Gifting Old Trinkets

Over the years I’ve received a lot of beautiful mail.  I have a folder in my file cabinet devoted to correspondence and it’s bursting with my favorite ones.  There are letters from when Tim and I were writing the distance away from across the United States and then from there to Europe.  I have the first letter I ever received from him– made from an old record album cover– and all the ones after that.  My sisters are all very creative, so I have cards made from vogue magazine clippings, type-writer typed with little messages “Erin, to my cool sister: if you were any cooler….” flip to the inside “you would be me”, hand-made envelopes, birthday wishes, thank you notes….  They are beautiful and so much more lovely to me than a card picked up from Cranes.

The War on Spending is still in full battle array at our house, so  I don’t even tempt myself when I get Anthropologie  or any other nifty-looking catalog.  I immediately stow them in my desk drawer where I keep cardstock, gluesticks and other supplies so I can later on pull them out and use clippings from their beautiful pages.

One particularly useful idea I got from Meghan was using these clippings for presenting vintage jewelry or other little trinkets in gifts.  Antique pieces can make great presents but often the method of displaying them is a little disappointing since they don’t come with pretty backings or boxes.  Poked through a hand-made card and wrapped nicely though, a pair of rhinestone earrings doesn’t scream “look at the used item I got you!”.  When I have time I prefer to piece together the message on the card using individual letters clipped from varying types in magazines rather than writing it.