Kindness feeds kindness

Some of you may remember that I participated in a Pay It Forward on instagram a few months ago. Frances was one of the girls to sign up, and we’d been following each other for a while. She offered to send me a thank you package, a stunning piece of mail which included the most flattering letter. It was impossible not to reply, honestly.

I did however fall of the mail and blogging bandwagon for a while, so sharing this a little late. This was the first letter I made after the pause, and I tried to focus mostly on being creative and letting that take me wherever it wanted. In the end I think it turned out happy if a little messy!

I made a flap on the front, under which there was a mail tag and some washi samples.

Goodies included a bunch of sticky notes and some Project life cards. I also added in a summery playlist that I was listening to as I made it. I love being introduced to new music from my penpals, so thought I’d share myself.

The camera had a hard time picking up the light blue “Laugh More” stamping which was underlined by neon pink washi strips.
I put the letter in a bag on the back of the flip book. I love how the sprinkles washi makes anything seem joyful and bright!

Thank you for looking! Please do share what you do to get back into a creative pursuit if you’ve gotten out of the habit.

May the postman deliver ever in your favour,

Alex x.

Pressed flowers and tea

Maria is one of the first pen pals I got, and I couldn’t be happier to have her. Her mail is stunning and her envelopes can be easily recognized. It’s always fun to make her a reply, an inspirational exchange of sorts.

I’ve been back on a bit of a booklet binge lately, and this one falls in teh same vein. This time, however, I went back to my original idea of overlapping flats and layers sticking out on all ends. Not all flaps are centred, but in the end they all slide nicely into each other.

I aped in some pressed flowers from this spring for some colour and texture. More texture was added by embossing a paper with the smile print. By smudging ink of different shades onto a paper and rubbing an almost water colour appearance came out.

I love this quote, and have used it in several bits of mail lately. Really enjoyed how the die cut frame game some dramatic flair.

In the envelope I added some goodies and my mail tag answers. And a bag of chamomille tea, to enjoy as autumn envelopes us in bright colours and chilly winds.

Decorated the envelope to match the contents, added the booklet and some post cards and sent it off to Poland!

May the postman deliver ever in your favour,
Alex x.

Design Your Life planner unboxing

In the middle of Christmas chaos – between gifts and social events and flying between countries – my DYL planners arrived. And I’ve been wanting to share them with you since.

 

But Christmas is its own vortex of stress and excitement, and I started January with one of the most stressful job interviews I’ve ever done. Oh, and I started an internship last week which, while great, demands I get up at 5.30am and get home 8pm – there isn’t much daylight left in the day. And these planners are so nice, honestly, they deserve daytime light so you can see it. But until the days start getting longer, I’ll settle for the selection below!

First let’s share some of the pictures of the DYL 2016 planner. Each month has a different theme. Below are some of the ones I really liked – I didn’t want to include too many since part of the fun is flicking through them yourself.

The other planner from Design Your Life is called ‘Back to Basics‘. Each week has a vertical spread, and the colours vary over the months. I really like some of the features in this one, such as the project tracker and the little quotes at the top of each week.

Another nice feature of the planners is the pockets in the front. Perfect for storing some stickers and post-it notes. The first thing I did was fill it up with some of the things I got.

The planners also came with a lovely little goodie bag – full of pencils, stickers, an envelope and some doodle pages for the planner. The hydration stickers are CNS Design, the same people that are behind the DYL planners, and are some of the most fun ones I’ve seen.

I’m really looking forward to using these planners more going forward, and hope you find some inspiration in the pages!

 

Note: These products were all sent to me one of the DYL Planner Experts, the design team for CNS Designs. While the products were provided to me at no cost, all opinions in the text above are my own.

Pastels and emoticons

Maybe I’ve just spent too much time staring at ban.do stuff, but lately I’ve been really excited about the 90s girl gang vibe that they emit! So went I sent of this letter to a friend in Australia, I might just have used it for inspiration.

I know, the ban.do influences aren’t necessarily too clear for others to see, but I stole the pink and gold largely from there and of course the emoticons which I drew throughout the letter.

Since Jane commented on really enjoying the sticky notes I put in the last letter, I decided to include some more unconventional stickies this time around.

Finally wrapped it all up in string and sent off to Australia. Hope it reaches her with a smile on her face!

Mixed some new and vintage stamps on the envelope – really loving the pink angel stamp.

And that’s all for now.
May the Postman deliver ever in your favour,
x

Autumn in my Gold Kikki K: Dashboard set-up

Since the last planner post went over so well – mostly due to the featuring on Philofaxy – I thought I’d share my set-up in my large gold Kikki K. Philofaxy is an amazing resource for anything filofax, or just for ringbinder planners in general, and I’d really recommend anyone interested pop over there. Plenty of functional printables for all sizes if you’re interested in that kind of thing.

This is the view that greets me as I open it, and I really do love how the bright colours and patterns have a practically immediately positive impact on my mood. The mixing of orange, red with pink and bright yellow felt very outside my comfort zone, but the more I’ve been looking at it the more I like it.

I really like how the Kikki K has a bunch of pockets on the left and I frivolously stuff them with planner accessories. I love how most of the things I put in the pockets have a functional purpose, but the combination and layering gives it a creative flair.

The top part of the pockets hold mostly cards and various paper clips. The patch at the top is one I embroidered and put on a paper clip I had lying around. I like the added whimsy of them and I’ll definitely be making more once I get back into embroidering, which tends to happen as we move into winter. The bigger pockets also carry some round stickers that I use to highlight important events, deadlines or meetings, or just add some colour.

The very bottom pocket carries a bunch of sticky notes from Knock Knock. I love this brand and have a whole series of their stuff. Putting the fun back in functional, cheesy pun intended. I mostly tend to leave the project life cards, but will sometimes nab them if a weekly spread needs something a little more permanent than a post-it.

On the left is my actual dashboard. I’ve kept the original Kikki K dividers as they’ve served me well, but I do prefer something a little brighter than the dull grey. Using different coordinating washis to add some project life cards with nice patterns and an inspirational quote does exactly that. I left one of the cards open at the top so I could use it as a pocket for my washi sampler.

I think the key thing about a dashboard setup is that it needs to be functional. I know I’ve emphasised the pretty looks above, but form definitely follows function. Everything is either securely tucked in a pocket or help in place by a paperclip – the planner can be moved around and wiggled vigorously without fear of anything falling out. They’re there to be inspirational, to encourage me to use the planner and follow through. The purpose is not for the planner to become dainty.

When life gives you lemons

Summer has been drawing to a close around here, but that doesn’t mean that you have to stop using all the bright cheery colours that are associated with it. I spent a few weeks at home in Sweden this summer, and I took the opportunity to use some of my mother’s great stash of tools and paints. All in all this is a rather simple letter, but it was a lot of sun putting it together!

As some may have noticed I love putting together small mail booklets. Below are the pages I put together – almost! As I sat down to pack it all up I decided it didn’t feel quite finished, and added a bunch of small details. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any time to take new pictures. The page excerpts below should still give you a good idea of what it looked like!

Some of the edits included writing in some inspirational quotes, adding extra headings and stickers. And of course a little bit of stamping – I love my roller stamps!

Then it was all wrapped up and put into this bright envelope. A little bit of lemon themed summer.

May the postman deliver ever in your favour,

Alex x.

London Transport Museum

When I cam across some pamphlets from the London Transport Museum I immediately wanted to cut them to pieces and make mail out of them. And so I did! The result was the letter below, sent out to Kat in March but not reaching her until June or so – had me a bit worried there for a bit. Post to Canada generally arrives quicker.

The colours are vintage inspired, but brighter and thus still quite fresh and modern. I included some washi samples, a bit of tape measure, project life cards and other small goodies in the letter.

The mail tag was written on decorated revision cards, which gave me even more opportunity to use the pamphlet illustrations.

The letter is where I used the big illustrations, including my favourite of the bus with people spilling out. I added that to a quick little washi collage which reinforced the colour scheme. Here are some detail shots of the decorations of the letter pages.

All the diffrent bits and bobs where then put into a goodie bag which I used as envelope. I like this extra pop of colour in the mail!

It ended up as quite a bulky letter, but surely that’s only fun?

May the postman deliver ever in your favour,
A

Living the planner girl life

Those of you who follow me on instagram are probably aware that I love a bit of creative planning alongside my lettering. It’s just so much more fun to start on the day’s tasks when you have something pretty staring back at you.

This is my current set-up in my Filofax Original in Dark Aqua. A combination of pinks, reds, aquamarine and mint. Such a happy combination!

Love the bit of flimsy that the Kikki K cat pen adds, and am really happy that my friend from Australia sent me the fruit bookmarks. I really do love all the Kikki K things, now I just need to find a job so I can binge!

The embroidered patch paperclip I made a while back, I think it’s super cute. Been considering selling them, but wouldn’t know what to charge, they’re fairly time consuming.

And last but not least, my dashboard: An inspirational project life card stuck down with what’s probably still my favourite washi. And that Ice cream binder clip that my sister gifted me. She’s a star!

A little something for Amanda

I’m really enjoying finding my way back to making some creative mail again. Had a computer crash (NOOOOOOOO!) but still had some of my outgoings uploaded to the cloud so thought I’d share one of them with you now. So wihtout further ado, here it is:

I loved how the bright red and mint popped, so kept it nice and simple like that. The sticky notes included as a goodie have funny fortune cookie style messages, like “The heart wants what the heart wants: an unending supply of human blood”. I think they’re hilarious, hopefully they will make her giggle too.

The unicorn was a gift from my sister – such a fun little prop. It’s also a pencil sharpener, I’m so fond of it.

Until next time.

May the postman deliver ever in your favour,
A

Vintage Airmail to the Philippines

Here’s a quick look at an outgoing bit of mail I sent off to Joeylyn from the Philippines. It was good fun playing around with the both the brown/kraft and airmail stripes colour schemes. My sister got me a vintage envelopes washi, and I cut that into single envelopes to use as stickers.

I made a small booklet out of sticky notes for the mail tag answers and questions, and added some washi and stamps for decorating purposes. Joeylyn had also just told me that she’s started collecting postage stamps, so I  threw in some of the ones I normally keep to use for decorating.and wrapped them up in tissue paper.

Popcorn tea is something I found in the tea aisle a little while back, and like to send to penpals because it’s funny and a little rare. There’s also a fortune teller fish – you put it in your hand and depending on how it curls it’s supposed to say something about you.

Then everything was bundled up into a little pile of goodies, which I hope that Joeylyn will appreciate! I wrote the letter on decorated revision cards, which is a first for me.

May the postman deliver ever in your favour,

x Alex.