This weekend provided a nice little break for us; we spent the past couple of days enjoying the slow pace of my Kansas hometown, and I got a chance to take some product photos. My vision was rustic chic, à la the works of Anna Claire Howard, a talented photographer with a knack for styling. Because my mother is an antiques dealer, I had access to all sorts of fun props!
While at my mother’s, I started playing around a little bit with embossing. I am absolutely delighted with the shiny results of embossing, and that’s where I came up with the idea for these DIY envelope liners featuring glittery gold polka dots. I created mine for casual correspondence, but they would be just as lovely used as invitation envelope liners. As many of you know, I am a big fan of creating my own envelopes, and in this instance I wanted something that would contradict yet complement the elegance of the polka dot gold DIY envelope liners. I chose a Whole Foods shopping bag. In a nutshell, here’s a visual of how I created the envelope {though if you want more information on creating envelopes, visit my blog post on the topic}:
Once you create your envelope, measure how wide it is, and how tall it is {at the tallest point}. My envelope is 7.25″ x 9.4″.
Next, cut out the rectangle that will become your envelope liner. Subtract 0.25″ from your width, but keep your height the same. My rectangle, effectively, was 7″ x 9.4″. Place your rectangle in your envelope, flip it over, and trace around it. Be sure you move the rectangle up a little bit so you can get that nice top curve; it doesn’t matter if the bottom of your liner isn’t flush with the bottom of your envelope.
The result of your tracing should look something like this:
Now, here’s my DIY envelope liners shortcut/tip: the truth of the envelope liner matter is this — no one is going to be checking to see if your liner extends to the bottom. Checking requires taking the envelope apart or risking damaging it. So — I just trim 0.5″ to 1″ off the bottom of my liner paper. That way, the top of the liner has all the right contours without you having to measure them out {which takes time, energy, and frustration}.
Once you’ve trimmed the bottom, check to make sure your DIY envelope liner sits where you want it. You have the freedom to slide it up or down to find that “sweet spot”.
Here comes the fun part: embossing! First, assemble your tools. I’ve got an embossing ink pad, gold embossing powder, a heat gun, and a pencil with an unused eraser.
Set up your station. At this point, you’ll only be using the pencil eraser and embossing ink pad; but you’ll want to have the heat gun, embossing powder, and a piece of junk mail or printer paper nearby. Use the pencil eraser as a stamp to make polka dots on your liner paper, like so:
I don’t stamp on all the paper, opting to cover just beyond what will be visible to the letter recipient.
I think the embossing process is so fun — probably because it’s messy and I’m glittery for days afterward! You essentially just dump embossing powder to cover your design, shake the powder off, and coax the excess powder back into its container {or a tupperware container}. You’ll be left with a glittering design that’s ready to be set with a heat gun!
Use your heat gun to melt the embossing powder into the paper. Be careful — the gun is incredibly hot {but as long as you don’t touch the tip, you’ll be fine}!
After a little under a minute, your embossed polka dots will be shiny and affixed to the paper. See how cool it looks? By the way, you can emboss any stamp — a lot of brides use embossing to emboss their addresses onto return envelopes.
Now, you’ll flip your liner over and put some sort of adhesive on the back. I would recommend a glue stick vs. Elmer’s glue to avoid those unattractive glue bubbles, but of course I went ahead and used Elmer’s because I don’t listen to my own advice and my glue stick has disappeared.
The last step is to stick the DIY envelope liner in your envelope — and you’ve got a very impressive, classy presentation!
If you have any questions or tips, feel free to comment! Otherwise, enjoy embossing — and, of course, creating DIY envelope liners!
Do you know if there is such as thing as embossing ink for dip pens? How amazing would that be?!
Hi Andrea!
I’ve heard of people doing calligraphy with stamp pad refill inks (maybe like this one?) then embossing it; but I haven’t tried that myself! That would be really cool, though. 🙂
I really want to make these envelopes, but I’m a student, and I’m on a serious budget – plus, since I’m still pretty itinerant, I don’t want to acquire a bunch of craft supplies till I’m more settled. Is there a reason this wouldn’t work out with glitter glue instead of embossing? What about just a gold sharpie that you can make dots with? In other words, do you have any suggestions for making something very similar to this, with a minimum amount of supplies?
Hi Sara!
No, no reason at all — you absolutely could DIY them with the gold of your choice. I just like the effect embossing gives because it’s very sparkly … almost like a gold piece of jewelry! I would say that your second best option would be glitter glue, and the third best option would be Sharpie (since it’s a little dull). You could also do dots of glue and sparkle gold glitter over them. Alternatively, you could use a glitter paint like this one — which Amazon reviewers say costs about $1.50 at Hobby Lobby. My last suggestion would be to purchase a piece of gold card stock like this, use a hole puncher to create little circles, and glue the circles to the liner in a polka dot pattern. I’ve seen glitter card stock at craft stores like JoAnn’s and Michael’s, so I think that would be a very cheap way to DIY these!
Any way you look at it, there are a lot of ways to get this effect without spending a lot of money on craft supplies! Hopefully these suggestions have helped you out; the liners will be perfect for holiday cards this year. 🙂
Awesome, these are amazing suggestions! I’m going to head over to Hobby Lobby/Michael’s and see what’ll work best… that gold paint seems like a good option! And I’ve seen that glitter card stock too… it might make for an awkward texture, but it would definitely be really sparkly. I’ll try a few things and see what works! Thanks for such a helpful and prompt reply! I super love your blog – so many amazing ideas. 😀
Actually, I’ll bet you’d be surprised at the texture with the glitter gold card stock! It would probably dry relatively flat; and then you could cut about an inch strip of the card stock to “wrap” up your card/letter … kind of like the blue belly band on these. Whatever you do, I am sure it will turn out really cool! And I’m glad you like reading the blog; I like writing it, so it’s a pretty good deal for both of us. 😉 Have fun shopping! There’s a European bakery right by the Boulder Michael’s, so my Michael’s trips are always about a bazillion hours long since I spend forever in Michael’s and then I’ve got to go buy a piece of Bavarian fig cake {because … why not?}.
Girly girly, you would have to really LOVE the person this envelope is going to to go to that trouble! Charming
Says the woman who paints beautiful acrylic flowers on her envelopes! 😉 It does seem like a lot of work … but the process takes about two minutes!
Lovely work as usual Lindsey!
I’m obsessed with the embossing powder, but unfortunately here in Italy I can’t easily find a website that sell this stuff here (without spending tons of money in shipment costs).
I’m hoping to find it on amazon someday! xx
I’m sad you can’t easily find embossing powder! Embossing is so much fun. I found some powders in the UK … maybe they’ll happily ship to Italy? :-/ Otherwise, Amazon has everything you need!