A glimpse of my studio

I always love seeing people's writing desks or mail art stations, so I thought I would share mine again. Same desk, same lamp, same mail cubby, but this is the first time I've shown the set up in our current house!

 Lots of horse pictures on the walls, the top painting is by my grandmother. I'm finally organizing my wooden mail cubby a little. Now two of the slots have labels!! "Thank you's" and "Check Envelopes"

I like the sloping ceiling and how it makes it feel cozy. I don't pack stuff in on the walls like this anywhere else in the house, but I love having all these photos and artwork around me while I make mail.

 two of my grandmother's paintings

 a photo of my cat growing up, Cotton, who lived to be 18! And a sketch that I did of him lying on my legs about 6 years ago...

We were right inside the barn, looking out at my horse Windsong, and the mules, the same perspective as this photo, except the cat was in my lap.

A Joanna Newsom (musician) themed postcard I received from a swap I ran on swap-bot. I just loved this.

Do you hang a lot of things in your mail spot?

The chair is kind of ugly, but it's very comfortable. I've heard it's easy to reupholster things if you have a staple gun, so maybe a that's a project for the future.

The room also functions as a guest bedroom, and I try to keep the bed pretty clear of mail flotsam, because a certain someone likes to sleep there.

Outgoing mail

Some outgoing mail:

For Christmas I received a fat book of origami paper. You can see four sheets of it in the above photo. I'm using it for writing paper, because I'm not very good at origami! I think that's what the giver intended it for anyway. :) I love choosing several papers in the same color scheme to write a letter on. I frequently start a letter using a notecard or occasionally a postcard, and then continue with more sheets of paper. Do you do this as well? What kind of paper do you use? I've bought a lot of graph paper in different patterns from the I.D.E.A. store and I frequently use that.

This paper underneath the "Hello" was wrapping paper that I'm reusing for stationery. My mother-in-law always has the best selection of wrapping paper! She gets those books of it where you tear out the pages. Have you seen those? Lots of beautiful ornate patterns.

Envelope from a Weimaraner calender and the left triangular piece of paper is from my old Arthur Rackham calendar. I just love his work. I'm using up every scrap from that calendar!

Incoming

lovely bright circle mail from Taradactyl

 I just love this stamp of one of South Africa's national parks. Beautiful! I just bought a sheet of the new U.S. National Parks, which are absolutely wonderful! The one of Assateague is my favorite, of course, since I grew up about 30 minutes away. My second favorite is the painting of Bandelier National Monument.

More bright mail! This time from Donovan Beeson of the L.W.A. This envelope is made of vellum, or a vellum-like material and when the sun shines through it or on it, it gets even brighter, almost neon.

And a lovely letter from Hannah, who lives super close to me! It's fun talking about the places around town that we go to.

Mostly calendar envelopes

I've been making a lot of envelopes from old calendars that I've had laying around for YEARS and want to use up.

Arthur Rackham, one of my favorites

Wildlife calendar

and a William Wegman Weimaraner calendar.

And finally a Talking Heads envelope, not from a calendar.