As I write this post winds and hailstorms are battering outside, which is ironic, because I want to write about celebrating sunshine and spring.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a fan of winter. I like the crisp, cold air of a July morning. The crunch of frost underfoot. My hands wrapped around a freshly-brewed cup of tea. Slippers, hot-water-bottles, cats on laps and snuggles with babies.

But I’ve also said it before and I’m saying it again: this year, I am determined to welcome the warmer weather with a positive attitude. Normally, the onset of a mild spring day has me all-a-dither about summer looming, and, “Oh no if it’s hot in September, January is going to be HORRIBLE.”

Not this time. I hereby declare that this is the year summer and I make friends. I will open my arms to the sting of hot sun on my skin, burning away the weariness and black mornings and endless winter viruses. I will re-plant my vegetable garden and let the summer sun and rain warm the soil into something that nurtures growth and life. I will make this a season of salads and seafood and fresh, wholesome summer on the inside of me as well as the back yard. And if it all gets too much, I will thank the gods that I now live in a house with air conditioning.

To celebrate my new friendship with summer, I made up a batch of little “sunshine packets” filled with organic sunflower seeds, to send to blog subscribers. I hope they will plant them and enjoy some glorious bursts of perspiration-free “summer” in their gardens or in pots.

Instead of the usual brown paper, I slipped these packets into cheerful yellow envelopes to make them even more summery, before I painted on the pictures and addresses. Here’s what they looked like.

These are some of the “tea fortune” parcels I sent out to some super-lovely people recently. (You can take a look the tea fortunes here). It was actually quite hard to come up with mail-art designs that worked on such teeny tiny packages. I struggled to find space to fit pictures and names and addresses and wax seals and stamps all on the one little panel, while still ensuring the addresses were big enough to be legible. Still, I kind of like how small they are. To me it makes them feel more gift-like, if that makes sense. I hope the recipients feel the same way.

Has the digital age killed the post? Recently the absolutely lovely Rachel Faith Cox sent me (in the mail) Simon Garfield’s latest book, To the Letter, and I have just started reading it. In this book, Garfield likens the post to the paddle steamer.

“The digitisation of communication has effected dramatic changes in our lives, but the impact on letter-writing – so gradual and so fundamental – has slipped by like an English summer. Something that has been crucial to our economic and emotional well-being since ancient Greece has been slowly evaporating for two decades, and in two more the licking of a stamp will seem as antiquated to a future generation as the paddle steamer. You can still travel by paddle steamer, and you can still send a letter, but why would you want to when the alternatives are so much faster and more convenient?”

But To the Letter, he says, is an attempt to provide a positive answer to that question.

“It is a celebration of what has gone before, and the value we place on literacy, good thinking and thinking ahead,” he says. And, in a sentiment I find quite lovely, “I wonder if it is not also a book about kindness.” Garfield wants to celebrate “the post, the envelope, a pen, a slower cerebral whirring, the use of the whole of our hands and not just the tips of our fingers.”

I love that concept, and it rings true for me. Each letter I write to blog readers takes me a lot of time, and I definitely use my whole hand. But I’m not used to writing long-hand any more. My hand cramps up, my cursive is appalling. I am always amazed to learn that people can actually decipher what I’ve written. My hand can’t keep up with my mind, and my thoughts and ideas race ahead of my pen until things become jumbled and lost. Sometimes, this manifests in blotches and crossings-out and other evidences of a little bit of emergency editing. Other times, I catch myself in time. I slow down, breathe, and write more consciously.

And it’s not just the writing of the letter. I use my whole hands to put together the collection of little things I put inside my mail: old stamps, tea leaves, a book, whatever I’m sending at the time. With my whole hands I wrap the parcels in brown paper, draw and paint the address and pictures, wrap the whole thing in string. In one hand I hold a stick of red wax and in the other I hold a lit match, dripping the wax in an ever-growing circle at the point where the string is tied off. As I press the seal with my initial into the hot wax, I press with two whole hands.

Every letter I send is a slow, tactile and personal activity. It takes me a long time, and I find it quite meditative. Therapeutic, even. I love it.

What about you. Do you like to write letters?

I’ve been writing letters again. This is one of my favourite things to do. It only really happens on nights when both children sleep early and well, and there are no other jobs to do. After the dinner is cooked and eaten and the animals are fed and the toys are picked up off the playroom floor and the kitchen is clean, I bring my things out onto the dining room table and write letters and wrap parcels and paint addresses on brown paper, while Mr B signs letters of his own, in front of the TV. I can get very happily lost in this lovely task. And before I know it, the time has gotten away from me and I realise Harry is due – or overdue – for a feed and I am due – or overdue – to climb into bed. So I quickly pack everything away and jump into the shower and start again on another quiet night.

Do you love snail mail? You might enjoy these 10 treats for your mail-box:

Absolutely adorable crocheted stamps

Stunning confetti-decorated mail

Snail mail my email (strangers will turn your email into a hand-written letter then post it to your friend) is back

Take a look at all this amazing mail!

Did you like the flower heart postcard I received recently? Here’s how it was made

This blog is filled with more amazing mail art

These DIY party poppers would be fantastic to send in the mail, with a little message inside the “pop”

Did you know you could personalise stamps with Australia Post?

This guy sent a camera through mail, inviting postal workers to take photos before passing it on

Birthday in a can is good. Mail in a can would be even better!

Happy Tuesday dear friends. I hope your week is GREAT. Here is some more mail.

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!

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.

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.

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…

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!

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.

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.