How To Series / How to Write a Letter

Introduction

Believe it or not, mail was the preferred method of written communication way back when in the year 2000. It s true in that year alone, over one million pieces of mail were sent through the United States Postal Service. Shortly thereafter, the internet began to take over, and email quickly overshadowed what became known as snail mail. The number of letters that people send every year has been on the decline ever since.

But in 2003, when letter writing was becoming a thing of the past, we cofounded a little company you may have heard of called Sugar Paper. We were determined to help people understand that the convenience of emails, and now texts and DMs, are not the same as pouring out your heart and soul onto nice stationery, sealing it with a kiss, and sending it to another to hold in their hands and save forever. After eighteen years of creating paper goods to inspire the letter writer in all of us, we decided to write a book about it.

We are Chelsea Shukov and Jamie Grobecker. Chelsea s love of paper began in grade school with
the first Valentine she received in a makeshift mailbox on her desk. She s been putting love in the mail ever since. Jamie s love of paper started in high school with a collection of colorful pens that she used to make passing notes an art form. We ve been friends since college and both of us happen to be the type of women who save letters in shoeboxes, still have ticket stubs from first dates, and just can t seem to part with any piece of paper that represents a memory. Growing up, our mothers instilled in each of us the importance of expressing our gratitude on paper, so I guess you could say they started it all.

In the beginning, Sugar Paper was all about the paper and the ink. We knew everything that we needed to know about designing and printing beautiful paper goods and we had become experts in the art of the letterpress. We were making stationery for people who loved paper as much as we did

Chelsea Shukov and Jamie Grobecker