Lost art?

The lost art of letter-writing — "an art robbed of romance and even basic courtesy in the age of rapid-fire, efficiency-obsessed, typed-with-one-thumb-on-a-tiny-keyboard communication." 

How To Write Letters: A Vintage Guide to the Lost Art of Epistolary Etiquette from 1876

Dear Reader,
I first began by making my own stationary using the Arnold Grummer Papermill Kit because nothing says you are special more than handmade paper!

Then I wanted to add some special touches to the design of the paper before stamping so I got out a couple of Lindy's Stamp Gang spray inks and spritzed some on a sheet of parchment paper that had been laying in the bottom of my spray box.

(I created a spray box for all my mixed media projects. I learned early on that by keeping a piece of wax paper in the bottom of the box does 2 things: 1. Keeps the box from being too messy looking and 2. Preserves all my liquid ink over sprays for future use.) You can see in the picture below that I can easily remove the wax paper and reactivate the dried ink by either spraying water on it or by spraying more ink on top of it. Then I can lightly lay a sheet of paper, in this case, my envelope, on top of it to get a wonderful soft mottled look. Frankly, I much prefer this method to directly spraying onto the paper. I used the butterfly stamp from What's up Gnomey? to decorate the front of the envelopes.

Getting a letter in the mailbox beats seeing a text on a phone screen any day!

I also used the fern stamp from the same What's up Gnomey? stamp set to decorate the front of the cards. I used my ColourArte Silk Acrylic Glaze in African Jade and the Twinkling H20 in Copper Penny to color in the image.

Writing letters doesn't require anything special but by adding your own touches and the effort of making your own paper, you sure can make the recipient feel special.

 You can touch and treasure a letter, which has far more personality than words on a screen.

I also love the romance and elegance of using a special writing tool like my fountain pen from Jet Pens, it makes me feel special when I use it. I also think that treasuring a pen has become a lost art too. So many of us (myself included) grab a cheap ballpoint pen for everyday writing ( like paying bills, grocery lists, etc.) so why not keep a special pen for for those moments when you sit down to write a heartfelt letter?

Celebrate letter-writing rather than lament it's decline, send someone a letter today.
yours truly,

Sandee