Custom Envelopes

With Valentine's Day coming up, I thought I'd make something a little more traditional (we can't all do it up with zombie cards, right?).

To start, you can make a template with any size and shape of envelope you want, just carefully open all the glued down edges (an irons steam setting can help soften the glue if you have trouble). I modified an envelope I had, so that rather than triangles folding in to the middle I folded up one rectangle with 2 side flaps (as pictured). This way, the main body of the envelope will fit onto one 8.5"x11" sheet of paper or cardstock. You can choose any color paper (for larger envelopes I suggest starting with a 12"x12" sheet of scrap booking paper), to make straight folds i gently scored all of the edges with an Xacto blade before folding.

For the inside, you can use an image from any magazine, other patterned scrap book paper, an original drawing or photograph, whatever you feel fits the occasion (I used an add from a magazine-It doesn't have to be something fancy). I stuck the whole thing together with a glue stick, it's cheap and it works better than more liquid glues and dries faster with less mess.