diy envelopes and liners

5 04 2009

Hiya!

I am about to take on my Save the Dates, because they have to go out Friday. (Better late than never, right?)

I haven’t been able to find an envelope in just the right color that I can get in quantities less than 200/250, and I only need like… 75, so I figured I would just make them. I’m not sure if there are a lot of other brides out there or not that are wanting to take this on, but this is an extremely good thing to do if you want a special envelope but don’t feel like paying shipping, don’t feel like paying an arm and a leg, or can’t find what you want!

I will update this once I am finished with our envelopes, but I thought I would share the template I made for envelopes. I have made 2 templates, and one is for an A7 (5.25×7.25) or Invitation size envelope, and the other is for an A2 (4.375×5.75) or RSVP/STD/Thank You Card envelope. I will also make liner templates for these too, but that will probably be tomorrow.

Firstly, I will show you how I made the templates.

I took apart an envelope carefully and traced the edges on a flat piece of paper (8.5 x 11 paper.)

I then closed it up, and traced the closed shape into the middle of the opened traced shape to show where the folds would be.

I then scanned the tracing onto the computer.

I then made a clean version in illustrator, and wrote some directions for people who use it on the places that would be cut off so they wouldn’t have text on places that they would be using if they decide to print the template directly on paper.

Then I printed out the template I made, put that sheet of paper back into my printer and printed a light damask pattern on the side with no template so that when I put it together the template would be hidden. I cut out the template, folded it where it says to fold it, added glue to the side areas that needed to be glued, put a card inside of it, and glued down the top flap to seal it so I could address it and mail it.

This is a really cool thing because you can trace the pattern onto a piece of two sided scrapbook paper, cut it out, and fold it according to my directions, and then you have automatically lined envelopes! Or, you can print a pattern on the side without the directions so you can have patterned envelopes, etc.

The possibilities are endless!

Enjoy!