have any envelopes, so I got out my scissors and made one:

I love making envelopes from magazine pages, it's an easy way to jazz up your letters and a great way to get another use for a magazine once you've read it. Plus it would be sad to just recycle these beautiful pages! Glossy magazine pages make excellent envelopes, especially now the Royal Mail have those postage stamps that are like stickers - they're much easier to stick to glossy paper than the kind you have to lick! (Those gorgeous autumnal photos = from the October issue of Harper's Bazaar)

Then yesterday (day 23) I did yet more simple-blanket-square-knitting, and got my paints out to test out some ideas for a new project. So much yummy colour...

365 / 181 - Envelopes, Biscuits and Crockery

Hello! My house continues to be a huge mess - it feels like we've just moved in, or are just about to move out or something, boxes and piles of things everywhere! I think it may be making my brain slightly addled but I shall attempt coherant thoughts...

Last night's craftiness? Working on a batch of biscuit brooches, and finishing some recycled envelopes I found half-finished in a box in the spare room yesterday afternoon:
They are rather a good (though embarrasing) example of how I start things and leave them unfinished... I cut out those envelopes on day 94, made the cards to go with the brown ones on day 89, and cut out the map sections way back on day 18! Oh dear. The patterned envelopes will be used for sending out my zines (I like to send interesting post when I can).

In exciting (to me at least) tidying news, I have conquered the mess in the odd little room off our kitchen. Mostly it's full of dull-but-practical things like recycling, my gardening kit and odd vases and dishes we don't have room for in the kitchen... but these are luckily hidden from view and in pride of place under the window is this china cabinet:
You can see better photos of my crockery collection here and here, and the awesomeness that is the dish at the top left here. Some of my china is thrifted and some inherited, and the cabinet itself cost about £3 (US$6) - I'm thinking about painting it white, what do you reckon?

365 / 106 - Tending to Parcels

These parcels are my master. I am their slave.
I have a big pile of jiffy envelopes with post-it notes stuck to them with order details scribbled all over them - what they want, what colour it should be, where they live, whether or not they've paid (and how many £ the $ converted into), all the important info. These jiffy envelopes go in piles, they get addressed and filled with items wrapped in tissue paper (current colour: blue), handwritten thankyou cards get added, the envelopes get sealed and customs labels get added and then I add fun stickers (I like stickers). Then I fill out proof of posting forms and head for the Post Office. The Post Office staff like the stickers quite a lot :)

I would have taken photos of the things I made yesterday to go in the envelopes but they were already packed up by the time I got around to taking the photo!

PS: upon request, you can see some of the thankyou cards here. The rest are just covered in yet more stickers :)

365 / 94 - Spring Cleaning and Scissors

The "spring" cleaning continues... but I'm feeling a lot better about it. For one thing, I'm actually making some progress - parts of my house are both clean and tidy! Getting rid of a lot of the clutter and properly organising things is making me feel better already (so many of our possessions were still in their "that'll do" places from when we first moved in) and I'm pleased with the pile of stuff we now have to give away.

Most importantly though, I did some crafting last night, hurrah! Not the largest or most exciting of crafty tasks, but one I have been meaning to do for ages - cutting up old envelopes to make, er, new envelopes:
Some of the new envelopes will have our address on the inside so I'll keep those for my personal letters etc. but the plain brown ones will be matched up with my new map cards (I do so love the look of the brown paper with the vintage maps) and the blue patterned ones I'll use for sending out zine orders. I've been using my spare map & giftwrap envelopes for sending out zines recently and the difference it makes is just huge. Even the normally stern cashier at the post office was entranced!

In Etsy news, my tea and cake obsession was blogged on I Like, my ornaments got a mention on Funky Finds and my moustache pins were on the Etsy front page early this morning - too early for me but you can see the treasury here. I was also delighted to find sweet mentions of this very blog here, here and also here - so, so nice to read other people's reactions to my witterings :)

In other news, it's lovely and sunny here this morning - even if I had anything crafty to show off yesterday I'd barely have been able to take a photo of it the day was so dark and gloomy and filled with rain. I'm hoping to get some gardening done this afternoon if the weather holds... does gardening count as craftiness, I wonder?

Crafting 365 - day seventeen - cards as far as the eye can see...

... well, almost:

I thought it was high time I actually finished making all the sheet music notecards (to match the envelopes I finished the other day) and got them out of my "in progress" pile and into my finished stash. I have basically run out of glue now, haha. Sooo many cards!

Oh, and I got the giftwrap envelopes finished too (destined for my own personal stationery box) and glued together a few map notecards & envelopes. All these cards need to dry and then have my shop details written on the back and then finally they will be parcelled up into neat little sets. And then they will be finished, hurrah! I do love finishing things, it makes me feel all efficient - no matter how long the thing in question has been "in progress" for.

I am going to try not to think about how many other half-finished projects I have lying about the place... Not having a dedicated studio space means I spend my life getting a project out, working on it for a bit and putting it away again. I have developed many elaborate storage systems for all these in-progress bits and pieces but really the whole thing is just a big mess of clutter and the moment things go in a box they get forgotten about and remain half-finished seemingly forever. Ah well. One project down, many many many to go...

Crafting 365 - day fourteen - cutting and sticking

Last night I finished a HUGE stack of sheet music envelopes, and spent lots of time drawing round my homemade envelope template. Here are the results:

So many envelopes! There are three different maps ready for me to cut & stick this evening, and also some giftwrap that I decided to turn into envelopes for my own use. I often send handmade birthday and Christmas cards & thought it might be nice to make some fancy envelopes to send them in (a fun handmade card in a dull white envelope is such a shame!)

Today I took some quick pictures of the new moustache colours, and traipsed around town trying to find some supplies. I fear that a trip to Hobbycraft (a big out of town arts & crafts warehouse) will be needed tomorrow. Hobbycraft sells an awful lot of stuff I can't get elsewhere (the busfare there is cheaper than postage I'd pay buying things on the internet) but my goodness it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It is so huge and corporate and without any kind of soul. It is a much nicer experience buying my habedashery supplies from my local market stall, or even from the habedashery sections of department stores like John Lewis (oh to live near a John Lewis!). Ah well.

So: a trip to Hobbycraft tomorrow, and tonight some more cutting and sticking as I shall be continuing with my envelope-making frenzy...

Crafting 365 - day one (yesterday!)

(Long post, sorry!)

I have decided that I am absoltutely fed up with letting dull everyday things like chores and paperwork and paid employment get in the way of making lovely stuff. It cheers me up so much when I make even a tiny small thing, and it's so satisfying to have a big heap of stuff that I've made ready to list on Etsy or to give to friends.

So: I am going to do my utmost to do some crafting everyday, and record it here on this blog. I am unlikely to finish something everyday, but even if I just do a few rows of knitting or glue some envelopes together that will do.

All full of this enthusiasm, I had a great crafty day yesterday. It did rather help that it absolutely threw it down with rain the whole day so I was stuck in doors and in need of things to do!

First up yesterday I finished some recycled envelope sets - I've had these lying around for ages unfinished and it was very satisfying to get them finished. Unfortunately I ran out of double-sided tape (which I use to make a peel&seal type strip on the envelope flaps) so only managed to make up three full sets, but there are lots more glued and ready for when I've been to the stationers. I am really pleased with how these sets turned out - one set was made from the giftwrap my birthday presents were wrapped in this year, and the others from the insides of A4 envelopes.
We get a LOT of those envelopes through the door as the boyf is on a lot of committees and things, so it was great to find a use for them other than just chucking them in the recycling. Also brown paper is just gorgeous and I cannot get enough of those soft blue patterns. The backs of the envelopes are turned into envelopes for sale and the fronts (with our address) are turned into envelopes for our own post. I've even started wrapping my envelope sets with strips of leftover paper - they look much neater than the ribbon I was using before, I think.

This is half-way through taking my photos yesterday - note my very hi-tech photo studio, complete with tomatoes (homegrown!)

Then in the afternoon - rather inspired by the new Studio Shot Tuesday group over on Flickr causing me to think about my crafty storage - I cleared out a clothes cupboard to make way for my fabric and assorted other supplies:
Most of the clothes in this cupboard are out of season things or clothes which I had shut away to see if I ever wore them (if that makes sense) as part of my attempt to massively slim down my wardrobe... so they will be perfectly happy in the suitcases under the bed that formerly housed all this yummy fabric etc.
Top shelf: folded fabrics and old clothes /vintage embroidery pieces I plan to use in crafty projects.
Bottom shelf: box of fabric scraps, piles of vintage books and old maps and two half-finished blankets in bags.
Top drawer: polyester stuffing, a half-finished quilt, some wool, a cushion insert and the pedal of my sewing machine. Soon to be joined by some felted wool sweaters.
Bottom drawer: the clothes that wouldn't fit in the suitcases :)

As I don't have a dedicated work room, my craft stuff is rather beginning to take over the house... I have my printer in the boyf's office (which is also our lounge), my sewing machine, some supplies, my works-in-progress and my finished items all tucked under the breakfast bar in our kitchen, and so many things in the spare room! All kinds of boxes of things and also:

Packing materials (normally tucked under a coat-rack)

Two lovely boxes of supplies...
One has fabric paints, beads and buttons (2 drawers), poster paint and velcro, chandelier crystals, vintage trim and knitting needles...
The other has assorted useful sewing bits (bobbins, needles, measuring tape etc), green & yellow thread, blue & white & black thread, embroidery floss and odd bits of wool, orange & brown thread, and a big drawer of ribbon, trim, cord, embellishments, glitter and all sorts of oddments that don't have a home of their own. The colourful drawers of thread are particularly pleasing - the rest of them only look neat when the drawers are firmly closed!
... and then finally yesterday evening I sat and listened to the radio while doing a bit of sewing. I finished two little Ninja baby brooches (left unfinished after I realised I had no safety pins left) and cut out lots of beaks and eyes for some half-finished owls and penguins.
I love when you add their faces, they suddenly have these great little personalities. I can't wait to get them finished :)

Trying to get organised

Oh to be organised! At the moment, I'm really not. I flit from one project to another leaving a big fat mess in my wake and the house is starting to look pretty shoddy because of it...

So at the moment I am trying to tidy up, to finish things, to store things better and to have a clear-out. All at the same time, whilst trying to crack on with some sewing too. Lots to do...

I'm currently finishing a load of map tags that have lain unfinished for a couple of months...

... a big stack of wildflower envelopes that I cut out ages ago but never stuck together...

... and lots of things involving felt!
Trying to get my shop nicely stocked, too, which is being slightly hindered by Etsy being a bit lame at the moment (running very slowly, items apparently taking days to show up in searches etc) and also by the overcast & rainy few days we've just had (that sort of weather makes all my pictures turn out blue).

Oh, and I had an idea for this month's design challenge (Fairy Tales) but I doubt very much that I have the talent to actually make it turn out how it is in my mind's eye! Ah well, I shall give it a go anyway.