Home made stationary

YAY! My first craft post! WOOO!

Ok, so in this little quick tutorial I just wanted to share a fast and easy way to make your own interesting and fun stationary. I have a friend in Marine Corps basic training right now and I thought I'd try to brighten up my friend's world a little by sending her some letters made on fun stationary. I looked around for some store brand stuff but my ADD knows no bounds and in the end I didn't want to just send her the same stationary every day. Why can't someone make stationary that's NEVER the same letter twice? Is that so much to ask?? 

SO, of course, since I couldn't find any I like, this left me doing what I usually do in such situations. I made my own. ^__^  I had a great booklet of scrapbook paper that my sister had given me on one of my trips up to see her. She had gotten it on sale (high five to her in thinking thrifty! I always respect that) and when she'd used what she'd needed for her own project, she passed the rest to me. This paper is beautiful and has lots of fun little cut-outs that I can play with. I didn't know what to do with it at first because I don't really make scrapbooks but then I thought about making my own stationary and this pad of scrap paper just seemed perfect! 

Ok, so enough rambling. Hit the link to see what you'll need to make your own!

Start by going to this site and downloading the Basic Envelope Template.

Next, gather some scissors, a glue stick (I prefer the little Elmer's glue sticks), a ruler of some sort, a butter knife, and the paper you'd like to use. The image below shows my gathering of supplies, sans the scrapbook paper, and what a finished envelope looks like.

Now, first, before you get all scissor happy, scan in your beautiful scrapbook paper. You'll want a good high resolution image to play with so crank those settings up. Then, pop that bad boy into some sort of photo editing software and lighten it up enough so that you'll be able to read things that are written on it. Then print it back out on plain 8 1/2" x 11" paper. Now you have your letter! I plan to write my letter in word and just run the paper through the printer again to put the words onto it since my handwriting is atrocious. If you do that, just remember to put the paper in the correct way so your words wind up on the already printed side. ;) 

Here's my template all cut out, my scrapbook paper and my printed out, lightened up letter paper so you can see what I'm talking about.

 

Next, turn your scrapbook paper over so the white side is facing up. place your template onto the back and check it to make sure you're getting the design you want when it's all finished. I wanted that pretty black flower in there so I made sure to put my template where it'd show up once everything was cut out.  Now trace around your template with a pencil. 

Now just cut around your pencil lines and when you flip it back over, you should have something that looks like this:

Now turn it back over so the wrong side is facing up. Take your ruler and line it up along the tabs on either side. Use the back of a butter knife to score the card and then fold down the tabs. Do the same to the top and the bottom of the paper so that you have made a square in the center as seen below:

From here, just grab your glue stick and put some glue on the two smaller side tabs. Be careful not to accidentally glue them down to the rest of the paper! You only want the glue on them, otherwise you might accidentally glue your whole envelope shut and that wouldn't help much. Pretty, yes. Useful, not so much. Once you have your glue on the two side tabs, just fold the large bottom piece up and press the two side tabs under it. You can weight it down under a book till it dries if you like but it's not really necessary. If your bottom tab is too long to let the top fold down properly, then just snip off the excess till the top of the envelope closes up nicely. See below:

 

And that's IT! Easy, right?? Now you can make all SORTS of really beautiful stationary. Bet you'll never look at the scrapbook section of your local craft store quite the same again, huh? 

Here's the finished product. Pretty, isn't it? I love, love, love this. I almost wish someone would mail me one. Heh. Maybe I'll have to mail one to myself and then act surprised when it shows up... >__>