July 2016 – Outgoing Snail Mail

     Much like my incoming for last month, it was a slow outgoing mail month! I’m determined to make August more busy but while I’m doing that, here’s my July outgoing mail.

     I started my month by sending out a couple of postcards via postcrossing. These went off to the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, USA and Russia. They’ve all arrived now although at least two of them had some trouble along the way – I believe the postoffice’s postmark was giant and ended up covering the postcrossing code but thankfully they still got registered. Note to self – write codes at the bottom of the card, not top in the future.

     I only had one swap-bot swap last month too and that was a pen pal swap so the rest of my outgoing mail is made of letters.

     My letter sending was a little slow too though – annoyingly, the price of sending mail went up from €1.05 to €1.10 mid-way through the month. Only a 5c increase, but very awkward when dealing with Irish stamps considering the numbers we have (for example, we don’t have a 5c stamp). I had all my stamps ordered into groups that looked good with each other to make up the cost but of course when the increase happened I had to rearrange them all to add up to €1.10 so now not all my stamps match.

     I did get a few letters sent off before the price increase, like the Limerick at night envelope which is made from a page from a free promotional magazine about Limerick.

     The castle envelope is also made from a page from that magazine. The paper the envelopes are made from is pretty flimsy but they’re fine to use once the letter paper is in them and they’re sealed up. Previously envelopes I made from the magazine arrived in their destinations so I’m not too worried about these!

     Unfortunately, I didn’t get the castle envelope sent off in time so I had to add an extra stamp to it:

Which was awkward to fit because I didn’t want to cover up the castle on the envelope. The SOAR (stamp on a roll) stamps are big and tricky to place because of their size – I’m not too fond of the SOAR stamps because of this, even though you can get them in any denomination you want. Also, the pictures they use for them are the 1916 commemorative images and I don’t really like them (flowers and animals suit my mail art a lot better!).

     While I did have a lot of stamp matching trouble last month though, I did start working on matching paper to the envelope as well. Purple letter paper with a purple envelope and…well I didn’t have any castle paper so I went with outdoors camping paper, close enough! If it didn’t match the mail art I at least tried to match it to the person or contents of the letter so in the case above, my pen pal mentioned taking a trip to the mountains and forests so camping paper seemed fitting. I forgot to photograph it, but for the Limerick at night envelope, I used the tattooed girl letter paper I got in June from La Papierre as my pen pal mentioned liking and having tattoos.

     I might not be able to match the paper all the time but it’s nice when I can!

     Finally, the last bit of mail I sent last month was to Keely. Well, last two bits of mail. I sent her a letter and birthday card, along with a mini booklet, but as it was weighing over 100g, it became cheaper to send two lighter envelopes instead of one heavier one! (Snail mail tip – invest in scales, it’s really useful for times like these!)

     The bird envelope had the letter and booklet in it. The two birds are pictures cut out from a colouring book (yup, still using that one colouring book that only cost me €5 – it was a great investment for my mail! if you haven’t seen my posts from a few months back, check them out: colouring books and envelopes part 1 and part two).

     I did forget to take a picture of the card itself, but you can see it in Keely’s mail post (which you should check out because she has such lovely mail!). It’s a travel theme card and envelope. I was in the craft store one day and spotted this pack with die cuts and card (it’s hard to see in the picture but there’s a faint map on the card I used for the envelope) and I straight away thought of Keely when I saw it! It had just been her birthday so it seemed the perfect material to make a birthday card from.

     And yup, that’s my outgoing mail from July!

     I’m off now to make sure August’s post has more pretty pictures than this one!