Mug swap review

While ago I already told you I am participating in Mug O'Comfort Swap hosted by CG swaps. Because my partner was from USA, it took us some more time to receive our packages, but luckily both have reached their destinations so it's time to show off!  :)
 My partner was Amanda from His and Her Hobbies. After a few emails we realized how similar we are. I mean - if we didn't live in different sides of world, one would be married to Aussie guy (or at least- married..) . But we have a lot of common so when I received Amanda's package, I could only sigh - a perfect combination it was!

So this is my new mug - in my and Amanda's favorite color

Very interesting tea set with black, green, white and herbal teas

I got a package of Swiss Miss what is really tasty! I am curios for who is this little note on the package. Maybe for kids who are not good at Math but still loves this drink?  :)

One more tea set. Tasty as well - with 6 flavors, including taste of sleeping bears (actually, I am little it afraid to taste it...)

Raisinets or raisins in chocolate are approved! One more common thing with Amanda - we love everything covered with chocolate.

And a cute extra - shopping list for my next tea purchase!

 Amanda, this was a great swap! Thank you very much for these goodies! Hope to keep in touch!

My dear friends, I warmly recommend to step by Amanda's and her husband's blog as there are really interesting stories about differences between USA and Australia about which you maybe even couldn't imagine! And not only that  - I am sure Amanda soon will show what she got from me! hisandherhobbies.blogspot.com

Review of my Snail mails: Received

I really like snail mail and last year passed as most productive in this field as ever. I took a part of interesting snail mail project and send out a lot of postcards via postcrossing.com. I can't show you here all those beautiful postcards I received (to see them, better check here), but I decided to go with a post where you could see basically all packages I got from my We Heart Mail partners. Hope you will find some interesting ideas what to send with your next snail mail package (maybe it gonna be for Sweet Swap?)!
I will try my best to show you my sent packages as well, so stay tuned!

January -  from Angela (Singapore) Blog post here

February - from Liliana (UK) post here

March - from Sharon (UK) post here

April - from Choni (Spain)  post here

May - from Catherine (France) post here 

November - from Sara (UK)

December -  from Kim (Netherlands)

Sweet Swap 2015 - don't miss it!

It's such a great feeling - to see how many of you have entered or at least interested in my first swap this year! At the moment we have participants from USA, Canada, Australia, The Netherlands and Latvia! You have only 3 days left to apply and add your country or town to this list! Apply you and tell your friend about this!  Who doesn't like sweets enough to take a part? :D

Photo from craftaholicsanonymous.net

Application form is here, all you need is to be ready to sent a sweets filled package to a random person and receive something sweet from another in return!

Have fun!

Sweet Swap 2015!

I would love to invite you to celebrate New Year with the first swap! Valentine's day is not so far away, so let's make it lovely and sweet!

Sweet swap's RULES:

• Applying time 5.01.2015 - 18.01.2015
• Application form is HERE
• Addresses will be sent out on 19.01.2015
• Prepare swap package and send it out till 26.01.2015
• Main thing to  include in package is something sweet - candies, chocolate, cookies, etc.
• Add a letter or postcard from you (be sure to include your name and/or email address).
• This gonna be secret robin round, it means person to whom you send a package is not the same who sends you a package.
• It's nice to publish photos of package you sent and received. If you do so, please, use hash-tag #sweetswap2015
• Those sweet and tasty things should arrive before Valentines day, so feel free to use it as inspiration.
• Sweet swap is open Internationally.
• Have fun!  ♥

Added! Please, try to pack your package of least 3-4 medium sized sweets (little candies - more). 

We Heart Mail letter to Agus

I haven't shared any sent mails for We Heart Mail project for a while, so I decided to show you what I sent all way long to Argentina - to Agus. With a long delay, mail's theme was Sea, Summer. Luckily for me, right now summer begins in Argentina, so my letter was right in time!

I found a few vintage style postcards - black and white reprint of old photo and some colorful postcards of vintage style swimming suits wearing ladies. Letter with two foot paperclip (I find them really cute  :) ) and stickers.

Here  I packed handmade earrings for Agus' summer outfit

What is summer without flowers? Couldn't send fresh flowers, so I went for brooch with cabochon. 

As Sea is so close with blue color, I tried to pick up some little blue things. Here you can see some of them - blue thread on wood spool (love to use those vintage Soviet time thread spools for holding washi tapes), packed towel (that little square with manly man is packed towel - you need to put it into water and it repacks itself- funky thing what to take with you on beach trip!) and off course -   different blue candies (including German chocolate Schogetten, classic Latvian candy Serenade and really traditional - Gotiņa (Cow - made of condensed milk)). 

So this bright blue-purple-yellow package was sent to Argentina. I really hope Agus liked it! I am sure she has received it, so if she will post some more photos in her blog, I will let you know!  

Thanks for stepping by! I have sent out recently a few mail packages, so soon, very soon, I will post about them as well!  Keep in touch!

Happy Postcrossing Birthday!

Today is kind of little birthday for me! Today I am member of Postcrossing for 4 years! I started to send out postcards just for fun as I enjoyed receiving them from my friend trips earlier. In these 4 years this has turned into a bigger hobby and helped me to set up some new goals.

I really really want to collect a postcard from every country. I have already quite nice collection, but if you are from country I am missing or you have a friend there, please, please, send me a postcard (a regular postcard with touristic view will work perfectly! )! Last weekend I re-made list of received postcards, now you can see it here: Postcard list Those countries I have a postcard from already, are bold and if you click on the name of country, you will see album of all postcards from this country I have received! Please, note that I have added to country list special territories as well, that comes from ISO 3166 standard.
I have received question about my address, so click here to see it!

To celebrate this little milestone, here are postcards I sent out today!

We heart mail: Part 5

Haven't shared any nice letter for a while, so let's start a new week with something wonderful! Like this colorful letter I received from my We♥Mail partner Catherine from France!

This little package included everything needed to make me smile so take a look what was inside!

Cosmos seeds will bring you to the moon and back or ...  will bring some really nice flowers to your garden! 

French stamps for my philatelist's heart - very big and very beautiful stamps! Love them!

Two cute crocheted brooches. As I have grey wool coat, I know that these flowers will be attached on it to.

Catherine wrote her letter on postcards - colorful multiview card, poster type art postcard and wonderful (looks and feels like vintage?) black and white postcard with castle in the fog. Roses in background are on handmade envelope.

And last but not least with flower theme - flowers which I can iron on fabric!

Sometimes snail mails turns into little package with a lot of very cute and nice things,but not always I am sure how to use them or where to put in my extremly small apartment. So let me tell you that this letter was briliant because nothing was spare - I love postcards and stamps and they are on their way to my collection (read about it more HERE) and seeds I will use for sure, just like iron-on and brooch flowers.

Thank you Catherine very much! I love your package!  :)

To all my readers I wish to write at least one letter to some friend or just random person and make it so good that it will really bring a lot of happiness to others (and yourself)!

Have a great week!

Fairy tale themed letter

Do you remember those little animal thread holders I shared a while ago? I would like to show you you an entire letter I sent to my friend from We ♥ Mail.





Letter's theme was Fairy tale, so I tried to stick with animals, cute drawings and prints. Below you can see some pictures from process and a short review of letter with my partner's comments is here.

This is elephant. I like it very much. If you do like it too, step by this page, where you can find template for big and little elephant. Print out yours and decorate your house with colorful elephants too!

When I am reading I like to have a beautiful bookmark  around me. That makes reading more special. I hope my partner Hila will have very special feeling when using this metallic bookmark with owl, feather and red stone I made specially for her. 

Lately I enjoy making these little labels so much! I should create some tutorial about them! Isn't it a cute way how to show that package contains handmade goodies - with this kind of stickers?

Like other times, I made paper for letter by making some watercolor painting. I don't like to use those store bought paper supplies, so I make my own...

Since my childhood I have always adored drawing by local artist and children book author - Margarita Staraste. When I started to think about letter I had to write, I realized - I need to make envelope with drawings from some of my favorite books. So I found a very damaged book in local charity shop with only few pages left. I would like to believe this envelope is a good ending for this beautiful book from 1968(!). 

If you are interested in letter swapping, let me know. I always love to send letters to creative people :)
And... a little reminder about my goal for postcard collecting - full list of received postcards is here.

Hope to see you back soon! :)

March snail mail

I know April is in the middle already, but I waited for my partner Hila to get her letter from me so that I could share a lot of pictures with you! Let's start with the colorful and cute-cute-cute letter I got last week from Sharon (Scotland). 

The whole package in theme of fairy tales (and cartoons)

These are some of the cutest stamps I have ever seen! Even the dissatisfied lady at the post office after a long week of work started to smile while passing me this package :) Thanks Sharon for making my post lady's day :)

Package included a long letter (I love to read these kind of letters so much!) and A REAL Winnie The Pooh book! Oh dear, Thanks soooo much!

 I love drawings - they remind beautiful illustrations from books in my childhood. Right after I checked everything from the package, I started to read the book. Adventures of Winnie The Pooh and his friends never gets old!

After enjoying the fact that I own The Winnie The Pooh book in original language, I found a mysterious bundle with the title "It's a letter writing kind of day". Can you guess whats inside?  

I may have been a bad letter writer, but postcard sender I am a big one. So I got a lot of beautiful postcards with Beatrix Potter drawings. Oh, it will be hard to send them out. I believe, I will hold all of these postcards in my special collection :)

Package included some little things for my future letters - transparent stickers with unbelievable similar design to my favorite Korean artist stickers (maybe author is the same?), postal stamp alike stickers with vintage design, washi tape and cute gift tags with curious Pooh Bear. 

Story tells, there were a fox which went to Latvia. I am sure she will have a lot of adventures over here in this little county!
On the letter Sharon wrote about her love of horses, so I were not surprised to find a necklace with a pedant of a horse. 

A big part of each snail mailing fun is possibility to receive something sweet. This time - Chocolate Easter eggs by a Switzerland company Lindt. For those who are not familiar with this company - Lindt chocolate is one of the most delicious in the world. Trust a true chocolate lover!

Be sure you don't miss other letters from We♥Mail project at projects blog: WeHeartMail.blogspot.com
Check out Sharon's blog here: TheLittleCloudStudio.blogspot.com

I am looking for postcards!

 Some of you may know I have started to collect postcards and stamps. For this reason I would like to collect different postcards from different countries of the whole World as much as possible. 

I have created a map with green countries from where I already have a postcard and red countries - from where I don't have a postcard from yet.

To be sure about my postcard collection - here is an updated list with countries from where I am still waiting a postcard.

If you would like to help me reach my goal, please, send me a postcard - write a regular postcard with view of your town / city / country and stamp it. You can find my address in this link(need to click on link to see my address).

I am sure that there are a lot of friends who could send me a big piece of happiness in form of a postcard. :)

Dear friends, if you would like to receive a postcard in return, be sure to include your address clear enough to let me read it :)

Thanks already now!

We ♥ Mail - February letter

Yesterday I already wrote about postcards I got last week, now it's turn to show you a letter I received from We ♥ Mail project!

Last weekend I got a package with UK stamp, it was sent by  Liliana. However, I was sure - my partner this month is from Portugal and will send me a piece of sun. She sent me a sunshine but only from West Yorkshire! Anyway it was nice enough to make me smile!

A beautiful envelope with a huge Royal Mail stamp(?)

So these are goodies from a package - flowers, stickers and love

Glittery  heart stickers for my lovely projects

Cute tapes with two kind of gingerbread hearts

Stickers, stickers, stickers and three more stickers!

Letter from Liliana with some cute drawings

Thank you Liliana for such a wonderful letter and all these little things I will use for other letters for sure! Have a great week! :)

I was very happy to get this letter as it helps me realize - there are so many creative and crafty young and young at heart people around the world! I wish everyone to join some a year long snail mail project - it is worth it!