I am VERY excited to announce our first giveaway. Hopefully the first of many!

For our first giveaway, I am honored to be partnered up with Elizabeth Levi of Blue Chair Studio.

Elizabeth has lived a full and varied life. She grew up in Iowa, headed West for a while, became a wife, a mother, an artist and then the pendulum swung back, landing her back in Iowa after a long road of adventuring.

Elizabeth’s style is colorful and carefree. She finds inspiration in art supplies and found objects of every medium. Her philosophy is that people should not be so quick to judge themselves when they’re making art or to give up too soon on their creativity. She thinks an artist is “a person who is willing to put fear in their pocket while they waltz with mistakes and polka with problems, and then frame the mistakes that come out just right.” What a great attitude!

And so without further adieu, here is the info about our giveaway! Elizabeth has been kind enough to offer a set of SIX lovely handmade notecards (seen below). These are printed on 80-pound cardstock, then hand embellished with paint, paper, ephemera and Elizabeth’s adorable stylings. All the cards are blank on the inside, but have varied messages on the outside: Hello (2), Congratulations, Get Well, Thank You, and Happy Birthday. A nice selection of colored envelopes are included for mailing.

Hello Card from Blue Chair Studio

Here’s how to play:

The winner will be chosen by random number generation. You can get multiple entries to increase your chances of winning. The list is below. The deadline to enter is May 15, 2009 at 11:59PM (central time). The drawing will be announced the next day and posted here.

For your first chance to win, go visit the Blue Chair Studio shop, browse around to find your two favorite items, then come back and leave a comment telling which were your favorites and why. In addition to listing your two favorite items, if you also post in the comment field what your favorite bookGoddess is, Elizabeth will send that to you if you turn out to be the winner.

For FIVE additional chances to win, you can do any of the following. Do as many or as few as you like. Or none. These are completely OPTIONAL:

• Subscribe to my RSS feed and leave a comment saying you’ve done so
• Make a post on your own blog about the giveaway and put a link to A Passion for Letter Writing and Blue Chair Studio then comment that you’ve done so
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter with a link to this post and then leave a comment with your Twitter ID and that you’ve tweeted it.
• Add A Passion for Letter Writing to your blogroll and leave a comment with your web address
• Make a purchase at Blue Chair Studio between now and the contest deadline and post a comment telling me what you’ve ordered. (One additional chance for each $10 spent.)

IMPORTANT: Please leave separate comments for each of the items you do because that’s how I’m keeping track of entries!

So, you can have up to a total of SIX chances to win. Good luck, everyone and enjoy. Whoever wins this one is LUCKY! The cards are so pretty and colorful. Really lovely.

Tags: contest, free stuff, giveaway, stationery

photo credit: tangobaby

Please go read the story with these links: original story and the latest update

One of the things Tangobaby is asking for (besides basic survival necessities) is letters of encouragement. On the update page she talks about this and gives an email address where you can send notes that might uplift Kelaya’s spirit. If you can manage some time, please send a note.
 

Tags: good deed, help someone

I ran across something today that is really cool. It’s called a Holley Portrait, named after a guy who came up with a clever way to do a typographic self-portrait involving his thumbprint and text. I’d never heard about them until I ran across Daniel’s web site that has a few. How clever!

As I’m always on the lookout to find some new and interesting way to write a letter, why not a Holley Portrait Letter? Go over to the site and read about how to make them. Then, instead of doing the traditional portrait, why not put a letter into it instead — the type of letter that someone would keep, like a “how I feel about you” letter or a “you’ve made an impression on me” kinda note. Or do a smaller version with all five fingers in a “bouquet” for “five reasons I love you” or “five reasons why I’m lucky to have you as a friend”, etc. You get the idea.

Have fun!

Tags: interesting, to-do, weird

Trivia Time! What year did the first image of a woman on a stamp appear? And who was the lucky lady? And what year was the first American woman honored on a stamp?

You can find the answer to these questions and more at the National Postal Museum’s virtual presence called Arago. They have a great exhibit called Women on Stamps.

One of my favorites is the Betsy Ross stamp issued in 1952. It has a great image of her sitting in a chair working on the flag. The detail is lovely. Another of my favorites is the Women of Progress stamp of 1948. A lot of my favorite stamps in general are from the late 40’s and early 50’s. I love the style of stamp artwork during that time.

Go check it out and let me know what your favorites are!

Tags: Philately, stamps

Okay, I’ve found our next “victim” of random acts of letter writing.

Nigel Alston of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote a great column about an acquaintance of his who wrote a letter for each of the 40 days of Lent. Mr. Alston says he was inspired by his friend’s tradition and decided to try it himself and found it gratifying.

I think it would be nice to send Mr. Alston a note and tell him how great he is for passing along the inspiration to his readers. I hope you will do another one of these with me since it turned out to be so much fun with Erin. Who knows what will happen.

Here is the article: Sending a Note of Thanks Give the Season Meaning

Here is the address:

Nigel Alston
c/o Winston-Salem Journal
P.O. Box 3159
Winston-Salem, N.C. 27102

Please leave a comment if you are playing!

Tags: random acts of letter writing, to-do

Our new friend Erin Delaney has a friend who is in the hospital and who could use a “boost”.

Can you spare some time to write a note and get a few friends to write notes too? She will be in the hospital for a while probably and could use some mail to keep her busy.

Read the whole story about Charlotte Lewis at Erin’s site.

Mail can be addressed to:

Charlotte Lewis
C/O Erin L. Delaney
R. 1220 South Prospect Street
Nanticoke PA 18634

Also, please repost if you can.

Tags: good deed

Remember last month when I said, “Hey everybody… let’s freak someone out!” Well, I don’t think it really freaked her out as much as completely and utterly thrilled her which is WAY BETTER than actually freaking someone out anyway.

I got email from Erin Delaney recently and she has given me permission to post it here. Ironically, you will notice that she mentions she doesn’t have my snail mail address. I was probably one of the last ones to write her (my bad) and I’m hoping the problem is that she just hasn’t received my note yet and not that it was waylaid by the U.S. Postal Service. (I might have really made the Postmaster General mad with all my marketing brouhaha from a few weeks ago.)

Anyway, here is Erin’s note. I am sure you will be as thrilled to read it as I was. How delightful. This was so much fun we’re going to do it again with another unsuspecting victim.

Wendy,

If I had your snail mail address, I would have mailed this message to you. I must say that it was one of the most exciting moments to get a call from my boss who had five letters all addressed to me from Flower Mound, TX; Chicago, IL; Pittsburgh, PA; Newport, RI; and Rochester, NY. I have to say that it was definitely a “freakout” moment! The excitement of opening each letter was overwhelming. I actually opened all of them then just looked at each trying to decide which treasure to plunder first.

Of course your dedicated readers mentioned your website, which I happily took a look at. I noticed that one of your readers, Stephanie, mentioned that she was overseas in Austria and that it posed a problem for proper timing for the full “freakout” effect, but I’d tell her that a good letter is worth the wait!

After reading each letter and reviewing your website, I was compelled to email you and let you know that I am going to write a follow up article for the Weekender based on your website, letters, and readers soon. It’d be great to talk with you (or even correspond with you) and I will keep you and your readers posted on when it will go to press.

Please let your readers know that I loved the letters and that I will respond to all of them that I received. I’d even love to correspond with even more of them! Furthermore, thanks for letting me know that letter writing hasn’t become a lost art.

Feel free to post this on your site if you’d like and check out my blog as well!

Erin L. Delaney
Read my blog at: www.erindelaney.blogspot.com

Tags: letter writing campaign, results of writing, you guys did great

Do you feel like writing a celebrity? Over at Spread Change, I’m asking people to send a note telling John Tesh how great he is for making the site Intelligent Kindness. If you feel like sending him a little note, you can wander over there and get the info.

Tags: celebrity, good deed, letter writing campaign

I noticed a person on Twitter (@iBlogBetter) who is starting a letter writing project. I’m not sure yet what it will turn into (he’s not saying) but he says he wants to revive letter writing and is looking for people to send in their address if they want a letter from him.

You can find him over this blog: I Blog Better Than Your Mom

(He actually does blog better than my mom.)

Tags: cool weirdos, letter projects, letters to strangers

Want to give someone a wedding present for less than a buck? There is a woman who is collecting congratulatory cards for someone’s wedding. If you want to participate, be sure to do so before mid-May.

Read more about it here: http://www.wildpostcards.com/2009/04/send-a-postcard-to-a-wedding/

Better hurry!

Tags: card, postcard, to-do, wedding