Arty Envelopes: Making Ordinary Items Beautiful

Mail Art. I love receiving beautiful, hand painted envelopes, especially when they have international postmarks and stamps. For a new Paper Traders exchange, we will be trading decorative envelopes.

Front of a finished envelope

Using a favorite size envelope as a template, I traced the shape on several pieces (double thick) of painted deli paper. They looked pretty good just with splashes of color, but I went another step and added stencils. 

I also was required to add a mailing label, which changed the whole look. To offset the big chunk of white in the middle, I added strips of other designs, washi tape and stamping.

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Mail Art envelope: painted deli paper, stamps, stencils, paper strips, newsprint.

For other envelopes, I used some ho-hum leftover artwork, traced on the template, and cut to size. Once it was cut and folded, a sort of boring design became a very striking envelope. I especially liked the NYC stencil, from Michelle Ward's exclusive collection at The Ink Pad NYC.

Stenciling experiment

Artwork cut to envelope template shape

Back of finished envelope