Enveloped

I found Christmas cards I liked today, but then realized that the envelopes were not lined and needed a bit of heft to make them a little nicer.

I remembered that my clever blog friend, Courtney from Style Court has shown examples of how she has lined envelopes with interesting papers to make a more elegant presentation. So I took a page (or really, a piece of paper) from her book and embellished my own envelopes.Since the cards that I selected have silver on them, I thought about using some of the joss paper I had on hand to line the envelopes. When I am in New York, I frequently stop by Pearl River Mart and pick up a packet or two of joss paper, which is traditional Chinese paper. Each square of paper has either a thin piece of square foil glued to its center or it may be endorsed with a red ink seal from a traditional Chinese character. The foil is either silver or gold, and both are equally beautiful and spare.

I made a template and cut it out of card-stock, and then traced the outline on the back of the joss paper and then cut it out. I placed the paper inside the envelope, and then glued the top of it onto the flap. I tried gluing the entire sheet, but it wouldn’t go into the envelope. As Courtney shows in her post, you can use almost any decorative paper that complements the envelope’s colour for a nice custom envelope!