Precious gifts come by post!

Some gifts are priceless. Not because of their translation into dollars or rupees, but the sheer love and effort that goes into them.

Last week, I waited desperately for a post to arrive. And what a wait it was, flipping open my metal mail box at least twice a day! When the post did arrive, I squealed with joy. My dear friend Ashwini of http://indulge-ashscorner.blogspot.com sent me a cute set of handmade gifts.

You may figure out that the little felt ball on the left in this picture, is a flower. Yes it is. But with a purpose. It is a coat-pin for my black winter coat!

The other two gifts,

 a lovely little soap bar that she made at home! And...

some body lotion, or butter as you would call it.

Ashwini's homemade soaps and lotions are a hit with her friends. I have met her, and let me tell you her skin is perfect, thanks to such lovely work with essential oils, basic home oils such as almond oil, olive oil and the likes from the kitchen shelf, and some soap base from the craft store!

I consider these my birthday gifts, even if she did not know and yet sent them over.

Big hugs to you Ashwini! Am inspired to make my own soaps now!

Postal flavours: Bookmarks with mail trash

We may have moved on from hand-written mail to e-mail world over. But that does not stop your mail-box from filling up.

My mailbox often gets full with coupon mail of stores I can rarely visit, given my no-car-no-life status out here in New Jersey. The other mail is from the electricity office, cable TV office, insurance and banks.

A lot of mail belongs to earlier tenants too, who we cannot go looking for.

Mail covers or postal envelopes in the US have patterns on their inside, something I love. I decided to experiment with these patterned paper pieces for my bookmarks.

The picture below is a sample of mail envelopes, basics needed for the bookmarks such as glue, a pair of scissors, mail envelopes, ruler and pre-punched shapes. You also need a paper punch - regular. And a small hole punch if you like.

Using a paper-trimmer, and corner rounders besides

I used a type-writer rubber stamp, and `a story begins' stamp which I had been looking for, a long time and found at Michaels during the Fall sales kick-off recently.

Dabbing some distress ink from a Distress ink stamp pad helped with the vintage look. Some olive green string with a wooden bead, and it is done.

Not to forget, you need a cardboard piece to firm up the patterned paper. I used cardboard from a pizza carton.

Here are the other pieces.

Since I was only experimenting, did not want to stick to a particular style. The red or crimson patterned paper bookmarks in the picture are actually courtesy mail from Target. Postal envelopes mostly have blue patterns or shades of grey-black. This was an exception. And my delight.

The `Live life' and `Hope' rangolis, I had experimented a couple of years back...not so happy with their result here. But I know how to make future sets better. The stamped words in the third one here read `Once in a lifetime you meet something who changes Everything'...so true! The white flowers are pre-punched from mail envelopes.

Here they are, a mish-mash of tinies and longer ones.

For the tinies, the sticker sheets above came in handy. If you look at the bookmark on extreme left, it is again a cut out of a mail cover. I still cannot figure out if it is pre-paid stamping by companies or bar-code printed. I have simply stuck the piece on another piece of cardboard, and a sticker rose to embellish it.

The paper clip bookmark was made with left-over mail paper and pre-punched flowers stuck on a paperclip.

Here is the rear side of some of these bookmarks....done rather casually. A doodle here, a punch-shape there...

Have a lot of mail around? Go ahead, try something. If you have kids at school, get them to try something new. And do mail me the pictures ;).



Photos: M Radhika
Permission for re-use is a must.