Snippets from the Past

Years ago when my mother, aunt, daughter and I were cleaning out my grandmother's house we came across boxes (and boxes) of neatly bundled cards and letters that she had kept since moving into the house in 1949 (the current year was then 1997). Not being able to bear to toss them, I took the lot home with me where they have been stored, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them.

Some of them I had used in Christmas ornaments. Some I used in altered tins that I gave to my family. The leftovers from those projects were still sitting around so I decided to go through the rest of the cards and letters to see if there were any that needed to be saved to other locations.

I came across a couple of birthday cards/letters written by my sister to my grandmother, from 1987 and 1986. In these letters she talked about her young children, the youngest being a new baby in 1986. Sweet little snippets in life. Written snapshots.

I knew immediately that I had to return these to my sister so I set them aside.

Fast forward a couple of days and I'm thinking that just handing them to her sounded so...boring...LOL! So started to think of a more proper "presentation."

This is what I came up with....the envelope is a sturdy double-sided design scrapbooking paper. The image on the envelope came from the card that accompanied one of the letters.The postmarks are from the original envelopes.

I edged the sides of the envelope with Distress Ink,

and the text on the back came from the inside of the same card.

Then, to identify the letters, I stamped the years they were

written on the letters themselves and slipped them in the

hand-made envelope. She loved them, by the way....:-)