goods and heroes: making mini envelopes

I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday with some painful sinus action thrown in, so the thought of reading or staring at anything electronic just wasn't appealing. I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself (and Ted had taken the boys ice skating) but then I remembered that something fun I'd ordered online had arrived: my Japanese mini-envelope template from JetPens. I'd seen these over on Angry Chicken's blog a few week ago. I justified needing to have one as I am teaching a class at North Park Village Nature Center on November 11th and the theme is The Art of the Envelope. (Oh and that's our cat Caddilac's paw, he wanted to play with the template.)

I am a sucker for wee little envelopes. Not only are the adorable but they're perfect for holding teeny-tiny notes or a few stamps or a handful of seeds. And with this template, you can recycle old catalogues, magazines and discarded books and transform the pages into something new. I like to use old children's encyclopedias and reference books that I pick up at yard sales and thrift shops. Yesterday it was Life and Its Marvels.

Here's a quick tutorial -- but it's super simple. First grab the template, a pencil, scissors, a glue stick and whatever paper you'll be using for the envelope paper. This template actually makes four different sized mini envelopes. I went for the biggest of the four.

Trace the lines onto the paper. I actully used a black pen instead of a pencil since I was having a hard time seeing the pencil on the paper.

Cut along the tracing lines, your envelope shape should look like this:

Fold the two smaller side tabs first and then the two larger tabs last. Pull the folds back "open."

The envelope should be vertically-oriented in front of you. Run the glue stick along the edge of the large tab on the left. Fold the right tab down and give it a good crease. Bring left tab over like you are closing a door and and press it firmly. Run the glue stick along the small tab at the bottom, fold it up over the glued "doors" and press firmly. Voila! You now have an envelope! This might be totally stating the obvious but don't glue the top tab. At least not until you've put something inside it. Here's the back of the envelope:

And here's the front. Love that floating "butter" banner!

I made four envelopes, three were from old book pages and one was from the cover of an old Anthropologie catalogue.

I stacked them up and tied them off with a little bit of baker's twine. All ready to be given as a simple little gift. Maybe I should give them with a tiny pad of paper ane one of those mini gel pens?