Greetings Recycled

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As you may imagine, I have a drawer full of cards.  It’s convenient for that last minute birthday or that last minute anything really.  but mostly it just gets more and more full the more I craft.  And very soon, I’m going to be making a lot of cards!  Ideally I would sit down every few days with a cup of tea in hand, grab a fountain pen, gaze out the window at my English garden and write a sweet handwritten note to any one of my faraway friends, which at this point is almost everyone I know.  Unfortunately, it never plays out like that.  I have this strange obsession with paper goods and conversely a fear of marring their beauty with my inadequate handwriting.  I know I need to get over it, the stack of unused journals in my bedside table is proof of that.  But that little slip in confidence always stops me from putting pen to paper.Another thing that stops me is the feeling that the card should be more of a gift.  I would like the recipient to want to keep the card and so then there’s that pressure to make the written note inside worth keeping.  I cringe at the thought of one of my cards ending up in the recycle bin.  As you can see I turn the whole act of writing a thank you card into quite a lot more than it needs to be.

Last week  I received an incredible package in the mail from my very crafty friend Dianne.  Dianne sent me a stack of old Geology maps from an office that was being cleaned out at the  community college where she works.  It was literally a treasure trove of well kept, high quality maps, and they are huge!  The gift definitely deserved a thank you so I decided to end the silliness and come up with a way to push past my fears.

I chose a card from the drawer with a fitting sentiment and decided to print my thank you on printer paper and affix it into the card with washi tape.  I’m always looking for new ways to use washi tape so I that I can justify purchasing more of it.  This way, Dianne can remove the greeting, stick it to her fridge if she feels so inclined and use the card again!  In the future I think I’ll try to print the greeting onto paper from the recycle bin to be even more green and perhaps mount the insert on a scrap of patterned paper to add more pop and heft to the greeting once it’s removed from the card.

I added some directions for the recipient just in case.  And because my cards are essentially my business these days, I added my business stamp to the back.  You never know who might see a card they like and want to purchase more.Oh, and the card above was inspired by a piece of album art, a great EP by Priscilla Ahn called Dream, click on the pic below to check it out!

Are you all any better about sending handwritten notes?  Am I the only one?

Keep pressing on and watch for the mailman, I might make this a habit.