One use for Instagram photos / make your own stationary

I love writing letters, and I love stationary. As a young girl, when I received a set of writing paper and envelopes for birthdays or Christmas, I would delight in the prospect of filling the paper with letters to Auntie's, cousins and pen friends. Somewhere along the way, I started to make cards to accompany my writing paper. I liked adding a bit of visual beauty to the simplicity of the letter writing paper. It has been far too long since I exercised any creativity in making cards from scratch, and the days when I would pick out pretty papers to cut & layer & collage with feel like a bit of a dim and distant memory. But my love for making things by hand has remained, and I am so thankful for the ease and versatility of digital photography, which can so easily be transformed into stationary.

Ever since I started using Instagram a year ago, I have been determined that I would do something more than just sharing the hundreds of tiny snapshots of the beauty I see in the world around me online. So, when I saw that Photobox had an offer on to print 50 Instagram photos for £6, I jumped at the chance to turn the tiny digital images into 5 x 5" prints. I've had a couple of Ikea frames lying around for years, waiting for a couple of 5 x 5" photos to fill them, since long before I knew about Instagram, but knew that I loved photos in a square format, so I purposed to finally fill those frames with Instagram prints, and I destined the rest of the photos to be turned into cards.

So, with the help of some photo mount spray and some perfectly sized recycled brown kraft cards and envelopes, I created a whole new set of greetings cards to restock and refresh my letter writing resources. I think I might just have to make this a regular habit.