So, I am going to go out on a limb and admit that I love girly romantic movies. I will also admit that I was excited to see “Letters to Juliet” this weekend with a couple of 10 year old girls. Let’s call it “research”, right?
I have to say that the movie was very predictable, even for my young friends, and more than anything I enjoyed the main prop, the letter to Juliet, that was aged and weathered as it had been trapped in a brick wall for 50 years, as the story goes.
I instantly remembered this envelope that a friend of mine sent to me recently. He reused an envelope that had been addressed to his mother by erasing the pencil and removing the stamp. The envelope is lined, thankfully, since the liner is the only thing holding it together, yellow and vibrant as ever.
The best part about this old re-used envelope is the texture. It’s ragged and almost soft yet crispy. It reminds me of cockle onion skin (my very very favorite of the old school writing papers).
Needless to say, when I got this envelope in the mail, it was obvious to me that THIS is the best form of recycling. No chemical processing, no electricity used to re-make this envelope.
Makes me think that I should start using pencil for my correspondence…. so in the future, someone can do the same thing with my envelopes….
Today I had a project which called for vintage postage for the envelopes. It’s my favorite time of the design process. 
10 NON self-adhesive vintage stamps with vintage glue. That’s what today’s assignment was. Fortunately I have a crazy friend, Joanna, who LOVES sticking stamps. We had our mock-up and set out to stamp 130 envelopes – that’s 1300 individual stamps, if you want me to do the math for you. Together, it took us about 3 1/2 hours (so it would have been an entire day if it were just me and that doesn’t even include the sealing phase). She is typically employed as an illustrator/conceptual artist on feature films and I can’t afford that kind of help… but fortunately, she works for me in exchange for food… and then bought her own lunch! That’s how much she LOVES applying postage!