Please Welcome Guest Blogger, Annie Authier, from the blog “Thriftfulness”.
With school starting now is the time of year when the air is thick with promises made in parked cars, deserted beaches, the empty beds of pickup trucks and under the glow of your parents’ motion sensor porch lights. These are the promises of summer lovers and they are, sadly but most assuredly, of the empty variety.
BFs and GFs who met on lifeguard docks, in camp mess-halls, and while holding their roommate’s hair back at house parties all over the United States are, at this very moment, vowing to write, to call, to Facebook chat every day and text sweet nothings every night. Will it happen? Probably not.
Though the combination of physical distance, ex-boyfriends who forgot how awesome your summer love looks with a tan, and angry fathers waving cell-phone bills is sure to crush your burgeoning romance, I’m one for keeping hope alive. Thus, I give you Goodbye Summer Love Stationary.
Receiving handwritten letters is one of the best feelings ever and making the stationary yourself makes this gift extra personal. Make it for sending your own letters or give it to your summer sweetheart so that he or she can promise to send it back to you chock-cull of XOXOs (though you should know full well you’re never actually going to get that letter). Here are some examples of my own Summer Love Stationary:
Materials:
-Nice paper (splurge on the thick stuff and send your letter in a big mailing envelope to keep your art un-creased)
-Scissors
-Glue or double sided tape
-Colorful markers or colored pencils
-Decorative material: (this can be just about anything) stamps and ink, watercolors, magazine clippings, old greeting cards you’ve saved for no reason, even tiny buttons.
-Perfume or cologne to spritz the paper with (I won’t make a Grease reference; I WON’T make a Grease reference!)
Once you’ve gathered your supplies and ripped yourself from your lover’s embrace, get to decorating. There aren’t many rules to this. Just keep in mind that someone is planning on writing on this so try to decorate on the margins and don’t use paper that is too dark or too bumpy.
For the first sheet (and I like to decorate every page different, although you may want to work in themes) I found a page in a decorating book that I liked and made a color copy of it, then just glued it onto the cardstock and decorated with a fancy “from the desk of:” tab on top. If you’re low on creativity or time this is probably the best way to go for you.
You can also use pictures from old birthday cards or wedding invitations that you’ve saved for no apparent reason. For the page below (picture is just of the top of the page), I also added some tiny buttons by sewing them to the card-stock. Ordinarily this would mean more money for postage but, because I’m your friend, I’m going to be straight: it’s probably not going to make it to the post office.
Various magazine clippings are also a great decorating tool. This mix-tape I cut out from a magazine ad reads “stories and soundtracks of lost loves” which will most likely end up a fitting irony for whoever receives it.
In the same magazine, I discovered these lovely mass transit pictures, which I used for decoration in this desperate attempt for a rendezvous cloaked in the lyrics to a Supreme’s song. This picture is of the top of the page and I painted tiny red suitcases down the right side.
One of my favorite ways to decorate is with stamps. Now these can get pricey but they are worth it because they’re pretty and they also last a long time. I use my old-lady-chasing-something stamp whenever I get the chance.
I used my Alice-in-Wonderland stamp to make a final angry plea to my summer lover that he BETTER call.
And finally, for when it’s clear that the relationship has died along with the potted basil plants in the yard, you can pull out the big guns: Tootie. She yelled, “AU gimme back my gold watch” on a hilarious episode of The Facts of Life so that she could remember the periodic table. Your stationary yells it because you gave that slug your gold watch and you want it back.
Make any variation of these Goodbye Love Stationary sets and send them off, you’ll be singing Hey Hey Mr. Postman and crying into your pillow before the last leaves change color. Goodbye summer love. Goodbye summer.
