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….

The post letters through time appeared first on Tiny Pine Press.

I get all stamp happy and pick out bunches to choose from and agonize over which ones are best suited in color, shape, value and theme. It’s a puzzle and I get to solve it. 

I design these stamp configurations with love, not logic, and then when it comes time to actually assemble them… Well, that’s when it gets interesting. Or when I get anxious. 

Everyone thinks that the final assembly of an invitation, the “stuff stamp and seal” is really fast and just the final bit of getting out the mail. But I am here to tell you today, friends, that one needs to allow a good amount of time for this process. Even if there is one stamp…. and especially if there are 10

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!

joanna with the finished product

It is actually quite zen when you get into it. And only once in awhile did we go crazy and stick the same stamp on twice. and sometimes your fingers get coated in vintage glue. And then you are smiling cause you were smart enough to not lick the stamps. Do you know when they made 3 cent stamps? Well, they made them for a bunch of years, but it was awhile ago… and they don’t taste good.

Anyways… here are some photos. And no, I am not telling you where I get them. That’s my little secret……

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