DIY Magazine Envelopes

As promised, here is a tutorial on making your own envelopes for stationery sets. While this template makes a rectangular envelope, you could certainly modify it to make squares as well, and as usual this image is scalable (the actual jpg is quite small, I printed it at 250% to make the cute envelopes shown in the tutorial--I just like cutesy small stuff, my original envelopes were much larger).


To make these envelopes you will need:

Paper or magazine pages of your choosing.
scissors or an X-Acto knife
a ruler
Envelope template (below)
glue (elmer's or glue sticks work just fine--if you do not have glue, you can go without and use stickers to close your envelope as well)

Start by printing the following template to your desired size:

Cut out your template and trace it onto your paper of choice. You could use scrap booking paper, thicker card stock, magazines, maps, old book pages, etc. For this tutorial I decided to use a jewelry advertisement from a magazine. The rose and jewelry are very Valentine's Day appropriate, don't you think? You could also use home and decor magazines to make envelopes for a housewarming party, or wedding magazine's for wedding invites and thank you's!

Once your image is cut out, as show above, you will want to take a ruler or other straight edge to aid you in folding your envelope flaps in evenly. I generally use the ruler as a guide and push my paper up against it to give me a general line of where my fold will go. If using thicker paper, you can gently score your paper to give a more defined guide, just be careful not to cut all the way through.

Now, you will want to fold all the flaps in with a harder crease. Turn your envelope over to the "pretty side" to decide which end you want to be the top and bottom. I generally like to fold over a straight edge on my "bottom" flap, but you can always leave all the points if you like that look.

Now, you will use your glue (very little is needed, so I generally use a brush to make a thin layer, or use glue stick) to glue down the bottom flap to the two side flaps. Here is your finished envelope!

If mailing these, I use white address labels to make it easy to read. You could also use white or silver paint pens on dark envelopes like this, just make sure to print clearly so the postal service can get it where it needs to go.

Easy Thank You Notes

The holiday season may be well behind us, but it's not too late to make sure you send a heartfelt thank you for all the goodies you may have received! These thank you note cards are super easy, bright and cheerful! They are also quick to make, and of course you can customize them with stamps, cutouts and more!


All you need to make these cards are:

X-Acto blade or other cutting blade
a ruler
Cardstock or scrap booking paper for decorative card face
Cardstock or paper for main body
glue (I used mod podge, but I have used glue stick before with great success as well)

I had a couple 8"x8" cardstock stack books sitting around, so I decided to make several 4"x4" cards. When mailing square cards, you may want to go ahead and put them into rectangular envelopes, the postal service charges extra for squares as they are an "irregular" shape. Here is another envelope making tutorial you could use!

To start, I cut my cardstock into my 4" squares. I chose several colors that coordinate so I could make some "sets" that I can gift to friends if I ever need a quick little gift. Don't you think these would look cute tied up with baker's twine, with matching envelopes?

Next, I cut out paper in 4"x5" rectangles to use as the main body of my cards. You can use cardstock for this as well, and if you don't want to be able to see the seam, you can certainly make your rectangle 4"x8". I folded over a 1" flap and glued it to the decorative card "cover". Once dry, you are ready to write out your thank you notes, or further embellish your cards with stamps or cut outs. I decided that with such pretty paper, I liked my cards to stay plain.


I'm a huge thank you sender, particularly to my grandmother. I always feel if I can't take the time to send a handwritten note, that I didn't deserve to get a present. I'm weird like that. She sure appreciates it though, and who wouldn't have a brighter day from getting one of these glittery fun cards? :)