Guest Post: Uncustomary

Hello guys! There's a girl I've met when I first started blogging here that always inspires me with her incredible creativity, and today I have the honour to have her guest posting for me! Please, meet Mary..

Hello readers of Wreck This Girl's Mailbox! I'm excited to be able to post here today. My name is Mary (of uncustomary) and I live near Baltimore in the US. I'm a self proclaimed street artist and mail enthusiast. Today, I wanted to share with you my thoughts on random acts of kindness, especially in the mail.

First, I should say that I own an excessive amount of stationery, postcards, and general paper. There was a time where I was constantly accumulating them and there was no way that I would have been able to use it all, even if I was sending ten things a day. Now, I've slowed down a lot on the intake, and I'm focusing on sending what I have out into the world. I have forty, or so, penpals that I correspond with regularly, but sometimes I feel like I need to spread the love outside of the snail mail circle I've created.

A great way for me to do that is to use sendsomething. If you've never used this site before, it's very basic. All you do is create a profile and include your address, so people can randomly send you mail. There's an option for clicking "random address", which works fine, but you can also search by keyword. This is really cool because I have a lot of specific postcards! So I can search for "feminism" and find someone who clearly likes mail and feminism, and I can send a postcard to them of a famous female figure. The same goes for cereal, actors, and umbrellas.

So what I do, is take a pile of postcards and search for applicable interests. Then, I address, stamp, and decorate them. Later on, I will write messages. Sometimes I write a quote in the message area, sometimes I make a list. Sometimes I write about my day or myself in general, and sometimes I just write a bunch of questions. It all depends on my mood. I think people put a lot of stress on what they should write on a postcard, but it can be very light and fun!

Getting mail from a stranger is an exciting thing for me, so I like to put that out into the world as much as I can. I also do this with things other than mail, which you can see here. I encourage everyone to send mail to people they don't know, and share parts of themselves on paper. It's liberating and a good way to solidify your interests and opinions.

PS - If you write me, I will always write you back.

Thank you Mary for sharing some of your mail enthusiasm with us!
How do you guys feel about sendin/receiving mail from strangers?

Have a nice day,
ƒ.

smash sunday

Hi guys! Oh, how I've missed "smash sunday", have you? Well, I hope you did, because I have some post in store for you, not necessarily about my smashbook, but about crafting and scrapbooking in general.
To start off again, today I'm having a lovely lady guest posting here.. let's see what she shared with us! ☺

Hi everyone! My name is Michelle Marie, and I blog over at Seaweed Kisses. When I'm not busy eating, traveling, or working my 9 to 5 job, my hours are spent crafting and writing.Today I would like to share some of my favorite go-to snail mailing tools.

I've been snail mailing for years now, but only amongst close friends and family, you see. It wasn't until recently that I started to branch out, and made some new wonderful pen pals. I honestly had no idea that the snail mail community still existed given how reliant we've quickly become on modern technology. Silly me, I guess I've been missing out all these years.

Now that my pen pal list has grew significantly, this has given me great opportunities to exercise my creativity and to find inspiration in everyday surroundings. One of the most recent projects that helped me bring out more of my imagination was the awesome Secret Pen Pal Scavenger Hunt that Fab had wonderfully put together.  It was so much fun, and I was introduced to many more like-minded people from all over the world.

So here I am, hooked on snail mailing and decorating paper.

In the past, the typical pen and paper were my best friends, but now as you'll see my crafting tools have greatly expanded since those beginning days.

guest post #2: Elisse

Hello guys! Today instead of the regular Smash Sunday, I'm going to share with you a lovely tutorial made by my friend Elisse. I'm sure some of you will find it super useful to decorate your scrapbook, journals, as well as your letters, enjoy!

Hi everyone! This is Elisse from Bij Gebrek Aan Beter. Quite some time ago Fab posted a guestblog over at my place (you can check that one out here) so I decided it was time to return the favor :)

A little introduction might come in handy: I'm a 21 year old girl with a passion for sewing, photographing and everything else crafty. I pretend to be an artsy fartsy lady. I'm also into snail mailing a lot (just like the readers of Fab's blog I suppose) so I thought it would be great to combine "sewing" and snail mailing into a DIY. Today, we are going to make our own fabric tape! A very quick & easy project!

guest post #1: Madeline

Hi guys, my lovely (pen) friend Madeline wrote something about the beauty of letter writing, and I want to share it with you today; enjoy!

Sending letters is more than just putting pen to paper. It's communicating with someone, a friend, a relative, perhaps someone you don't know. It's making an effort and showing a little love. There's something joyous about the sending and receiving of letters. Reading a letter and knowing that not so long ago, the page was in the hands of the writer, pouring their heart out onto the page just for a little while.  Just for you.

letter writing :: film (by chickadee nest {martha})

Guest Post: Nnenna | Correspondance Club

Hi guys, one of my new blogger friends, Nnenna, runs a pen pal club, and I'm really happy to be part of it now! :) I though some of you might be interested, so I asked her to write about her project here.
You have until May 1st to sign up for the next month round, so make sure to read the whole post if you're interested!

Hiya- I'm so excited to be here on Fab's blog today! She asked me to share about a little project I started a few months ago called the Correspondence Club. First thing you should know about me is that I'm a huge stationery lover! I also love to write letters- I think they are such a special, thoughtful item that you can treasure for years. Then, I thought about how fun it would be to connect with my blogger friends in another way- through letter writing! 

When I posed the idea to my readers, I was so glad to hear that there are others out there who enjoy writing letters just as much as I do. I thought to myself, "Just go for it!" and that's how the Correspondence Club got started! 

Each person has one partner and we exchange letters once a month. In addition to our letters, we also include a small little gift (under $5), to brighten your partner's day. It doesn't have to be anything expensive at all (you can even handmake something); the idea is just to include a little present that you think will make your pen pal smile :) Then, at the end of every month, I do a round-up post on my blog with pictures of all the letters that people have sent! You can see some of the letters I've sent below :)