Snail Mail
Hello again!
Thanks for coming back and/or continuing to read these blog posts. There is definitely a steep learning curve for me here but I remain hopeful that I’ll figure out a rhythm soon. Feedback and constructive criticism are welcome!
Today I wanted to talk about “snail mail.”
I have been a lover of receiving physical mail for a very long time. I mentioned some of my feelings on it in my first post, but I wanted to dive a little deeper today and also post about some products that I’ve been using.
When I was in second grade I had a friend who was from Japan. She was briefly in the US and after second grade she moved back to Japan. Our moms ended up exchanging information so that we could write letters to each other. Though it was short-lived, likely due to the attention span and memory of a second grader, I remember getting the coolest stuff from her. Her handwriting was way better than mine and outrageously neat for second-grader and her stationery was always very unique.
Ironically, as an adult who is very much into the Japanese aesthetic, this is even cooler in retrospect. In fact, many of the paper products I use for journaling or writing letters are Japanese products, and I absolutely adore them.
Recently I’ve procured this letter pad from Midori, a Japanese stationery company:
I thought it was so cute but I had no idea how fountain pens would write on it. You can see in the last picture that I did a little test with the pens that I had inked at that time. I wouldn’t say this is a great material for fountain pens but it can work. It seemed like finer nibs and drier inks worked best on it. Broader nibs and wetter inks resulted in feathering, some worse than others.
Diamine did particularly well, as out of the four (4) different Diamine inks that I used, none of them feathered and they all looked pretty on the paper.
I tend to be quite verbose (I’m sure this is obvious, even now) and so the fact that the lines don’t go all the way to the sides really cut into how much I could fit onto the page. Additionally, you can see from the photos that it is not meant to be two-sided.
Overall, I’d still purchase again because the design is just so unique and I love how it looks.
Another Midori product that I snagged recently are these adorable little stationery sets:
They appear to be a similar material to the foliage paper above, and so I’d recommend the same kinds of nibs/ink on them.
These are actually quite small - about as tall as my iPhone 12 Pro and a bit wider. They come with four (4) envelopes and four (4) stickers, but 12 sheets of paper, which is good because they’re so small! Again, still cute enough to repurchase, in my opinion.
Since the second grade, I’ve had a few different pen pals over the years. One in particular that I communicated with for at least a decade. We haven’t written snail mail in a while, but we are still in touch via social media and there will always be a special place for her in my heart. I hope that one day we can pick back up with the writing, when life is a little bit less crazy.
Luckily though, I still have some other people that I write to on a semi-regular basis and I was delighted to discover “washi tape” to enhance my letter-writing experience.
This is something that I actually wasn’t aware of until a few months ago. I had the opportunity to see it in a store first hand for the first time in September, and then I went a little crazy…
Washi tape is a masking-like tape that is quite durable, and, as you can see here, comes in a lot of shapes, sizes, patterns, and themes.
It is very easy to tear off and sticks to almost anything, but also doesn’t leave a reside behind. Apparently people use this for decorating their walls and other home projects, but I just use it to add some flair to my letters, so I don’t know about long-term use on items that you would eventually want to take it off of.
Lastly, to wrap things up today, I always seal my snail mail with a wax seal. For a long time I was pretty insistent on an “ancient-only” aesthetic; something very clandestine and important-looking. This made sense with the wax seal. Now, I like to mix it up with cute paper (as showcased above) and a more modern vibe, though I will always go back to my roots eventually.
Either way though, I’m set on using the wax seal even if it doesn’t match exactly because honestly…it’s just so fun! I had a custom wax seal made for my wedding a couple of years ago and now it’s the one I use for everything. I’m starting to think that I need another one though…for…science..reasons?
Until next time!