I know, email and blackberries are great, they really are. E-cards are so wonderfully convenient too, I don't have to actually remember to pick out cards when I'm at the store...I can just hop online and go to my favorite e-card source, type in a recipient's email and there you go! It's just so darn cool, as well as easy to utilize in this fast paced world. But does anyone else out there miss traditional correspondence? I'm talking real cards or letters written and sent to friends at times other than at Christmas. I have suddenly found that I really miss a nice card I can hold, or a hand written letter from a pen pal that I can save in a drawer. I never get many of those anymore.
I think what sparked this little bit of nostalgia for me was a time a few months ago when I started to clean out my recently deceased grandmother's things, all things which I inherited....when I say inherited here, I mean all the stuff the rest of the family dumped on me because they didn't want it. But as I sifted through the mounds of old pictures, papers and letters that had been forgotten in a shoe box, I realized I had a goldmine. Dozens of vintage postcards dating back to 1899-1910 and hand written letters to her grabbed my attention.
There were even sweet notes penned to her from her boyfriend...whom she later married and he became my grandpa! As I read through these things, I realized that I was looking at a slice of her life, a unique picture of the time in which she was alive and with us. It then suddenly occurred to me that my grandchildren may not ever get to see this side of me. For one thing....I don't keep a diary or a journal, even though I do scrapbook, and for another, all of my little notes to people and cards sent to me are lost in some digital "ether" out there.So I guess this is what has led me down this recent path to the style of creations I have been doing.....greeting cards and paper goods with a nostalgic and Victorian flair. For one thing, I love mixed media, altered art and paper ephemera art, I have just never really pursued it except in my personal scrapbooking. With these cards and tags I have been making, I hope to create little bits of art that the recipient will not want to throw out and will want to save for posterity. The cards I have been making have also been all blank on the inside, so that the giver can have ample room to pen their message.
