League of Extraordinary Penpals

I have been trying to decide between joining the Writers' Alliance or the League of Extraordinary Penpals. I love the stationary that's available on the Alliance website, but the League is less expensive while still having so many wonderful things that I'm interested in. I spent yesterday writing letters, notecards, and postcards, so it seemed only right to join.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to add the cool "I belong to" logo and link to my sidebar, so I'll just put it here.

League of Extraordinary Penpals

Making Mail

I might have spent far too much time playing Dragon Age yesterday, but I also had a lot of paper and pen fun.

A sampling of my new envelopes. 

Envelope making is a great recycling project. I used an old map and some magazine pages for some of the envelopes, and I used a spirograph on some large thrift store envelopes. The labels were cut off of sheets that had jammed up the copier at work and were being thrown out.  

I started out by making envelopes using the Kuretake Handmade Envelope Template  purchased from jetpens.com.  I traced the shape onto the page then cut it out.  

I used the Kuretake Handmade Envelope template to make several of my new envelopes.

The pages are folded along indents.

Cut and folded envelope just before I glued it with my Kuretake Craft Glue Pen.

I used the Kuretake Craft Glue Pen on my envelopes.  An ordinary glue stick would have worked, but I love this little glue pen. It's far stickier than a glue glue stick, and the ink squeezes out blue. This was my first time using it, and I learned to dot the glue on instead of drawing ink lines with the pen. It's very strong, and a little bit goes a long way.

These envelopes require address labels if they're being mailed.

Then I pulled out my spirograph. 

I have a partial spirograph set from the late 50s/early 60s. I purchased it on eBay. 

The box came with some of the circles, the pins, two outer circles, and two long sticks. I haven't figured out how to use the sticks properly. I think they might require the pins. The box also says that it's a great way to get children interested in math, but I've checked with some math professors and teachers, and nobody knows why it says that on the box.  

Look! An orange and pink spiraled envelope!

I needed very large envelopes for my spirograph. 

Finding paper that could fit inside my map and magazine envelopes was difficult. The envelopes are small because I didn't have large enough paper to make larger envelopes. I don't have any paper that will fit inside my large spirograph envelope.

The smaller template envelopes were a bit easier. I discovered that one of my notebooks is great. It's a gorgeous notebook with a cover that's been decorated with snipped electrical wire. It's too small for use as a journal and too large for a quick jot pad. I picked it up on a lark at  Antigone Books  in Tucson, and the high quality paper is great for writing letters!

I purchased this journal from Antigone Books in Tucson.  The cover decoration is a great example
of re-purposed materials (electrical wires snipped and glued into place).

The notebook pages are not not lined or perforated. I yanked them out at the wire binding then trimmed off the edge bits.  Then I placed washi tape along the top edges to disguise that they weren't perfectly even, and voila, pretty paper!

Some samples of some of the paper I decorated yesterday.

Future envelopes will be more customized; I plan to play with lining the envelopes for more variety. I'll make some solid envelopes with spiffy inserts or add solid linings to my spiffy envelopes. I think it will be even easier to line envelopes made by template because then I can add them before I even fold the page! Oh the fun that I'll have.

Stationery

I'm having a very difficult time buying writing paper in person (with matching envelopes and not sized to go through the printer). Notecards are everywhere. Which is nice, but I want to write letters, not a thank you card!  I tried whining and complaining for a bit, that didn't get stationary into my hands.

So I made some stationary today. I have a gorgeous notebook with plain white paper that too small for my notebook taste but too heavy to use a jotter-pad. So I cut some pages out of it and grabbed the washi tape.

But what about an envelope? I mean, the note stationery pages are not big enough to turn into postalettes, so I need a paper transporting device.  That's where my new favorite toy comes in:

Kuretake Handmade Envelope Template photo courtesy of Jetpens

The kuretake handmade envelope template is amazing. I ordered a package that came in earlier this week, and this was one of my happy items. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a huge project, and I didn't get to play with it the first four days I owned it!

I made up for lost time today. And I forgot to take photos, so I'll rifle through some of my outgoing mail and see if any of it is worth taking a photo of.

I used a map and some magazines. They only fit the second smallest envelope size, and I'd like to find something a bit larger to trace the template on. Any suggestions?