Hello! I am excited to share with you a project that I’ve had in mind for a while. I don’t know about you, but I’m connected to my phone too much, checking Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin you name it. Most of the information disseminated via all these sites/apps is pretty happy, spontaneous, braggy, cranky, lovely and sometimes just a little sad. The latter does not happen too often, at least in my feeds everything is pretty upbeat. Not much drama, but sometimes, through a status update (mostly) you can detect a hint of sadness or loneliness or maybe I’m making all of this in my head! Or maybe not…

So when I read an email or see a status update of a friend that I haven’t seen in real life in a long while I wish I could tell her in person, “Hey, I miss you!” “Let’s do coffee and put it on the calendar!.” And yes, I will type these words on the computer, but it seems like unless we finalize plans on an email, the words I wrote become suspended in the online oblivion of our busy lives. Therefore, I want to be more proactive and do something about this. You may be thinking: “What in the heck is she talking about?”

OK, to the point, I want to write a handwritten note to a friend more often than never and let my words be tangible and memorable. I do think about my close friends and long-distance friends a LOT and I would like to put my thoughts on paper and send them via snail-mail.

Now you are probably thinking, “Um, no way… this sounds like a LOT of work…”. I agree, it is work to stay truly connected to the people we love and I want to make it easier, at least for me, to write a letter and send it out the following day. Therefore, I came up with the idea of having a few simple stationery cards, compiled in a small berry box. I also don’t want to have all these greeting cards mixed up and try to find a card that goes with the words I want to send out. So I designed a bunch of cards, categorized them in 4 types of cards: “Hello”, ” Birthday”, “Thank you” and “Love”.

The first three categories are pretty self-explanatory, but the latter “Love”, are intended for someone who needs encouragement, or someone I really miss. I’m calling this project: “Berry box stationery kit”. I intend to have at least two of these kits around the house. One in my bedroom and another one in the kitchen. This way it will be pretty accessible and I will try to revive the long-lost art of the handwritten note.

Here are a few cards I designed and at the bottom of this post you’ll see the kit all put together and materials I used. Wow, that was quite a lot of words to describe my project… As always, thank you for reading! I would love to hear from you and your thoughts on handwritten notes ;)

I enjoyed this project so much and I hope it inspires you to create your own stationery berry box kit. It’s summer so you might salvage a berry box from a farmer’s market outing. The materials mentioned above can be all found at Michael’s or any other crafting store.

The way I made the cloud tabs/dividers was simple to make. You punch two cloud shapes with your puncher. Then you stamp the word you want on each cloud with an alphabet rubber stamp kit. Once the ink is dry, you grab a paper straw and cut it in half. Then you flatten with your fingers one end of the straw and “sandwich” the straw between the two cloud shapes.Finally, glue them together. Once you have the paper straw and cloud piece put together, you align the straw to the far left of your divider card and glue it. Then on the next card divider you glue your paper straw/cloud further in the card and so on, like a folder’s tab system.

For the gold sparkly dots on each divider I used a 1 inch circle punch. I undid the tape, maybe 3 inches of tape and then put the tape face down and punch it. The “sticky” party of the tape should be face up so you can grab the punched circle with your finger and stick it on your piece of paper.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be more than happy to help you out. Now, if you don’t want to go through the hand making process of these note cards, you can purchase A4 size cards (3 1/2″ x 4 7/8) and only categorize them any way you want. Then just work on the tab dividers and have fun crafting!

PS: While you work on this project, it would be wise to have your address book handy. I have mine on my computer and I also have it printed out in folder in my kitchen. So many times, I’ve written a note and then it takes me forever to address it.

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I’m linking this post to the following blogs:

The Hankful House

PS2: It’s Monday and SkiptomyLou blog is hosting a linky party. Join here.

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