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Hi. My name is Katie Crooks. I'm a public programs coordinator and the Smithsonian American
Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery. One of the programs I coordinate, Handi Hour, features
hand-made crafts, and one of the crafts that we have is envelope making. You can make cool
envelopes with any paper that you have lying around the house. Here you can see I took
our calendar of events, and I made it into a snazzy little envelope. I also made a gift
tag envelope out of some shiny gold paper, and this little guy was made out of a page
of an old book. Excellent way to recycle some things that you have lying around the house.
To show you how to do this craft, you'll need a few materials. First, you need a regular
envelope, the size that you would like to make the envelope out of your fancy paper.
You’ll need the fancy paper you want to use. You'll need a scissors, a pencil, some
newspaper, a little bit of water in a shallow tub, some tape, and then some type of heavy
stock of paper. I'm recycling an old piece of file folder. Something like that will work,
an old cereal box will work just as well. The first thing you want to do is you're going
to take your envelope and submerge it in water. Don't get it completely soaked, just good
and damp. Let it sit out for a bit on the newspaper, and I've already placed mine in
the water, and when you've done that, it will start to peel away where the adhesive material
was so you're left with a deconstructed envelope. Go ahead and take that and blot it against
the newspaper and get it as dry as possible. I recommend then leaving it sit out, for maybe
an hour or two, so that it dries because right now-as you can see there's a little tear in
this one-it's pretty fragile when it's wet. I'm going to set that over here as I already
have a dried, deconstructed envelope. So the first thing that you're going to want to do
is to trace this onto your heavy paper. That way, you can make something that is very sturdy.
Just sit it on there so it fits and none of the edges run off the side, and trace it with
pencil, which, to save time, I've already done. From that, all you need to do is cut
it out of the file folder or whatever heavy paper you have. I've already given it a start.
Pretty easy. You'll just want a nice, sharp scissors to make good, clean lines. Also,
another time-saving trick for us, I've already cut one out. This particular envelope is going
to be just under 6 inches by just over 4 inches-a nice good, standard-size envelope. Take your
form and take your fancy paper. This can be almost anything. The thicker, more durable
the paper, the better it'll last when you put it in the mail because when you do get
done with this, as long as you use proper postage, you will be able to use this envelope
for regular mailings. Just go ahead, place your form on the paper, make sure that it
doesn't run off on any of the sides, grab your pencil, and just trace around. I got
a head start, and I already traced the form on this piece of paper, so all I have to do
is cut this out just like I did for the card-stock template. And, to move us along quicker, I
already have one that I've cut out. Looks an awful lot like the previous form. Usually,
to fold it up I just eyeball it and fold it the same way that I unfolded the regular envelope.
You take the side panels and fold them into the middle and you can already see how that
envelope shape is taking form. Take the bottom and bring it up. Now, if you're not comfortable
eyeballing it, you can also take the form from the old envelope that you dried out and
you can fold them together-so just refold the envelope that you already had, and it
will help guide you. Then you can just unfold it after you've made the creases and refold
it back together. Take a little tape. If you've made it with enough allowance, you can use
glue or double-sided tape so that it can be a hidden adhesive and people won't see the
tape. I'm just using regular tape here and I'm going to tape down the edges to hold everything in place. Just make sure
that your tape doesn't hit this little part here or it will stick shut and you won't be
able to get your mail inside. This paper is pretty decorative, so I'm going to have to
use an address label for my mailing address and my return address, but once I put on proper
postage-a regular forever should work fine-and I put a letter on the inside, it'll be good
to send in the mail. You can seal it with glue, double-sided tape, regular tape like
you did the bottom, or you can use a decorative sticker or seal to hold your envelope shut.
And that's how you do it. Thanks!