♥Happy Penpals!♥ ~Part 1~

 

Happy Penpals Part 1

♥Tips for happy snail mailing~!♥

 

Heyo everybunny~! I hope you've had a lovely weekend~♪

Today I cleared out my bedroom, because my parents are buying me some more furniture! A bookcase, chest of drawers, and maybe also a vanity desk. It's mainly so I could have more space more books, and more space on my desk for all my studying~! But I'll make a proper post about that soon~ It's quite exciting!♥

Here's my desk~! Next to it is where my bookcase will go~♪ 

(Hopefully I'll be getting more decorations and posters soon too♥)

Anyways, while I was tidying today, I found my drawer full of souvenirs I've collected and also received from penpals over the years. I also found all of my letters! I thought since I often get asked about penpals, I'd make a series of penpal and snail mail tips posts!♥ I hope you'll enjoy them!

I've been snail mailing for around 5 years now! I've had a couple breaks here and there, and recently I've started to get a lot of penpals again, which is wonderful~!♥ 

♥Today I'll give you some tips on what to get before you start finding penpals and writing!♥
At the end, I'll list some shops that you can buy resources from!

 

♥Resources!♥

 

Here's one of my stationery drawers~♥ Everything's organised... as neatly as possible ww~♪

First I'll talk about pens!♪

♥It's a good idea to handwrite letters, even if you're self conscious about your handwriting! It's more personal, whereas typing letters and printing them can seem a little robotic. I have a variety of coloured pens, though mainly pink!♪

♥If you're worried about making mistakes, write out what you want to say on plain scrap paper first and then copy it out onto nice paper~ You could also keep some corrector fluid/tape handy.

♥With a variety of coloured pens, you can colour coordinate your ink colour with the paper.♥ Just be careful that the colours don't blend too much - keep is as readable as possible!

♥I find that biro/ballpoint pens can get a little messy and untidy, so I prefer to use "fineliner" pens. 

Next to the pens, I have some shaped hole punches and a stamp!

I wish I had a few more stamps, so I might try to find a cute set soon~♪

 

♥If you don't want to use decorated paper, you could use plain coloured and decorate it with stamps and punch shaped holes in it!

♥You could also punch shapes out of patterned paper and stick it on the coloured paper~♪ 

After those we have deco tape~!♥

 

♥I use deco tape mainly for sealing letters! It's nice and secure and since I often send things for swaps (I'll explain these in a later post~) they stay nice and safe♪

♥You could also use it for decorating paper!

One of the most important things are...

♥Stickers!♥

(at least, to me they are~ and probably the most fun!♥)

 

 You can buy stickers in sheets like these! They come in a variety of styles with lotsa different characters, animals, and objects♪ There are also stickers filled with water and glitter, squishy puffy stickers, dress up doll stickers, and stickers with beads inside~

 Here are some stickers that have come with letter sets I've bought!♥ Many letter sets will include matching stickers.♪

 

Sticker flakes are brilliant!♥ They're also really good for swaps♪ 

From my experiences, they're also fairly cheap!

And then of course, the most important thing is... 

♥paper!♥

There are so many different types to choose from♪ You can buy letter sets, memo pads, or packs of paper~

 

These are sheets of letter paper from letter sets that I've bought~!♪ Letter sets are often really good value, since they come with paper, envelopes, and stickers. Though if you like to write really long letters, you may find yourself running out of paper! Generally they contain enough paper for two sheets per envelope.

 

For those who enjoy writing a lot, memo pads might be a more economic purchase!♥ Memo pads usually contain around 100-200 sheets of paper, featuring different designs! The ones I have are quite small but it's possible to buy bigger ones. I used to buy a lot of Diddl memo pads (they're at the top in the photo♪), and they came in small, medium, and large.♪ Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any recently.

Last but not least, are envelopes~!♥

 The ones that come with the Japanese letter sets that I buy are my favourite! Though as a word of warning, they are quite small. So you may want to make address labels and stick them on instead! That way it can fit onto the small envelope, and it can also be easily read.♪ 

You can find a lot of kawaii stationery on eBay and Amazon, the brands I generally buy from are Sanrio, San-x, Q-lia, and Crux. Another brand to search for is Diddl!

Artbox is also a very good stationery stockist, as is Shop Kawaii!♪

If you're in the UK, Paperchase sells cute stationery in original designs.

  

I hope you've enjoyed reading my first penpal tips post~!♥ I'm really looking forward to writing the next one, which will focus on writing the first letter and addresses. (I've had a lot of awkward experiences with addresses ;; )♪ It can be pretty tough to get the first letter out, especially if you've never had a penpal before, so I hope I can help! If there's anything you'd like me to cover in a future post, or if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.♥

Thankies so much for reading~♪♪

Have a sweet day and a dreamy night~♥♥

Love, Amai ♥

♥-hughug-♥