Outgoing: Holy Mary part 1

It's not that I am deeply religious, but I was raised as a catholic. As a child I did my Holy Communion (as every child in our village) and was part of the church choir (although I was always the one at the back with my out of tune voice). I have good memories from that time, but now I am older I'm not a practising catholic anymore. I do still have a thing for catholic memorabilia though. I love rosaries and Holy Mary pictures and we always light a candle in front of the Holy Mary altar when visiting a church. The kids always light a candle for our deceased cats by the way. I got chatting to Tessa about this somewhere on the world wide web and I found some memorabilia from when we visited Kevelaer, a small pilgrimage town in Germany. It's one of the towns my late grandma used to visited and always returned with some kitschy catholic stuff (which I loved by the way!). I got really inspired and carved a Holy Mary stamp and found a matching postagestamp. So I stamped away and made stickers and a card and off it went to Tessa!

Outgoing: Coming home

A while ago I found this gorgeous old book in a thriftstore. The inside was nothing really special, but the cover I really loved! The pages were slowly beautifully turning yellowish. There was also a chapter about moving plans, and how appropriate would that be for someone who is moving house! I decided on a bit of embroidery on paper and ended up with this tree growing out of a house. It turned out really wel! Maybe in the end I should have used a different colour but somehow I quite liked it like this, a subtle pink on the pages.
I've carved a stamp out of a rubber eraser (that was done before I did the stampcarving class by the way). I've made stationary with it and stamped away on the envelope and wrapping paper and included the stamp as a little gift. I also included a vintage moving address card! It's from the fifties or sixties I think, I'm not really sure to be exact.

Inspiration: Thrifting treasures

I just love a bit of thrifting, especially nice stuff I can use for mail, decoration for my studio or just because I think it's lovely. On Kingsday (I still have to get used to it being called that instead of Queensday) I found this vintage tin full of vintage letters. I was seeing these letters popping up everywhere on blogs and Instagram, but they were all really newish. Never had I seen a vintage one, until I stumbled across it on the Kingsday market. Yay!

How about these thrifted posh handkerchiefs that were once bought in Austria as a posh souvenir, but never been used though. I do have a thing for vintage handkerchiefs, especially when they are embroidered and in a box. God knows why, but I really love this stuff.

Normally I go to thriftshops for some treasure hunting, but this time I went to a flea market they call a free market. Well, it wasn't free, I had to pay some Euro's to get in, and once there I was really disappointed. Even thriftshops have better stuff, and of better quality and prices were ridiculous. I did buy this vintage toy car though, just because it is colourful, but the woman charged me a ridiculous price for it. 5 Euro, which I managed to negotiate to 4,50 with great difficulty. A small book, just because I liked the cover and the typo and some postagemark stamps! A great addition to my collection!

Inspiration: Vintage sewingthings

I have an accidental small collection of sewing things! I just love my thrifted buttoncard, the other stuff I found in my own sewing box, and the small card with fasteners was sent to me by Janien from Leuke Post. Isn't this vintage sewing stuff just lovely! My accidental collection is a little seventies with all that orange. Some of them I bought (and used ofcourse) in the UK while I was living there (in the nineties).

Incoming: vintage from Belgium

I just realised that I'm behind on posting stuff, this mail from Yves arrived in the beginning of April, and it's June now. Well, some catching up to do!
Yves is my Instagram friend and collects vintage stationary. After he posted the postcard in his feed, we wondered why in the olden days people put stamps on the front of the postcard instead of the back. And I still don't know really. Kinda curious. He remembered us discussing this (digital discussion) and sent it to me! I love it! I also like the vintage birth announcement of Pierre, which is vintage letterpress (where you can feel the print inside the paper with your fingers).

Incoming: Beauty from Poland

When I opened the envelope that arrived in my mailbox, I was really happily surprised! I didn't expect this inside, a careful and beautiful wrapped parcel from Ania. I knew I had to contain myself from just not opening this right away. I felt this needed good light and careful attention (does that sound weird? I always feel if someone really makes an effort, I feel like really making an effort in carefully unfolding the parcel).
The next day (after almost jumping up and down from excitement) I had peace and quiet and started to carefully unwrap the bear wrapping. Inside was this book tied together with ribbon. Yet again really beautiful. I could feel the attention to detail that was put in it. It turned out to be a folding book, like a harmonica. So it could be read on both sides. It was a penpal book to get to now a bit about Ania (I made one for her over here). And it was all so lovely put together, the photos don't even do justice to it all. Well it's a book that had to be experienced and felt, not to be photographed I guess. And I really felt it. It was so amazing that I cried a little while reading her letter. Just because I could feel the attention and honesty inside this, all the way from Poland.
It is so dear to me, that I have put it inside my glass cabinet, just to look at. I just don't want to take anything out it. It's just so in tune with itself. Pure beauty.

inspiration: stamp carving

Something that was still on my bucketlist, was learning how to do stampcarving. Via Instagram I met my new penpal Mirjam, and she is like my stampcarving hero! Turned out she didn't live to far away from me (well, just under an hour away). She invited me over for an evening, to learn tricks and trades from the stampmaster her self. And how much fun we had! It's always a bit scary to meet someone you have never met before and only now through the digital world and snailmail. But I put on my brave shoes and went on my way. And boy I didn't regret that at all! What a wonderful evening full of laughter and joy we had. In between chatting I also learned some stampcarving. Since I brought Mirjam a little gift, a tin full of plasters with a vintage nurse on it, thought that was appropriate since we both work in healthcare. I had wrapped this in a sort of purple pattern paper with a vintage postagestamp of vintage nurses.
And I decided to give that a go, a vintage nurse (it had to be a bit of a challenge ofcourse). And this is what I came up with: a vintage nursing stamp.