Serendipity Stamps Blog Challenge #7 - Envelope Art

It's been a while since I have posted anything...although I have been busy getting ready for my son's wedding coming up in a few weeks.  Today I am taking a break from wedding prep to share a project I made for Serendipity Stamps Challenge Blog #7 which is titled "Envelope Art".  Although I don't write any letters these days, I do send cards and gifts to my crafty friends in padded envelopes.  I have always though that those plain old manilla colored envelopes are so boring and decided to see if I could make a more cheerful one myself.  There is a very good tutorial on how to make your own padded envelopes that can be found here.

As you can see, I chose an Easter theme...Serendipity Stamps has lots of great Easter stamps and dies making it very easy to create a cute Easter scene.  To make the envelope, I just used two sheets of cardstock (one patterned, one solid), each 7.5 x 10.75".   I cut an Easter basket on my Silhouette, ran it through an embossing folder to give it the basket-weave effect and threaded some thin ribbon through it.  The cute Easter eggs are from Serendipity (Egg Outline Die) and (Scroll Scroll Die).  I stamped a design on the solid egg using Serendipity Tiny Flower and colored it with some copics.  The cute labels are also from Serendipity (Panel) and I think they look perfect as mailing labels.  Just because I wanted to give my envelope a better chance of surviving the US Postal Service, I stitched everything down to give it a bit more strength.

 I used rubber cement to adhere some bubble wrap to the inside (bubble side facing the paper).

Then you use a bit more glue to adhere the two pieces of cardstock together.

You smooth the the edges together with your bone folder, wait for it to dry and you are done!












Our Serendipity challenge was to make sure our envelope art was "mailable", so here's my proof!

I mailed my envelope with a few goodies to Serendipity Design Team Member and my good friend, Jeanne Jachna.  Jeanne lives many states away from me, so I stitched around the edges of the envelope just to make sure my gift didn't fall apart en route.

Here is my envelope waiting for Jeanne in her mailbox:

Are you wondering how it held up?  The answer is pretty well, just a little damage to the envelope, but mostly on the back side.

 The front stayed in good shape and those eggs, although they look delicate...are in reality very strong!
Edit:  I forgot to thank Jeanne's son Roger for photo-shopping the address labels off my pictures...he is so smart!

So,  would I do this again...only for a super special occasion and never again during Winter.  It was so warm in CA, I never even gave a thought to the fact that my package might get wet in snowy weather.  I also would use two pieces of score tape in place of the rubber cement.  I think they would have held the bubble wrap in place a little better.

It's time for you to make your own envelope art now...and you have a chance to win a great prize, $20 off your next Serendipity Stamp order.  All you have to do is make some kind of envelope art using at least one Serendipity stamp or die in your design and post it on the Serendipity Stamps Challenge Blog.  Here's the link.

The sale this week at Serendipity is buy 3,  get your 4th item free and is valid from 3/6 through 3/13 and is a perfect opportunity to grab some Easter stamps!

Everyone on the Serendipity Design Team has some Envelope Art to share...make sure you check them all out!

Jeanne Jachna

Marybeth Lopez

Anya Schrier

Miriam Napier

Jenny Gropp

Pauline Paulington

Egg Scroll Die

Egg Outline Die

Tiny Flower

Panel