letter box – naomi bulger

Snail mail – thank you + Tuesday links

Some beautiful surprises have been arriving in the mail and on my doorstep in recent weeks. I feel so lucky to be on the receiving end of so much thoughtfulness and generosity.

:: Lovely cards and notes and ephemera from beautiful friends met via this blog
:: Precious cherries in the middle of winter, from my wonderful husband
:: An adorable, polka-dotted parcel of goodies, from the lovely Louise of Jubilee Road
:: The most extravagant, glorious floral postcard I’ve ever seen, from mail artist Dean Grey
:: Stunning pink roses from Tillda Flowers, with little watermelon sweets from Suga Muma
:: And this crocheted bunting from Sandra, which is so perfect I don’t even know where to start

Each of these absolutely brightened my day, and I’m so incredibly thankful to everyone who has taken the time to write to me and send these things. WOW, you guys are so generous!

It’s not exactly the same, but I thought I’d try to pay it forward a little bit by sharing some lovely bits and pieces with you all that I’ve collected from around the Internet of late. I hope you enjoy them.

1. To test any creative idea, ask yourself: what comes next?

2. These people have transformed something from the everyday (a school bus) into something wonderful (a stylish holiday home)!

3. More giant knitting. Snuggle up!

4. This made me laugh. My ideal wedding at any age

5. LOVE the look of these DIY ‘watercolour’ mugs

6. When was the last time you wrote a thank-you note?

7. Cats like food trucks too!

8. Valley of the Kings. I want to go here.

9. Fantastic list of books for creative people

10. I lost way too much time exploring The Nostalgia Machine. All the memories!

11. Don’t try this at home: railroad street art

12. Healthy nachos? Don’t mind if I do!

13. This makes me want to create my own urban jungle

14. In my job and my creative pursuits, I often still draw or write things out by hand before flipping open the laptop. Seems I’ve been doing something right.

Have you written someone a letter later? Just a little note in the mail to say “Hi, I’m thinking of you”? Let’s all send someone a lovely surprise in the mail this week. I can tell you from personal experience: it will make their day!

Snail mail – illustration inspiration

24 Jul ’14 25 Comments

More mail art has been going out to say thank you to people for subscribing to this blog. People have been asking me how I decide what to draw and paint on the mail. Here’s an idea of my thinking behind this batch.

∧∧ Clare wrote in her blog about finding a figurine of Krishna in the creek near her house

∧∧ This had something to do with Liesl’s email address

∧∧ Adrienne has a blog called Tough City Writer

∧∧ Louise wrote in her comments to me, “I like rabbits”

∧∧ I had an aunt and uncle who used to live in Willoughby and they always gave me books, so I drew some for Bridie

∧∧ Relates to something Laura shared in her message to me

∧∧ Relates to something Sandra shared in her message to me

∧∧ Emily has a blog called Thimble Cat

∧∧ I wanted to make something a bit fairy-story-ish for Kwan-Yu

The end. More soon!

Snail mail: a good mail day

11 Jul ’14 4 Comments

Yesterday was a Good Mail Day at our place, capital letters justified, with three lovely surprises arriving in the mailbox and at our front door.

Lately there has been a frenzy of letter-writing and parcel-painting around here. I’ve been sending decorated snail mail out to people who subscribe to this blog, and it’s been winging its way all over the world. I send mail because I love sending mail, and because I’m so phenomenally grateful to YOU, and to everyone else who takes the time to read this blog and leave their comments and share their stories. I told a little story about that recently, here. I don’t expect anyone to write back but when they do, it is SUCH a bonus to find their friendly letters in my mail box. It absolutely makes my day.

^^ I wrote about ‘meeting’ actress Kate Holderness a couple of months ago. We found each other via a circuitous route with the common thread being our mutual love of snail mail. Then just yesterday, a lovely care package arrived from Kate, out of the blue. Madeleine, Harry and I whipped up the Angel Delight that same afternoon. It tasted like childhood. Can anybody clear up a mystery for me? Is Angel Delight junket? And also, how beautiful is the envelope my mail came in! It was covered in stamps and washi tape and sealed with a wax seal, and those balloons floating out of the dream-like picture were just perfect.

^^ One of the two lovely sisters from Etsy shop That We Do (I’m not sure if she wants me to use her name) recently subscribed to this blog and, as with anyone who wants it, I promised to send her some snail mail. But before I even got up to writing the mail she sent me a wonderfully thoughtful handmade gift in the mail. It included a pine cone found by her two-year-old daughter; a crocheted hair pin; and a gorgeous necklace, made in colours inspired by my blog header, and stamped with my initials. I absolutely love it. I wore it all afternoon and the children were mesmerised!

^^ A few weeks ago my local deli (who I really must feature on here sometime soon because they are so much MORE than just a deli) alerted me on Instagram to a competition being run by their florist, Tillda Flowers, to win two visits worth of a flower subscription. And I won! You guys, I never win anything! The first beautiful bunch arrived yesterday and, as you can see, I really need to invest in some nice, vintage vases because the teapot had to stand in instead. I love the idea of a flower subscription: imagine having these arrive at your doorstep every week or fortnight, to brighten your day!

So to all of these folks, THANK YOU, truly. Your thoughtful, beautiful mail made a cold, windy winter’s day seem sunny and welcoming. I am so lucky!

ps. Don’t forget that if you subscribe to this blog and would like me to send you some mail like this, just use this form to send me your contact details.

Snail mail: the back-story

4 Jul ’14 19 Comments

Lately a lot of people have been asking me about the snail mail I send. I figured it’s been a while since I shared this story, and never in the one place, so I thought I’d give it a go today. Forgive me if you already know this story: please enjoy the pretty pictures and I’ll be back with something new tomorrow.

So back a few years ago, I wrote a little novella called Airmail. It was about snail mail between strangers. A girl chose a phone number out of the phone book, at random, and started writing letters to the stranger. As her letters became increasingly surreal and urgent the recipient, an old man by the name of G.L. Solomon, was moved to shake off the shackles of his curmudgeonly, routine-driven life and experienced something of a “life renaissance.”

When the book came out, I thought it would be a fun thing to write letters to readers. So I promised to write a personal letter of thanks to anyone who read Airmail (and I did). Some of them wrote back to me, which was wonderful.

As time went by, other readers found me online, and wrote to me from all over the world. Some of them drew pictures on their mail, sent ephemera, snippets of their lives. They wrote amazing things about how my book had reached them at the right moment in their lives. Letters like this:

I am staying at a youth hostel in East Berlin and stumbled across a copy of your book. I am a forty year-old woman traveling with my 14 year old son, and readily identified with Mr Solomon’s bemusement when he first enters the hostel (it was my first time staying at a hostel!). Being forty this year was hard for me and I too am traveling and gathering more marbles. It’s not so much that I haven’t lived an adventuresome life, it’s just that suddenly your life seems so much shorter while the list of things you want to do grows bigger, and you realize that you have spent the last 10 years of your life raising kids and working. (could this be what a mid-life crisis is all about……duh) It’s amazing how at certain critical points in your life the right book or the right experience occurs. Your book is part of that for me. Today I walked past some graffitti on the side of a cafe -’ Life is not over yet ‘ it read.

You cannot imagine how that letter made my day! (Well probably you can.)

Since I started doing this – writing Airmail, writing to book readers, writing to blog readers – I discovered a whole new community of people who love snail mail. And they are the BEST people. There’s something about people who take the time to write and send letters, and read what others send them. Nine times out of ten (probably more), they are kind, considerate, lovely people. Often funny and clever. Always generous and creative. This community is the best thing to have come out of writing my book.

Meanwhile… we had originally planned a bit of a book launch when Airmail came out. A bookstore in Sydney was going to host it, and a local online magazine was going to host a bit of an ‘after party’ on a rooftop, with a snail mail theme. We ordered a box of books ready for this event (books were included in the ticket price), but then we moved from Sydney to Queensland. We figured I could still fly back to Sydney for the event, but planning it got a lot trickier. Then we moved from Queensland to Adelaide, and the planning got even more difficult. And a move back to Sydney seemed less and less likely. We started putting out feelers in Adelaide for bookstores that might host a book launch instead but to be honest by then my heart wasn’t really in it. Then I went overseas for a month. Then I fell pregnant. Then we moved yet again, this time to Melbourne. And by then it felt like the book had been out forever (it was less than a year but the gloss had come off), and I admit I felt kind of deflated and a bit of a failure.

People were still buying my book and reading it and writing me lovely letters, but that box of books from the launch-that-didn’t-happen sat sadly at the bottom of a cupboard, mocking me. Until you. I can’t tell you how honoured I feel that you come here to this little space of mine. That you read my blog, that you take the time to comment, and that you share your stories with me. Every time I hear from you, I am blown away. Every time! It is so amazing. YOU are so amazing.

So I decided to use that sad little box and turn it into something really happy: a way to say thank-you to you for taking the time to read this blog. And because I want you to know I care, I do my best to make the mail I send you as pretty as possible. Thank you!

ps. If you subscribe to this blog (or you want to) and you’d like me to send you mail like the parcels you see on this page, just leave me your details using the form on this page.

UPDATE 5 July 2014: as of today I have run out of copies of Airmail to send you. However I would still love to send you something nice by snail-mail to say thank you for reading this blog, and I will still do my best to make it look pretty. If you have subscribed to this blog (or you want to), simply fill in your postal details on this page. And if you’re still keen to read Airmail, there’s a list of stockists here.

Snail mail: the Madeleine edition

25 Jun ’14 10 Comments

A short while ago I sat across the table from Madeleine, painting brown-paper-wrapped parcels to send to blog subscribers. I had out the water-colours and was applying some tint to the pictures I’d outlined in black pen (always with the art-liner). For her part, Madeleine was up to her elbows in craft paint and was smearing her hands with joyous abandon across a big sheet of butchers’ paper.

Then I left the room to make a cup of tea. When I returned, Madeleine had gotten her paint-covered little hands onto one of my wrapped parcels, and was covering it with her own brand of mail art. That parcel was intended for Michelle, and you can see the finished product below. I think she is pretty lucky to be receiving a one-of-a-kind work of art by Madeleine in the mail, don’t you?

After the clean-up, I had a little try at wrapping some of the parcels with Madeleine’s butchers’ paper and went for a minimal, line-drawing feel instead. I also had a play with some collages, just to mix things up.

I hope everyone likes their mail! More coming soon…

19 pen pals you wish you had

19 Jun ’14 23 Comments

As you probably know, I like to draw pictures on my mail to make them pretty. But did you know there was a whole movement called “mail art”? I only just discovered this! It’s when people take the time to decorate the envelopes, so you get a wonderful treat before you even open the letter (and the postie gets something lovely to look at, too).

I’ve taken a wander around the Internet and collated 19 lovely letterly folk who – surely – make the posties and pen-pals of the world very happy indeed!

1 // Sender: Kaitlyn Patience from isavirtue. Last Christmas, Kaitlyn came up with the idea of a snail-mail advent: she posted one beautiful letter a day to various friends, in the lead-up to Christmas

2 // Sender: Dean Grey from Exploding Doughnut, who sent this ‘leaf mail’ to cheer up a friend who was going through tough times

3 // Sender: Katherine from Wishbone Blog. Katherine has two younger sisters who are the “golden threads” in her life, but they live far away. So she sent this lovely mail to them for their birthdays

4 // Sender: Fabrizia from Wreck this Girl. Fab is a pen pal extraordinaire, although she’s put new pen pals on hiatus while she focuses on uni. Take a look through her blog for some beautiful mail

5 // Sender: Marian from That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles. I love the way she makes collages on her mail from pop culture clippings

6 // Sender: Giova from One Bunting Away. There are lovely themes to these mail packages. Take a look at the Alice in Wonderland-themed package. I must do that for a friend one day!

7 // Sender: Illustrator Axel Sheffler, to children’s book publisher Klaus Flugge. Take a look through this gallery in The Guardian to see some amazing snail mail Flugge received from other illustrators

8 //Sender: Bianca from Good Night Little Spoon. Bianca is so generous she not only made this beautiful envelope for a mail-swap, she created a free printable so we can make our own letters look this pretty too!

9 // Sender: Magdalena from The Craft Revival. I love these envelopes: they are like a colour explosion! Magdalena gives the rest of us five tips to make our mail look this great

10 // Sender: Rin from Papered Thoughts. Rin sends and receives all kinds of beautiful mail. Take a look through some of the incoming and outgoing mail on her blog

11 // Sender: Meghan from And Here We Are. Meghan must truly be the typography queen. You don’t need to draw pictures or use colours to create stunningly beautiful letters

12 // Sender: Rin from Papered Thoughts. Again. Because, how adorable are those washi tape flags!

13 // Sender: Paper pastries. This blog is full of hand-crafted and designed mail, and lovely calligraphy, as well as stories of personal mail shared between pen pals

14 // Sender: Le Blog de Liberty. So my French isn’t great, but as far as I can tell, this post title says “Spring mail-art.” And those colours are tres jolie, oui?

15 // Sender: London illustrator Chetan, who goes by the name Cheism. How amazing is the line-drawn city behind the address on this mail!!

16 // Sender: Emily from Thimble Cat. Do you know any fans of the Grand Budapest Hotel? If you do, how about sending them a little letter that looks like this?

17 // Sender: Lindsay Ostrom. Lindsay heard a story about a post-mistress who was trying to save her little post office, one postcard at a time. So she sent her this stunning record postcard

18// Sender: Moi! I’m not exactly in the league of these other guys but I do love to send mail, and if you subscribe to this blog, I’d be happy to send you a free copy of my book Airmail to say thank you. I’ll try to make the mail look pretty, too. Here’s some other mail I’ve sent. (Fair warning: I put the snail in snail mail, but I will write!) Just go here to send me your details.

19 // And finally, anyone who contributes to the Mail Me Art project. About eight years ago, smarty pants Darren Di Lieto came up with the genius idea of inviting artists and illustrators from all over the world to send him decorated mail. They didn’t even have to include anything inside the mail: “the medium is the message,” he said. You can buy the books from this project here and, if you’re feeling creative, you can contribute to the latest project (and book) here.

Now it’s over to you. Who would you add to this list? Do you like to send pretty mail? Share a link to your mail project in the comments if you do so we can all admire it!

Snail mail: Dear you

12 Jun ’14 10 Comments

And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
~W.H. Auden, “Night-Mail”

Dear you, you are not forgotten. THANK YOU for reading this little blog of mine, and for your comments, and your feedback, and just being here with me. I sent five of you some little painted packages in the post last week, I hope they reach you in one piece and I hope you enjoy them! I’m writing and decorating some more right now, so the postman will be knocking again soon.

I love to write mail, and sending you something by post is the least I can do to say thank you for subscribing and for reading. If you’d like some mail from me, just go to the subscribe page and fill in the form to send me your mailing address. Also, it’s not too late to enter to win a copy of the launch issue of the stunning new Alphabet Family Journal and a poster by Bianca Cash. Details for this competition are on this post about family (take a look at the comments others have left – they are incredibly moving!).

And now for a spot of nostalgic poetry: the complete poem “Night Mail” from which the quote came above, written by WH Auden for a 1936 documentary of the same name, and narrated by John Grierson.

Snail mail: never give up

4 Jun ’14 6 Comments

This morning when I opened my mailbox I got the best kind of surprise: mail from gorgeous person and motivator-extraordinaire, Katherine Mackenzie of The Beauty of Life. Katherine sent me two postcards, one on which she’d written a little message for me, and another that was left blank so that I could send it on to somebody else.

My postcard featured a quote from Harry Potter author JK Rowling. “One thing is for sure: if you give up too soon, you’ll never know what you’ll be missing. Keep going and never quit.”

This was EXACTLY what I needed to hear today, as I struggled to get on top of everything on my plate, and grappled with self-doubt.

And it reminded me of JK Rowling’s incredibly inspiring commencement address on “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination,” made to Harvard students in 2008. Have you heard it? If you haven’t, do yourself a favour and watch it right now. The next 20 minutes may be one of the greatest gifts you could ever give yourself.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

… Or if you’re not a video watcher kind of Internet person (as I so often am not, because I don’t want to wake babies sleeping nearby), here is a link to the full transcript of the address. Get ye reading!

Easy “woodland picnic” party invitations

2 Jun ’14 18 Comments

I always think it’s nice at a party, even a little one, to give your guests one “wow factor” to make them feel special. It doesn’t need to be difficult or expensive, just something that looks a bit extravagant, so they think “Wow, I’m excited to be here.” It might be a rainbow curtain of coloured streamers at the front door, or a confetti-strewn hallway (if you can stand the clean-up later), or simply a fancy table-setting.

Same goes for the invitations. They set the scene and build anticipation for the party. And because I’m all about the snail mail, I LOVE to make interesting, unexpected invitations and send them by post. These days it’s so nice to receive ANYTHING other than bills in the mailbox at all, let alone a little present, inviting you along to a shin-dig.

Madeleine loves a good picnic so we are hosting a “Winter Woodland Picnic” party for her second birthday. Recently I saw these woodland party invitations by Michaela Egger on Oh Happy Day and I thought they’d be perfect for this theme. Michaela gives you a full tutorial for making the invitations, even down to templates to make the boxes yourself. If you have the time, they look pretty easy and then you’re talking about almost no cost to make something really pretty!

As it was, I bought my boxes for $3 each from a local cafe, because I couldn’t find the type I wanted in craft stores, and was too lazy/time-poor to make them myself. Other than that, the florist moss was $5 and I had ridiculous amounts left over, and I covered the envelopes in old stamps we already had around the house to cover postage, so all in all it was a pretty cheap exercise. From start to finish, these invitations took about three hours to make (I made 14).

These are the steps:

1. Decorate the outside of the boxes, any way you like. I chose to paint little toadstools on mine (Madeleine helped me pick images from the Internet to copy), but you could do anything: make a collage, create a potato-stamp, cover it with confetti… go to town!

2. Print out your invitations, roll them into a scroll, and tie them with string.

3. Fill the boxes. In this case, I filled mine with florist moss to create a woodland/grassy theme, following the Oh Happy Day tutorial. I also sacrificed an old tea-towel and cut up tiny squares to look like picnic rugs. Maybe you could add little doll-house picnic items, or some tiny forest animals…

4. Pop your invitation into the box, stick it in an envelope, and post it to your friends. Done!

Madeleine posted the invitations herself. Later the same afternoon, we saw the post van driving past us (“Red car!” Madeleine alerted me). I explained that her party invitations were in that very car, and the driver was taking them to all her friends. The wonder in her eyes. Oh, to be almost two again!

ps. It seems almost unbelievable to me that we are gearing up for Madeleine’s second birthday already. You name the cliche, I’m feeling it. The years are short but the days are long. It feels like just yesterday that she was born, and yet I can barely remember or imagine life without her in it. She is my own little baby. She is growing into such a big girl so fast. And so on.

I once read that cliches only become cliches because they are the best way of expressing something. So there. I am embracing my inner cliches AND my inner conflict. Every day I am so proud of the way she is growing. She is so clever (says her mother), and I can’t wait to see what she will do next. Yet, I want her to stay little forever. I’m not ready to lose that baby-sweetness!

Snail mail: mail’s in

4 Mar ’14 3 Comments

Look what arrived in the mail for me, all the way from Roanoke, VA (USA). A gift from my gorgeous, talented, creative, free-spirited friend Brandi Bernoskie, one of the greatest things (or people) to have come from my venture into blogging.

Thank you Brandi!

Snail mail: yours truly

27 Feb ’14 2 Comments

I managed to carve out some time during the past couple of weeks to write some mail and draw pictures on the envelopes, to send to blog readers. I hope these letters find them well, and that they enjoy their little parcels.

I really love sending pretty mail, so if you’d like some just let me know! At the moment, I’m posting copies of my book Airmail to people who subscribe to this blog. It doesn’t cost you anything or commit you to anything, it’s just my way of saying thanks for reading. If you’d like a copy, just follow the prompts on this page to send me your postal address (goes without saying that is never disclosed).

Yours truly (and all that),
Naomi xo

Snail mail: the mail is late

5 Dec ’13 5 Comments

Approximately one million years ago I promised to send copies of my book Airmail to people who subscribed to my blog. You can see some of my past mail projects here.

Then life got in the way. “Life” in the form of pregnancy, illness, work, renovating, moving and five months of a little girl who wouldn’t sleep at night and would only sleep during the day if I was pushing her in the pram (= zero time to myself. Ever).

But now my pregnancy is almost over (and thankfully the morning sickness is well and truly over), Madeleine is healthy again and spends two days a week in daycare, the renovations are almost done, we have moved into our new house, and a brilliant sleep whisperer alongside my very brave and good girl have given me my evenings back.

So… I sent off my book to five very patient blog readers this week, and enclosed little notes of abject apologies inside. I don’t even know if they still read this blog but ladies if you do, pretty mail is coming your way very soon. I hope you like it. And I am VERY sorry to have taken so long.

(Also, not one of them contacted me to complain that I hadn’t delivered on my promise yet. Not one. And they would have had every right. People are so kind!)

ps. If you want a book and some pretty mail, it would be my pleasure to send it to you. Just fill in the form on this page. I can’t promise I’ll be speedy, but I WILL get it done eventually. Promise!