JOURNAL

documenting
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discovering joyful things

Naomi Bulger 24/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 24/11/2015

Tiny talismans

These two little onesies are all I have left of all the clothes my children wore, up until today.

On the weekend we completed an enormous and much-overdue sort-and-clean of our front room. Previously, I'd gone through the children's old clothes, those that didn't fit them any more, and sorted out some to give to friends, others to donate to charity, and the stained and tattered ones to throw out. These made a gigantic pile in the front room and, since Emily will shortly arrive to spend the summer holidays with us, I needed to get them out of the way - along with all the other junk stored in that room - so that she could actually see floor space. Mr B took three car-fulls of clothes, blankets, toys and other homewares to charity that day.

Unfortunately, he accidentally also took the items we'd reserved to give to friends. Even more unfortunately, somehow he took the one little bag of tangible memories I'd kept aside for my babies.

Do you know the bag I mean? Most parents have one. Inside it, the soft, star-patterned muslin wraps that Ralph had slept in every day for the first 18 months of his life, that still smelled like him. Milestone outfits: the red, knitted poncho that was the first item we bought for Scout, ever, while I was still pregnant; the cream cardigan and matching bonnet with crimson ribbons, crocheted by my mother, that was Scout's "coming home from hospital" outfit. The pale yellow onesie with the drawing of an elephant that my friend gave Ralph: he always looked extra tiny and precious when he wore it. The blue gingham dress that perfectly matched Scout's eyes, which she wore from the age of three months to as recently as six months ago, translated into a top, because she (and we) loved it so much. The matching Piccolini "hot dog, pretzel, NY" t-shirt and onesie that were gifts to the children from my dear friend and surrogate sister Misha, in New York.

There were more. Not so many, but enough to fill a small bag. Clothes that dressed my memories, so vividly that just holding them or, better still, pressing them to my face and breathing them in, could transport me instantly back to my children's babyhoods. To those tiny, milk-soaked, sleep-deprived, heady days, when time was somehow suspended in a flood of exhaustion and "new things," and every step dragged, as heavy with overwhelm as with abundant love.

But as slow as those minutes were, cupping tiny life in my arms at 3am, sitting propped against my pillows and feeding a hungry infant for the umpteenth time in 24 hours, time was racing cruelly and relentlessly, even then. And now, well, every age is the best age. I can't decide whether I want to stop time, fast-forward time, or roll it backwards. But those clothes were my time-machine, the key to temporarily rolling time backwards, when I needed to.

And I needed to. I need to. They say smell is the most emotionally powerful of the senses. I miss the sight of those clothes. But the smell, oh, the smell. I will never again bury my nose into those muslin wraps.

I'm not ashamed to tell you I sobbed pathetically when I realised they had gone. I made Mr B race back to the charity to see if they were still there. "You do it," he said. "You know what you're looking for." But I couldn't. "Look at me," I wailed pathetically, pointing to my red and swollen eyes. We both knew that as soon as I got there, sorting through hundreds of boxes for the most precious mementos from both of my children's babyhoods, I'd probably fall apart.

Mr B loves me and so he went back to search, but the bag was gone. Its contents sorted, loaded into a semitrailer, and taken off somewhere. To a charity store, maybe? Or to be given to families in need, or to be used as rags. I don't know.

I cried so hard, Mr B grew frustrated. "You haven't lost your babies," he said, exasperated. "They're upstairs sleeping right now!"

And he was completely right, of course. Later when I recovered my equilibrium, it got me thinking about the value of "things" in our life. I felt a bit guilty. After all, if there was a fire in my house, I'd save my children, not the clothes they wore.

But there is a power, a potency, to the things we associate with those we hold dear. That's why, every summer when I was growing up, my mother packed a suitcase with a change of clothes and our photo albums, nothing else, and kept them near the door in case of bush fire. When my friends' apartment burnt down, they were left with nothing: only the clothes (pyjamas!) on their backs. But they didn't lament their computers, jewellery, art, clothes, refrigerators or anything else of practical or monetary value lost from their lives. It was for their wedding photos, and gifts from loved-ones, that my friend Annie cried. People as far back as the neolithic era have been found buried with small, personal items: talismans of emotional and spiritual significance so important that they choose to take with them into the afterlife.

It was by pure chance that the two onesies in this photograph survived our clean-out. I don't even know how. They must have fallen out of the bag when Mr B picked them up and, of all things, they happened to be the first clothes that each of my children wore, ever. Scout's onesie, the yellow one, swam on her. Her tiny arms were comically lost inside the sleeves, and her adorable little feet reached to about where the knees were meant to be. But I hadn't known how big or small she would be at birth, and this was the little suit I'd chosen to take with me into the delivery room, to dress her in it, moments after she was born. Ralph wore the bow-tie onesie, teamed with cute little white pants, and he looked so dapper and unearthly and darling in it. That one was a gift from my parents.

These two are the precious talismans I will carry with me, maybe not into death, but at least through my children's lives as they grow and flourish. The only fabric left to me that their tiny hands touched, that their baby-breath coloured. If I have to leave this house in a hurry, and after saving my family (of course), I will probably grab these as I run.

Naomi Bulger 23/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 23/11/2015

On quitting Facebook: a status update

Just over a month ago I announced my intention to quit Facebook. It probably shouldn’t have been a big deal but it turned out to be kind of a big deal and, from the comments and emails I received, I realised the idea was kind of a big deal for other people, too.

So here I am a month on to tell you how things are going.

To be succinct: it's going great! I genuinely love being free of what I hadn't even fully realised had become a millstone around my neck. For maybe three days after quitting, I'd have a moment where I'd sit down and I'd go to pull my phone out to look at Facebook and then realise it wasn't there. And do you know what, the rush of realisation wasn't loss, but HAPPINESS. Every time I forgot I didn't have Facebook and then realised it again, I felt the weight lifting and the sense of freedom ALL OVER AGAIN. It is seriously NUTS that I stuck with it so long, considering how much I must have hated it without even knowing it. And it is even more nuts that I bothered to use it, given this reaction. I suspect I may not be altogether bright.

Here are some other things I've learned and experienced about quitting Facebook, in no particular order:

1. Facebook is REALLY difficult to quit. As in, they make it super hard to get out. I didn't want to just "disable" my account and maybe come back to it later, I wanted everything gone, for good. It took some googling and tutorials and then MULTIPLE pages with tiny, almost-hidden text for me to figure out how to properly cancel my Facebook account. Even then they had a cooling-off period of several weeks. I can't remember how many (two or three or four) but I don't want to go back in to check, just in case that launches everything back up again!

2. When I'm with my kids, I'm WITH them. I'm down on the floor pushing trains over wooden tracks, instead of up on a chair half-watching them do it, while flicking through Facebook.

3. Keeping up with friends is not as difficult as I'd feared. I've been making more of a concerted effort to email, text and call my long-distance friends (and have had more time to do that since I'm not on social media), and it's been going fine. I'm sure I've missed some of their photos of their new cats or trips to the country or children's ballet concerts, but Facebook elected for me NOT to see them more than half the time anyway, so when I'm in touch with my friends, I have to ask them (shock! horror!) questions like, "What's been going on with you?" and "Oh, little Jude was in a concert? How cute! Do you have any photos?" It's not rocket science and it turns out that we (or at least I) don't need Facebook either to stay in touch with or to learn about the lives of the people we love.

4. I'm writing and painting a lot more. I didn't think quitting Facebook would have a big impact on these activities, because I didn't tend to spend time on social media during my specially carved-out "creative" times of the day. But it turns out those quick "I'll just check if anyone has messaged me" or "I'll just read what that notification was about" moments add up - and probably the fact that once in there reading a notification, I'd get distracted and end up losing precious minutes reading and scrolling whatever was there. Now, I'm loads more productive.

5. When things happen in the world, I don't always find out straight away. It's not that I can't keep up, it's just that there is certainly the possibility of a time-lag in the things I find out, versus the things that YOU find out, if you're on social media. For example, when the news broke about Paris last week, I'm fairly sure it was all over social media. I remained blissfully unaware, dead-heading the climbing roses on our front porch. Later, when I took out my phone to look at the one remaining social media app I still regularly use, Instagram, I kept seeing drawings and photographs of the Eiffel Tower. That made me suspicious, so I googled "Paris," and there the horror unfolded. If I hadn't used Instagram, I probably wouldn't have found out until later that night, watching the news. So I guess in these sorts of cases I'm a bit behind the times, because social media is THE place to get instant updates on what's going on in the world. I'm ok with that. I do think it's important to stay abreast of what's going on, both at home and abroad, but in most cases I don't think personal timeliness makes a big difference. I can't see how me knowing a few hours sooner would or could have helped anyone in Paris, nor would it have been particularly edifying to me. I'm content to read the papers, watch the news, read the websites, talk to friends: I feel like that keeps me fairly well-informed and the world won't end without me knowing it.

6. I'm reading a lot more of the blogs I love. Genuine, original content, that's positive reading, as opposed to Facebook dross that I haven't chosen. These are blogs I subscribed to because they inspired me, but rarely got around to reading before.

7. I'm commenting more on blogs. Often when I did find the time to read blogs, I'd flip through on Feedly and just mark the ones I kind of liked (sometimes to share with you) before moving on. Now, I stop and comment, creating or entering conversations. I don't do this every time, but I do it a lot more.

8. There's no getting around it, I probably AM missing out on some events and invitations. On the other hand, I don't know about them so I'm not breaking my heart over them. When it comes to personal events, I hope I'm loved enough that if my friends are planning a party and using Facebook to do it, that they'll reach out to me via email or text or some other way if they want me to come. If not, though, that's ok. We're not all everybody's best friend, and my closest friends and I have used Facebook but never relied on it as the framework of our friendships. We will carry on without it. However, the more public, open invitations are what I probably WILL miss. Fun events and festivals and meet-ups that are organised almost exclusively on Facebook. That's a shame, but again, not enough to make me want to go back. I follow a lot of blogs, so I get a lot of information there, too.

9. Not having access to the Facebook groups and events functions makes things a bit trickier, but not insurmountable. Recently I had an idea to start a kind of snail mail club. A bit like a book club, but we all get together and pool our cool stationery resources and listen to music and sip tea (or wine!) and write and decorate letters to pen-pals, friends, relatives, whoever. I'm part of an online alumni group called Blog With Pip, and this would have been RIGHT up the alley of a number of members. Ordinarily, it's the sort of thing where I would have emailed the woman who runs the group (Pip Lincolne of Meet Me at Mikes) and asked whether I could announce the club on the group page, and invite participants. That would have been handy. Instead, I emailed some friends and bloggers I knew who might be interested, and some of the members of the group who I had met in person and who I thought might enjoy this kind of club, and asked them directly. A number were keen, so we'll have our first club meeting shortly. If they want to, they can ask other people in the Blog With Pip group, or make an open invitation if the group leader is ok with that, themselves. Either way, once we find a public venue (the first one will be in my house), I'll share all the details here and invite all of YOU, so again, I think I'm ok doing this without Facebook.

10. I do miss out on membership in groups, but I can work with that. To be honest, the only group I was active in was the Blog With Pip group, and yes, I did fear missing out on the community that gave me. It is a largely positive group, full of creative people genuinely trying to support and inspire one another, and was one of the main reasons why I stuck with Facebook for as long as I did. One idea Pip had was to create a new, secret profile, and join the group under that pseudonym. I'd do it without having any Facebook "friends" so it would exclusively be an avenue to be part of the group. I may still do that. But for now, even the white-and-blue branding of the Facebook website makes me feel queasy in the stomach. I just don't want go there, in any way. I'm guarding my new-found freedom closely. So I read Pip's blog and the blogs of a lot of other members, and I keep up with what they are doing that way. It's not ideal, but it's a compromise I'm willing to make.

11. Blog traffic hasn't changed. Facebook was by far the biggest referrer of traffic to this blog, and I was aware when I made the decision to quit that my blog statistics would likely drop accordingly. This is not a particularly big blog at the best of time, so while I'm not monetised and traffic doesn't matter in any material sense, I still want to be connecting with YOU. I don't want to be writing into the ether, you know? However I was willing to take that hit, in order to be free of Facebook, my old "frenemy." To my surprise, so far, I haven't noticed any real difference in numbers.

12. Quitting is addictive. Once I'd told everyone I was quitting Facebook, I couldn't WAIT to do it. I'd said I'd wait a week (to put my affairs in order, so to speak), but my finger was itching over the "delete" button (that's speaking figuratively, of course, there is a LOT more to do than hitting "delete" - see point 1). I went into Twitter and quit that account, which wasn't much of a concern since I rarely used it. By the following day, I just couldn't wait any longer. I quit Facebook. An email came through from Mr B that same day, "I want to quit Facebook too. How do I do it?" So that night, we cancelled his Facebook and Twitter accounts too. Then I cancelled my LinkedIn account, which I hadn't updated anyway in years.

And it all feels GREAT.

Image credit: Benjamin Combs, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons

Naomi Bulger 20/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 20/11/2015

A week of creative snail-mail: 10 mail-art parcels

Each of these brown-paper packages was no bigger than a greeting card, but I made the mistake of filling them with a few too many things, making them a few too many millimetres too fat. Four millimetres, in fact, less than half a centimetre, but that was all the difference it took to kick each of these packages into the $18+ category for the international ones (which was most of them). I had already covered them in stamps, but when I discovered the true cost at the post office, I had to admit defeat. Not only would 10 parcels at $18+ each put rather a strain on the budget, there simply wasn't the room for any more stamps (the backs of these parcels, which you don't see here, are mostly covered in more stamps)! I had to come home, slit open one edge of the parcels, and slide out one of the gifts I'd hoped to enclose. The moral to this story is, oi vey, Australia Post. Please don't complain about the decline in people using the post when you want to charge almost $20 for a greeting-card-sized (and weighted) letter, just because it's a few millimetres thicker than usual. Or, as one of my snail-mail friends suggested, how about a "frequent user" discount? Just a thought…

ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course?

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here.

Naomi Bulger 19/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 19/11/2015

A week of creative snail-mail: typewriter

Ok I'm actually really proud of this idea. In this Snail Mail My Email request, the writer only asked for "mail art," without specifying anything in particular. In her letter she made a cute little Christmas wish-list, which included among other things a blue typewriter and another cat (or three or five).

So I painted up a blue typewriter, and cut a small slot in the top, about where the paper would go on a real typewriter. Then I wrote the letter on segments of paint-chip cards, and inserted them into the typewriter so that they would slide upwards to be read (like paper in a real typewriter). I'm really pleased with the results, and think you could use this in loads of ways. Like, typewriting the message itself and turning the idea into party invitations?

For the mail-art part of the letter, I decided to go with "crazy-but-adorable cat-lady," for a bit of fun.

Naomi Bulger 18/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 18/11/2015

A week of creative snail-mail: London bus

On Day 3 of my Snail Mail My Email challenge, the letter I was asked to write and send was particularly touching. I don't know who Keir and his Dad are. Maybe Keir is away at university (I know Americans call university "school") but, to my mind, the letter read as though Keir was younger. I pictured a father separated from his boy, unwillingly. Maybe a broken relationship, maybe he was deployed somewhere… I don't know. But it was touching and lovely and a bit sad because of the evident separation.

There was no specific doodle request and I don't know why, but London Calling by the Clash was in my mind (GREAT song), so I figured I'd make Keir a London bus postcard. And then I thought, why not turn the stamps into bus-windows?

Naomi Bulger 17/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 17/11/2015

A week of creative snail-mail: chocolate cake

The next email I received for Snail Mail My Email (I wrote about it here and the official website is here) included a letter and a doodle request that made me laugh out loud: "Doodle of Bruce from Matilda eating chocolate cake." So that's what I drew on the envelope and, for good measure, I made a chocolate-cake letter to go inside. I divided the letter into five "pieces" and then painted up a chocolate cake with pieces attached by tiny dots of glue (easy to lift off). Each piece removed revealed a bit more of the letter.

Naomi Bulger 16/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 16/11/2015

A week of creative snail-mail: snowflakes

I've just finished a week of Snail Mail My Email, during which I pledged to write "creative mail" on behalf of strangers, using copy sent to me via email.

This was the first letter I wrote. The note itself was very short, and the "doodle request" was for a snowflake. I decided to fold up paper doilies and cut little patterns in them to make snowflakes. Then I wrote the message on one of the snowflakes, sprinkled them with a bit of glitter for extra pre-Christmas oomph, and threaded them with string to create a fun garland. I hope the mystery Amanda likes the letter from her friend!

Naomi Bulger 10/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 10/11/2015

A lot of words about not having words

Lately the words haven't seemed to be coming. And I'm not unhappy, in fact, quite the opposite, but I think I am maybe just replete with my simple family life. I have moments, flashes of something so real and powerful, through the day, and I want to share them with you, but the words don't come.

I look at Scout's face as she bends over the toy train-tracks she is fixing for her brother and there is so much human intelligence inside that furrowed brow, I can't even explain. She's just SO REAL, this little girl who was once just a fantasy (like, I am back in my home town of Sydney and I just so happen to bump into somebody from my past and here, by my side, little hand clasped in mine, is a tiny blonde angel. And I say to this person from my past, so matter-of-factly, "Oh, this is my daughter..." And that scenario has never played out but my point is that once it was a fantasy because I never expected to have children and nobody who knew me ever expected me to have children but now, if I happened to TAKE Scout with me to Sydney, it could absolutely be a reality. And that... well, that blows my mind!). Here she is, loving me, challenging me, negotiating with me, making me laugh, this bright and affectionate little humanoid supernova dressed head-to-toe in pink, and the full comprehension of her very existence makes me dizzy.

I'm not telling this very well. I don't have the words.

Ralph wakes up in the morning and calls out for me from his cot. When I go into the children's room and open the curtains to let the early sunshine in, he launches into action. "Hide! Hide!" Still standing up in the cot, he grabs a blanket and throws it over his head, often staggering backwards because he can no longer see: a strange, teddy-bear-patchwork-quilt ghost in his sister's hand-me-down Peppa Pig leggings, missing one sock.

Ralph runs his entire life at 100 percent. From that first, ghostly moment until lights' out, Ralph plays, laughs, runs, kisses, talks, jokes, sings, rages, laments, eats and even sleeps at 100 percent. Again, language fails me. I want to tell you how substantial he is, with his meaty little paws and chubby, bare feet like bricks. Funny faces pulled to make me laugh, and a constant, foot-thumping, shadowy presence in my life as I go about the house: "What doing Mummy?" I feel like I can't do justice his adorable nonchalance when it comes to cheerful disobedience.

Me: "Ralph, turn off the television please." Ralph (not lifting a finger): "Just watching, Mummy."

Me: "Ralph, you can keep that car in bed but it's only to cuddle, not play." Ralph: "Not for playing, just cuddle?" Me: "That's right. It's sleepy time." Ralph: "Broom broom! I playing with my car!" Me: "No Ralph, only for cuddling, or I have to take it away." Ralph: "Alright Mummy. Just playing. Broom broom!"

Me: "Ralph, where are your shoes?" Ralph (with a grin): "Maybe in water?" (In case you are wondering, sandles do not float)

Ralph (in my arms, spotting the cat): "Ruby! Ruby!" Me: "You can pat her Ralph, but you must be gentle." Ralph: "Pat her very gentle?" Me: "That's right, Ruby likes you to be very gentle. You mustn't chase her." Ralph (leaping out of my arms and diving for the cat, who races under a chair): "Ruby! Ruby! AAAAAAAH!" Me: "No Ralph! You mustn't frighten the cat." Ralph (with an angelic smile and a demeanour as though he is reasoning with a dullard): "Very gentle Mummy. Just CHASING her Mummy."

I dunno. These aren't the best exchanges. I can't remember the really good ones because I'm just IN them and not remembering to record them, but I guess what I'm trying to say is just how much I love being a mother to these two incredible, opinionated, emotional, intelligent, loving little balls of electricity.

And how much I am learning from it all. Like, learning about how OTHER people learn.

Scout has been doing some little reading exercises. I show her the sentence "I am Sam." I ask her, "Where is AM?" and she points to it instantly. "Where is I?" Where is SAM?" and she points to each of them in turn. So then I point to AM and ask, "What's that word?" Scout pauses, one finger goes to her mouth. "Um, I don't know." She looks to me for reassurance. It's the same word, the word she just picked out without hesitation only a moment ago. But her brain hasn't learned yet how to make the connection between sight and sound, when it comes to reading. She's great at recognising letters but struggles when I try to get her to think about sounds."Where is M," I'll ask, pointing to a page of text, and she can pick them all out. But then I'll ask, "Which word starts with an M sound, mouse or baby?" And she'll say "Baby!" because she likes babies better than mice.

Anyway, this is all probably very boring for you and I promise to change direction the next time I post on this blog, but honestly I find it all FASCINATING and I don't know how to write about this motherhood thing properly, so instead, I'm blithering on in a fairly pointless overflow of words.

Oh, this is Ralph *not* chasing the cat.

A video posted by Naomi Bulger (@naomibulger) on Sep 21, 2015 at 3:07pm PDT

Naomi Bulger 04/11/2015 Naomi Bulger 04/11/2015

Make this: surprise slide-up cards

Boo! Recently I made these little slide-up cards, after watching one of those "how-to" tutorials on YouTube that make simple things so much more confusing than they should be and assume you are the proud owner of an entire cupboard full of obscure craft supplies, when you could actually make do with a piece of cardboard and some sticky-tape.

Mine were Halloween-themed but if you want to make them too, they would suit pretty much any occasion or holiday: little hearts popping up to say "I love you," fireworks popping up to say "Happy New Year," flowers or confetti or - you get the point - to say "happy birthday," and so on.

Following is my pared-back tutorial, with a few moments of "full disclosure" on things I did wrong or could have done better, so you can learn from my mistakes.

The basic mechanics of these kinds of slide-up cards involve plastic wrapped around a rectangular piece of cardboard (or more accurately, an "H" shape, to stop the plastic from sliding off). You stick a second piece of cardboard with your picture or message on one side, and a third piece of cardboard with the "pull here" instructions on the other side. When you pull down on one piece of cardboard, the plastic slides around, pushing the other piece of cardboard up. Make sense?

ΔΔ What you'll need:

* One or two sheets of thin cardboard, or some thick (eg water-colour) paper * Scissors * Sticky-tape or glue * A pencil, or something to measure your cards (you could use a ruler and/or one of those grid maps, OR you could do what I did, and trace around your mobile 'phone) * Thin plastic (full disclosure: being the non-craft-supplies-cupboard type person that I am, I didn't happen to have any thin plastic available, so I just cut up the plastic covers from some greeting cards - do you know what I mean? - and they would have worked really well except for the folds in the plastic that caused the "slide up" bit to catch)

ΔΔ While you can make these cards all out of the same cardboard, I used a few different types, just to make my cards interesting. I used the beige cardboard you see pictured because it was handy, to make the H-shaped mechanics of the card. I used water-colour paper for the slide-up monster or ghost, and for the "pull here" tab at the other end, because I thought the colours would show up better on white than beige and I didn't happen to have any white cardboard handy. I used old pages of Frankie magazine to make the "envelope" of the card, because they're pretty. You could of course use plain cardboard for the envelope, which would leave a whole lot of space to create your own design or the first part of the message.

ΔΔ Step 1 (top left): cut out a piece of cardboard in an "H" shape, then cut out two rectangles, slightly smaller. I traced around my iPhone to get the rough sizes of my two smaller rectangles (which make up the monster and the "pull here" tab), then just went a bit bigger to get the H shape. You can see the pencil-work where I traced around the iPhone then made it a big bigger. This is part of the inside of the card so don't worry about pencil marks.

Step 1b (because clearly this is actually two steps but I forgot to take a photograph of the H before I'd already stuck the plastic on)... Now cut out a strip of plastic long enough to wrap all the way around the short bit of the H, then wrap it around and stick it together. Make sure it's not too tight, because this is what will be used to slide your picture up and down so it needs to move easily. (Full disclosure: as I mentioned, the creases in the re-purposed gift-card wrapping I used meant that in some cards, the plastic would get stuck and wouldn't slide smoothly. Also, I used sticky-tape to secure the plastic because I didn't think glue would be reliable, but the tape also created some problems with the smooth sliding of the pulley. So the one thing I would do very differently next time would be to find some better - crease-free - plastic at the newsagency, and possibly some good glue)

ΔΔ Step 2 (top right): take your two smaller (in my case iPhone-sized) pieces of cardboard, and place them to the plastic on the H to see how they fit. You may need to trim them further. Now would be a good time to draw your slide-up message or illustration (in my case the monster), because it gets tricky to draw or paint after the card is made.

ΔΔ Step 3 (bottom right): place your "pull here" card on top of the H, lining it up with the bottom of the H-card. Then tape it to the plastic at the top. Turn the H over, and line up your picture (monster) card, face down, so that the top of it is flush with the top of the H-card. Tape it to the plastic at the bottom. Turn the H back over and test it at this point. Give the "pull here" tab a tug, and see if your picture slides up. Don't worry if they flop everywhere, the envelope will hold everything in place.

ΔΔ Step 4 (bottom left): cut out another piece of cardboard or paper. Measure it to be slightly bigger than the H, then double it sideways. I used pages from Frankie magazine for this. Fold the cardboard or paper in half, then stick the H to the right-hand side of the card (on the inside, of course). Make sure when you tape it that you secure the H on both sides, but don't stick down any of the moving parts.

ΔΔ Step 5: Fold the card over to close it, and seal it up with sticky-tape or glue, again making sure you don't go near any moving parts. Cut out a little square or semi-circle to reveal your "pull here" tab.

ΔΔ You're done! I used the blank space above "pull here" to include a spooky little Halloween quote (see the picture at the top). You could add a secret message here, if you wanted to.