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 :-)

Old mail #1

In this new series I want to share some of my old letters.I've been penpalling for 20 years and kept all my letters and cards. Maybe this photo series can inspire you :-) Enjoy.

When I was a child I had an amazing penpal. She only lived around 100 kilometres from where I lived. Since we've become real life friends and still are to this day. She is really creative and this is an example of a card she made. Look at the awesome fold:

If there is one thing I love it is colorful cards. Here are some birthdaycards I recieved 10 years ago.

And some christmas cards:

Woodland folder snailmail

I've been looking at different penpal letter styles on Pinterest and got inspired by some 'folder' syle letters so I decided to try and make my own. I made it from a reusable sticker booklet. Since it had a forest theme I decided to make something with a woodland theme.

I made the outside of the folder by simply covering it in pretty dotted paper, adding some masking tape to the fold/crease and going through my cut-out images for some woodland themed images. I also added a cup of coffee ;-)... I used my letter stamps to stamp the words "Snailmail for u" on a sticky note and added it to the front page. To make a pretty way of closing the folder I punched a hole through the pages and closed it with a gold bow (not shown on the images).

The inside of the letter folder included a letter in an envelope of the left page. On the right page I enclosed some goodies: a mini notepad shaped as a leaf. A bunch of green polka dotted masking tape. There are 10-15 stripes on top of each other so plenty to play with. I also added a see through bag of purple items (my penpal loves purple). And lastly I added a green envelope with questions for my pal.

I am really happy with this letter folder and will definitly be making more in the future! 

What do you think?

5 tips on being a well organized penpal

When having a bunch of penpals I find it important to stay organized. Here are my top five tips to being organized in your "friend/penships".

1. Sent/recieved notebook
I keep a really simple log of in- and outgoing mail in a small notebook. The notebook fits in my planner so I carry it with me always. In the top corner I stamp/write whether we are talking sent or recieved and which month. Then I write the names of the sender/reciever as I get/send the letters. I also write little comments such as what was else included other than a letter - and as you can see on the picture - on the sent lsit I mark the price for the letter: In that way I can tally up every month and see how much money I've spent on postage.

2. Remember birthdays / other important dates

What is better than recieving a greeting from your penpal on your special day? Write down birthdays, children's birthdays, anniversaries etc. in your calendar and send your pal a little note to celebrate the day with them!

3. Who shall I write next?

I try following the 'FIFO' format - First In First Out. That means that I try to reply to letters in the order I recieve them. To make sure I don't have a huge pile building up I always keep unreplied mail in the back of my planner. That also means I have them with me everywhere and can write a reply if I get a little extra time.

4. What have we written about before?

Sometimes I need inspiration or need to check up on a certain detail that I know I've read in a previous letter. Therefore I keep my letters in a folder where every 'pocket' contains letters from one of my penpals. This makes it easy to find the previous letters from that particular person.

5. Indulge in the memories

After having had penpals since I was a young child (around 6 years old) I have recieved hundreds of letters. Obviously there isn't room for them in a folder. I store them in boxes with years written on the label. It is awesome diving into the old letters - rediscovering old pals - reading about what was important in my life when I was younger and just getting inspired by viewing all the papers, fonts, envelopes and so on.

How do you keep organized when penpalling?