Magazine Envelopes

Recently I had numerous thank you cards to send for my birthday, I had some amazing photos I'd screen grabbed and printed from Magnum Essays, I was originally going to make a suspended room divide from them, but never found the right room. 

Instead I backed them with thick card and made postcards from them (for personal use only, of course) and sent them as my thank you cards. My only issue was that I didn't have any envelopes for them and instead of buying boring white envelopes that are ill fitting, I chose to make my own.

Here's how to make the template and envelope:

Find a card you need an envelope for.

Measure it 3 times height wise. 

Draw around the three, 
add flaps to the middle section,
and a triangular end.
(It's good to measure it with a ruler,
to check it's straight, etc).

Cut out as instructed above,
 I normally use hardboard 
(for this, I simply used paper as a demo).

Find an appropriate magazine image.
High fashion magazines are good due
to the elaborate photo shoots.

Cut the page out, either draw 
around your template and cut, 
or use your template as the guide.

Remember that the image seen on
the front is the middle panel.

Turn over and place your
card in the middle position,
to check everything fits well.

Remove photo.
Fold the bottom flap up,
as so.

Fold the side flaps in.

You might need to cut the
top of the flaps to line up...

Fold the top over.

Unfold and attach double sided
sticky tape on both side flaps
and on the top flap to secure 
the envelope with.

Remove the cover of the tape 
on the side flaps and secure the 
bottom flap to the sides.

Some times, you can incorporate
the top flap to exaggerate
the over all effect, when opened.

Pop your card inside, seal,
add a clearly written label and stamp.
Pop to your nearest Post Box.

And this is how you make free envelopes with a twist and a charming impact!

As you can see above, I even used ones with a body of type, basically, every page in most high glossy magazines can work.

Enjoy!

Glossy booklets of joy!

There is nothing nicer than recieving new magazines, whether it's 'Innovations', a random household or clothes catalogue, a trashy mag or a big fat glossy magazine.
I love them, so much. There is nothing nicer than taking some time out and flicking through the crisp new unopened pages, the unseen images and unread words.
So other week when I arrived at work, to find the new Ikea catalogue, I was in heaven! Now there is something especially wonderful about household catalogues, as it's all new and fresh and rephotographed and pretty! And it immediately makes you want to go out and buy everything they sell, they do such an amazing job of selling the dream and making the people in the photos look so realistic that I see myself as the lady shown, showing her orderly drawers of spice and herb pots to my mother-in-law, while the slow roast lamb in my twin fan oven simmers and the large baking tray full of potatoes, rosemary and olive oil glistens and crisps up....ahh the dream i live in is grand but only while looking through the catalogue.
The downside to catalogues is reality, I expect that if shops and companies could, they would remove reality completely, as then we would all buy, buy, buy and never consider that it's not worth it or that it's not the same dream that you were promised. Although knowing that the dream and reality are never the same thing, we still try and try to live the dream and buy the dream and believe that the dream is possible. But what would life be, if we didn't continually try and try to be better and never except that this could just be it. But if you ask me, Ikea and other catalogues do sell the dream extremely well.
I love the fantasy land and dream bubbles...reality has it's place but for now, I'm going to continue to keep an eye on my slow roast lamb and put my spice and herb pots in alphabetical order...and try to keep my mother-in-law as sweet as possible, I mean she is the nicest lady in the world, so it's not that hard, not at all and the kids adore her and my husband, doesn't think that she's always right, although she is.
"So come on Audrey (my dream/bubble mother-in-law's name), let's crack that bottle of red open".