Decorated Envelopes

When I send cards or letters, I like to think that receiving that piece of mail is brings a few moments of joy into the recipient’s life. If possible, I want those moments to start when the second their eye lands on the envelopes. Now, some will recognize my handwriting, and there is always the return address, but I like to have a little more than that. For instance, while the postal service offered them I used the Nature of America Series stamps (you can see a couple of them I used in this photo) kind of as a signature on the envelope. At least I like them to know that they received a personal piece of mail and not a bill or add. Sometimes this is easy as with the bright pink envelopes I recently sent cards in, other times, it’s a little harder. Recently I had to use #10 business size envelopes-not the easiest thing to make look personal. Not that I have anything against letters in those envelopes, one of my most regular correspondents uses them, and I’m always more than thrilled to get her letters. Pretty mail is kind of a hobby to me, and I’ve been reading some letter writing/mail art blogs, so I wanted to do something a little fancier. You can see in the above photo the embellishment I settled on. Here's how to do it yourself (or with your children, I'm sure that one of these envelopes with a drawing inside would make most any grandparent, aunt, uncle, or older friend's day):

Supplies:

• Envelopes
• Colored pens
• Small stickers (as you can see, I used quite a verity, it doesn’t need to be anything fancy)
• Ruler or stencil (this is really optional, all you need is something to make your lines strait)

Instructions:

1. Chose your sticker (This could match your stationary if you used it, could represent something you know the person you’re writing to likes/is interested in, something that brings to mind a joint memory, or just something you like)
2. Choose your coordinating pen color(s)
3. If you have stencils, decide if you want to use one of those designs or just strait (You can see below that I did one that was waves that I used with blue and a seagull to hint at a port visit I made with them last year).
4. Draw your lines
5. Place your sticker
6. Address
7. Stamp: you may want to consider using a stamp to coordinate like you did the sticker, with more and more forever stamps being offered (I counted over a dozen kinds when I checked on USPS.com just now) the fear of stamp prices changing no longer stands in the way of keeping a stock of stamps to pick from.
8. Fill
9. Mail

Here are how my four envelopes turned out (you can click on the photo to see it larger):

I'm linking up to:

http://www.homestoriesatoz.com/2011/06/tutorials-tips-link-party-16-giveaway-by-artistic-letters.html