Flowering folder letter for a new pal

 

The other day I got a letter from a new pal named Vanessa. I love getting to know new people and I was just in the mood for some letterwriting so I read her letter and sat down to reply just an hour later. I had a piece of cardboard laying around so I decided to make another Folder Letter as I really loved the Woodland one I did back in May.

 



This is the inside layout. On top I have an envelope for mixed stickers. Vanessa asked me to return her stamps and instead of just putting them in the envelope I made a little baggie with all kinds of cute stamps. I also had some small cute sticky notes that I could fit in there and some gingham masking tape.
Vaness loves cows so I found some cow stickers and included them too. - How cool is it to be a fan of cows? Love that detail!

The letter was put in a transparant envelope on the right side. These can be found in my shop.

I hope Vanessa will enjoy the letter and look forward to getting to know her better :-)

Revealing a big secret ...

I promised you all a big surprise and here it is:
I'm opening an online shop. Yes, how awesome is that? To begin with I am hosting it by blog here: writeprettyshop.blogspot.com 

In the shop I will be selling stuff from my stash so be ready for some great deals on pretty paper and paper supplies!
A good thing you have to keep in mind when browsing is that I do not restock items - when they are sold out they will not come back so if you want something be sure to buy it before someone else does. I will always be posting here on the blog when I've added new stuff for the shop.

Also note that all prices are in DKK (Danish Kroners) so be sure to have a currancy calculater ready - just google and you should be able to find one fairly easy :-)

If you find something you like email the order to me at email@marieholm.dk.

Ready?

Go shopping!

GOTM Winner July 2015

It is time to announce the winners of my Writepretty Giveaway of the month (GOTM) July 2015.

The winner wins 5 unique, handmade and neat Friendship Books made by me in the themes they like. And a big envelope stuffed with LB's, FB's, Decos, Stickerbags etc. sent to their home.

The winner is ASMA :-)

Asma has been contacted directly. Stay tuned for news and the GOTM for August.

New stuff for the craft stash August

Today it was time for my monthly haul of goodies to add to the craft stash. I am really piling up some goodies but I also need to clear out some of my old ones - a big surprise will soon be featured on the blog so stay tuned :-)

I am still a bit focused on labels since our printer is not working. I write so many labels by hand and actually it's kind of fun with the hand-written look they get :-) A bit more personal. I bought some awesome giftwrap since we were running low: One has a grass print and the other one has a pile of stones. I fell completly in love with the plaque on the right about "homemade ICE CREAM". Had to have - don't know where to put it yet :-p

Stickerbag Zoo Game

I love sending fun little games and surprises with my letter. Sometimes I even event new games like this one: A Stickerbag Zoo.

I had a small sheet of cute little animal stickers so I made a game.
I put the stickers bag in the plastic wrap they came and but drew 'bars' in front of the animals with a permanent marker.

The rules state:
"This is a zoo with 18 animals. But some are double (eg. 2 lions). Help us up the variety by taking out one of the animals which are double and add a sticker with a new animal instead. Let's get as many kinds as possible.
No more doubles? Send home to *name and adress of reciever*"

I hope one of my pals will enjoy this game and have fun with sending it on to other penpallers.

Sent out in July

First letter for a new pal. Magda in Poland.

A pencil case - junk food - letter for Lori in Canada

My new pal Magda wrote me back super fast so I whipped up another letter for her here in July. The pouch on top with the text "everyone's a star and deserves the right to twinkle" doubled as the envelope.

Kitty mail for Carla Rose in the US.

Stitch letter for my pal Sany.

Recieved in July

Beautiful letter with lots of goodies from my new pal Magda in Poland.

Cute card from Heather in the US love the dinasaur stickers

Look at that great sticker-stripe with frog princes holding hearts, so cute!

Seed packets from IKEA

This week we went to IKEA to buy a couple of things. I found these amazing seed packets on sale (around 1 dollar for a pack of 3). Aren't they awesome? I love their graphic look and they are perfect for adding to a penpal letter - although we are late in the season but they should be good for use untill 2017. :-)

Kitty mail

I made this cat themed letter for my pal Carla Rose in the US. The  letter is written on cat themed letter paper. I found a big sheet of cat scrapbook paper in my  craft stash. I also included some cut-out cats, a cool tatoo-styled notecard and two playing cards with cats. I hope she'll love it.
All of this was less then 50grams so really cheap to send.

Our Project Planner

Living on a farm we always have ongoing projects and need to do a lot of organizing/tracking.

The planner is divided into four categories: House, Outside, The farm buildings and 'Everything else'.
A standard page includes a title: Eg. the name of a room in the house, and a list of to-do projects.
We try to divide the projects into smaller projects so they are easily obtainable. Every project has a progress bar. Every time we have worked with a project we can color in as far as we think we have progressed. When a project is finished we cross it of to the left.

On this page a few projects have become invalid so we've just crossed them over.

Some of the pages are more journal styled - like this one that contains info about my first litter of bunnies this year - from day of breeding to observations and count when born.

Bigger projects have several pages with todo lists, shopping lists and info about colors we've used.
If I can't find another color swatch I just take out this one and add it to next years journal.

This is an example of another fun page - I track our egg supply by simply adding to this list daily. Instead of just writing a number I paint little eggs. Once a week I add them up and write the number to the right.

I also keep track of how much of the different fruit and vegetables we harvest. This way I can compare to last year and see if we did better or worse.

... And I draw little plans of how I want my gardens planted... This is great to do in the winter months.

Lastly I want to show another type of to do lists. This is a prioritized list of 19 projects we want to finish this summer. The A, B and C's show how big we think they are - C's require a lot of work.

Do you use a project planner?

My personal planner - introduction

I share a lot of mailrelated stuff on here. Another thing I really love is planning. I have a personal planner and our household has a project planner. In this post I'll show you some pages from my personal planner.

I bought my personal planner on paperchase - I love the design with the birds and the dark lilac combined with brighter pink on the inside. I also like that it's soft to hold and has a great closing clasp that holds it tightly together even when stuffed with items. In the inside cover I keep stickers and little notes to write on. The contents vary all the time.

One of my penpals sent me this lovely bookmark with a lady in a 'tea flower'. I use it as a bookmark in my calendar so I know which week we are in.
The basic idea of the layout:
Weight tracker: Right now I am trying to loose weight. The pink dot on the left page at the top shows my current weight - I way myself once a week.
Green: I usually use the green to write about tasks I have to do concering our animals
Orange: Is for tasks concerning cleaning.
Pink: The pink is used for statements or tasks that doesn' fint in any other category.
Blue: The food we had for dinner.
Other colors doesn't really have certain meanings - I just use them for decorative purposes and sometimes I don't really follow my own rules :-p
On this page I've added some long strips of tape to indicate our vacation.

Here are some other pages from this planner:

Do you use a planner?

Junk Food Ketchup Letter

A month ago I found an amazing pencil case in one of my go to stores. Yesterday the pencil case was turned into an envelope in a 'junk food' and 'back to school' combined letter for one of my best pals. Lori in Canada:

I rolled up the letter to fit in the pencilcase and added two cool erasers: A burger and a hotdog. I also added two coca cola bottles to add to a keychain or zipper on a school bag.

Snails on speed?

Okay I know it might be a long shot to indicate that this post has anything to do with what I normally post on Write Pretty but I got the association -SNAIL mail - so I think it qualifies it a bit - Right?

In my neighbouring country - Sweden - is an amazing artist Stefan Siverud. With a steady hand and a creative mind he decorates the shells on garden snails. I know it sounds weird but the results are amazing just look at the details:

Check out more snails and other great nature art on Stefans site: legalassassin.com

New stuff for the craft stash July

Once a month I raid my two favourite stores for new stuff to add to my 'Craft stash'. This month there wasn't that much but I bought a few items:

I broke our printer a few days ago so I bought some label-stickers where I can handwrite my labels untill we get a new printer.
I also bought a few notecards, some forest friend - erasers, a pad of new decopapers, a pair of fun socks, nailart stickers, and some small sticky notes.

GOTM: July 2015

This giveaway is closed. Find out who won here.

Every month I will put up a post with the GOTM (Giveaway of the Month) and you have one month to participate. The rules may differ from month to month but so will the prizes so be sure to check by the blog at least once a month to participate in the GOTM. And without further ado:

In July you have the chance to win a bunch of new penpals! Yes, doesn't that sound awesome? What you'll actually win are two different items.

Item 1 is 5 unique, handmade and neat Friendship Books (FBs) made by me. You will decide the theme(s) and I will send out the FBs to my regular penpals who will then forward them to their pals and so on.

Item 2 is a big envelope stuffed with Labelbags (LB's), FB's, Decos, Stickerbags etc. sent home to you to enjoy and pass on to your own pals.

How to participate: Please read :-)
To participate you must write a comment below.
The comment must contain the following:

• A way to contact you (Eg. an e-mail or a blog adress, Facebook account link etc.)
• 1-5 themes you would like your 4 FBs to be inspired by if you win.
• That's it!

You don't have to share, pin or anything like that - feel free to do so if you want but it is not necessary. So easy right? ;-)
You can participate from anywhere in the world as long as you comment before 25th of July. I will use random.org to find winners.
The winners will be announced on the blog and will also be contacted directly so I can get your postal adress.

Good luck and have fun!

GOTM Winner - June 2015

It is time to announce the winners of my Writepretty Giveaway of the month (GOTM) June 2015.

This month I had two prizes meaning there are also two winners :-)

1st Prize winner: Aenk June
This great grab bag of items will go to Aenk June. Congratulations!

2nd Prize winner: Cindy Tomasi
These stamps are great for organizing and will now be sent to Cindy. Congrats!

Both winners have been contacted directly.

Keep an eye out for the next GOTM for July which will begin shortly.

Why you should send and recieve FBs if you love penpalling

FBs in penpal lingo has nothing to do with Facebook but is an older - and much simpler - form of communication. FBs are Friendship Books - which, as the name states, are books that can help you get new friends, swap partners or penpals - sounds great right?

Still, to some people Friendship books are annoying and 'in the way'. They feel they are chain mail and get annoyed when their penpals pass them on to them. Ofcourse you should always respect your penpals wishes but I want to tell you a few reasons why Friendship Books are actually pretty awesome if you like penpalling :-)

Free art for your letters
FBs come in all shapes and sizes and many of them have themes. When composing eg. a letter with a yellow theme simply shift through your FBs and see if you have a few with the same color theme. If so, pop them in your penpals envelope and brighten their day with a piece of free art :-)

Get to know new people
The FB is filled with adresses on people who share your interest: Penpalling! Yay! Read through the FBs - many people are great at adding a few words about themselves. Sometimes the image they add to their label will give away that they are starwars fans, love gardening etc. If they write: NPW it means New Pals Wanted and then you are just one letter away from a potential new penpal. How awesome is that?

Get the word out
FBs are a cool and unusual way of giving a shout out to a big but unknown audience.I always add this blog adress to my labels and if I am looking for new penpals, or new swap pals I write it on the label - I actually get pretty good response on this.

What do you think about FBs?

The uniqueness of a letter

This is so true!

I don't have the source for this picure but if someone does please let me know so I can credit the artist.

Yellow mail

Summer is here! We actually had a few sunny and warm days here in Denmark. That made me want to send a happy yellow letter to a friend.

I found a lovely bright polka dotted pouch for toiletries - perfect as an envelope!

I stuffed it with yellow and dotted goodies. - The little duck on the picture somehow hid itself when I was making the package so it's still sitting here staring at me from my desk :-p But still my pal will recieve some great stickers, quotes, a cute little voodoo doll and some pop candy :-)

What color should I mail next time?

Stuff I Love #4

I love.... The amazing talent of Stine Hvid. Like this smiling baby giraffe poster:

(via Stine Hvid Illustrations)

This psychadelic version of ET - and it's a pin so you can wear it - goes with everything :-p

(Via ValleyCruisepress)

This gardening washi tape is so me:

(Via BellasBeadHabit)

This snail mail art print should hang on the wall of all penpallers:

(Via AcrossFields)

And lastly - 'cause I love cute stuff and enjoy a nice cup of tea - these marshmallow mugs!

 (Via Amazon)