Postcards Inspired By The Lake {Give-Away}

{Comments are now closed. Thank you all for your kind words and your interest! I'll be back in a day or two to announce the winners.}

When I came home from Squam, I wanted to send out a few thank-you notes. (I am a big fan of thank-you notes.) It seemed obvious that I'd make them. I wish I had photos of the process, but it's more like these grew, not that I created them, and I just never thought to photograph anything. I worked on them in bits and pieces, first cutting up some cereal boxes, then applying gesso to cover the pre-existing design, and then a coat of white acrylic paint. Then I began to play. I made eight total; here's five of them before I mailed them out.

I mixed some green, for the green of the lake. I added some texture with bubble wrap and a few circle prints in darker blue. Then I selected some of the photos I took and layered them with a painted frame. Finally, I used the birch leaf stamp I'd carved. The woods were full of birches, and while I do see them around here, I don't see that many of them, and I wanted to capture their presence on these cards. (You can click to make the photo bigger.)

I liked these so much, I wanted more of them. So I scanned three of them in and ordered some Moo postcards. Scanning them in allowed for the texture to really come through, but I wonder if using a photograph wouldn't have worked better in some ways. But I'm not sure my camera is good enough to capture a full-screen image for this purpose, without shadows getting in the way. Obviously, some more experimentation might be in order. But still, I love these postcards, too. Here's a close-up of one of them:

I wanted to send something along to my cabin mates as a souvenir of Squam and our cabin (in the top postcard's photograph, below). One woman in our cabin had made up little treat bags for all of us, with a notebook and pen and buttons (buttons!!). I wanted to reciprocate and to bookend that, in a way, so I made up a set of postcards for everyone. (The brown with the leaf print is the envelope to hold them.)

And here's the give-away part...I have two sets left over. Whether you've been to Squam, want to go to Squam, have admired it from afar, or just like to have pretty postcards (hopefully you think they're pretty) to send to your friends, leave a comment for a chance to win (two people will receive one set each). You can live anywhere in the world, as long as you have a mailing address, and you need to either make sure your contact email is in your profile, or leave it in your comment. I'll close comments in a week, 7 pm EST on Tuesday, July 3, and choose via the good old "pull a name out of a hat" method. Each set contains six postcards, two of each design.

I would love it if you'd also tell me...who was the last person you sent honest-to-goodness fun snail mail to? Besides mailing out these packages of postcards, my last fun mail was sent to my sister--I sent her one of the remaining original postcards.