Making Envelopes for Happy Mail (with a naughty baby)

Today, I spent the morning making envelopes! I use some normal every day copy paper, a thick layer of gesso, which my son helped me texture with his hands and toys, and acrylic paints.

First, Gesso. Let it dry, let your kid mess it up with various vehicle toys, makes great texture plus apparently its a ton of fun.

Mr Texture

Then, add color. Lately I've been doing a ton of red and oranges, so today I tried to stick with cool colors. Staying in a single color theme makes it easier when making a group. I just squirt the paint directly to the paper and brush it out, you need a good layer of paint to make a sturdy envelope so slop it on. 

If you have a toddler around, again encourage some good texture work. Or get in there with your fingers or something. You can even steal a baby's toy and use it yourself, like I did here. 

NEXT, add a pattern. I used some household items, I will name them off with the photos. I tried to stick with the same colors for the patterns, I wanted them to stay vibrant, not to mud em up, so I used all the willpower I had to keep the red and orange far, far away. At the request of Greyson I did pull out some purple though. 

The left is stamped with bubble wrap and a coaster I have been using as a stamp, it's shaped like a record, grooves and all, it's a great stamp! The right is made with a plastic bottle cap and ...you know, cardboard ribs 

Left is just dots made with my finger. Right is bubble wrap and a plastic bottle cap.

Left is the Coaster. Right is bubble wrap, a few bottle caps to highlight the bubble circles, and a couple random cardboard rib stamps. Also Grey ran his truck through that one 

Same stamps, different ways. Truck tracks, coaster, bottle caps.

Cardboard ribs

NOW! Please forgive me! I was not planning on making this blog post, so I did not take pictures of the next steps. Now, all of these looked fine.. but I wanted one more level. So I made some stamps. I took some cardstock and some copy paper. I cut the copy paper into 4 pieces and glued them together, I then cut out the design and glued it to the cardstock. I put some glue on top and made some texture with my brush ..just because I wanted to. I made a few stamps but I only used this one. Also, I couldn't hold back the red/orange monster any longer, so I ended up using it! Make sure everything is dry before you start. Also, when making envelopes I suggest you fold them BEFORE adding stamps, because  you will get a better overall composition. I am sure you can tell I did not do this. I also took the red color I used for the stamps and added some little dots and smears to the other envelopes, embellish as you like. To fold the envelope, you can find a template and cut or you can just as easily do a simple fold, I take the paper, fold an half an inch on each side, fold the bottom up, fold the sides in on the top half (to make the triangle shape, but you don't even really have to do that, and then fold the top down, easy! I do cut the little half inch fold and glue it to the back.. I will make a folding and gluing post tomorrow :D