snail mail

While I don’t often use vintage stamps for my own letters, I am feeling pretty tempted by the offerings from Verde Studio. So many beautiful vintage stamps.

She offers sets of multiple stamps, that should equal enough postage to send a simple letter. I love the creative way that she pairs up the stamps, like this pair of bridges and a stamp for the Metropolitan Opera.

This week, I received my very own Letter Ledger from Paper & Type, which I’ll be using to record all of my correspondence for 2013. I love the design of the notebook, which features areas to record what topics you discussed, and what stationery you used, as well as a little envelope to store postage. I’ll admit, my memory is not the best, so having a written record of what I just sent my pen pals helps me to not tell the same stories over and over (or to send the same card to the same person twice!)

So, readers… do you have any pen pals?

I have been pretty excited to see what new stamps USPS would debut for 2013… what can I say, I’m a snail mail nerd to the core. These kaleidoscope flower designs are new this year, and I hope to be able to use them soon (there’s no release date posted yet). I’ve resolved to keep sending at least one hand written letter per week, as I did last year. I’m curious, readers: do you plan to send more snail mail this year?

Spotted this great illustration by Lydia Nichols, which she submitted for the To Resolve poster project. There are tons of great illustrations for that project, certainly worth perusing the index.

Writing more letters was one of my resolutions for 2012, so I can definitely relate to this one. Are you making any resolutions for 2013? I would highly recommend setting a goal to write my handwritten letters. For me, it’s meant developing closer friendships with my faraway friends and relatives, and getting to enjoy that lovely feeling of having more in my mailbox than just junk mail and bills.