Thursday, June 18, 2015

Pocket Letter Newbie

I have officially participated in my very first Pocket Letter swap!!
I loved how fun and simple it looked, so I started collecting all of the
"ingredients" to begin making my own. But you really do need someone to
swap with to make it official. I happened to be chatting with my dear friend
(in real life), Dani, who stated that she has been trading pocket letters all
over the US and Internationally for a few months. What?! How did I not
know this?! I made sure she was my first PL swap, although I still haven't
received mine yet....

I went with a purple Goth theme which I chose myself. I guess you can
pick a theme between you and your trade partner, but Dani left it up to me
since it was my first time. I know she doesn't "do pink", so I went with
purple. Everyone loves purple, right? Well, they should!

I began by grabbing a stack of trading card sheets from my ATC stash,
and pulled out my ridiculous amount of ATCs that I have made, but never
gave away. I have a lot! What a great way to share them with new friends far and wide.

I was lucky enough to have won some Bugaboo images from a recent LOC challenge,
and really wanted to color them up. I love this spider hanging from the moon.
I colored it with Copics and then clear embossed a spider web over the entire card
before using Distress Inks to color the background. 
Then the fun really begins when you start adding goodies to every pocket. 
I added a bunch of paper punched spiders to this pocket.   

After filling the pockets with ATCs, and blank coordinating papers,
I added rhinestones, bows, glittery border strips, puffy bat ribbon, etc...
Basically, add fun crafty stuff to share. I guess the original idea is
to add a tea bag, a note about yourself, a fun quote, and all kinds of 
ephemera. There is a great introduction to Pocket Letters here,
by the lady who created them. 

This one was fun. I just added some Tim Burton-y paper clips, and
a bunch of punched bats, and teeny neon clips, too.

This image was fun to color and play with. I got a bit over zealous with the 
polka dot background, but it's very fancy now.

Dani loved her Pocket Letter. I am going to the post office to retrieve mine today.
And pay to get it out of hock. Make sure to add the correct postage, and that it's
packaged properly when you do your swaps. I'm sure Dani did as well, but 
apparently my local post office is super persnickety and wants special handling
fees or something.... Of all the swaps Dani has done, both in the US and Internationally,
this is the FIRST one to have issues. And we only live about 10 miles apart.
I am such a unique experience.  



5 comments:

  1. Brilliant and yes so amazing! Looks so fun I have yet to jump in to try. Thanks so much for sharing, love reading your posts :)
    ~kim

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  2. Oh Wow!! Serena's tutorial was the first I heard of them too! I love that you used your LOC prize images - those are so cute!! And yes, everyone should love purple! This is fabulous! I love the final result! :D Mo xxx

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  3. Eeeeek !!! Totally AWESOME Glo :-D I have just signed up for a Swap and have to make my very 1st one of these. Not quite sure where to start but you have certainly inspired me :-D

    Hugz
    IKE xxxxx

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  4. THIS IS A GREAT IDEA! I gotta get into it.

    ReplyDelete

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