Snail Mail: A Homemade Craft Session

For Isabel and me this journey began as @isabelandkate, sending more mail, making people smile, and seeing what happens. We started this instagram account as a hobby, a creative outlet, and a way to brighten people’s days. This account expanded into our business, but we still make sure to carve out time (I’d say each week, but I’d be lying) to make some of our own #snailmail.

For my most recent crafting session I turned to our Pinterest board for some inspiration and was drawn to these two:

This pin inspired me to share postage in a glassine envelope with the recipient so she can easily send mail back to me.

This pin inspired me to either use washi tape as a border for the address on the front. I also thought I could just cut the washi tape to look like this.

I also was given some steel letter punches that can be used to impress leather or metal and thought I could try them on our soft cotton paper that we use for our Of Note cards.

And so my #mailart session began.

I started with the idea with sharing a postage stamp with the recipient. I tried it in the glassine envelope, but didn’t have the right size on hand. I also thought about writing “will you be my pen pal?” on it, but was worried about my hand-writing messing it up so I decided to keep it simple.

Next came the envelope. I didn’t have the stickers on hand that you see in the image above so I used washi tape and cut the points out myself. They are entirely imperfect, but hey I’m human, and I don’t mind. Luckily for me, my white gelly roll pen shows up on this washi tape so I can write the address directly onto the washi tape.

I was enjoying playing with the washi tape so I continued by cutting out triangles and creating an abstract pattern. Nothing fancy, just fun, and reminded me of all the leaves falling around us in New England these days.

My crafting session ended with experimenting with the steel letter punches. I sampled each letter out on scrap paper before going for the phrase.

What are your favorite tools for crafting mail?