03 November 2008

Homemade shipping envelopes


Being, as I am, an online retailer, I do a lot of shipping. And darned if shipping envelopes don't get expensive after a while! I reuse envelopes when I can, but I (thankfully) don't receive enough things through the mail to ship everything I sell with reused envelopes.


So I started making envelopes out of grocery sacks. (The genesis of that idea courtesy of the Etsy Labs.) I chop up the sacks and sew them (yes, on the sewing machine) into envelopes. And I still do that when I need larger envelopes.

But most of my items with fit into these new envelopes I'm making. Turns out some old books have really thick pages. Books like children's dictionaries and encyclopedias, or binders of "Wood Structural Design Data" from the OU libraries book sale.


I just pull two pages out of the book, chop one a little shorter than the other (to make a flap), and sew them together with a long zigzag stitch. Not hard, just a little time-consuming, and they are so. cute. The ladies at the post office always rave about them.


So you want some of these envelopes, but you don't have any old books, can't stand to chop up old books, or are just short on time? Well, lucky you -- I made a bunch of extras and I'm selling them! Hooray!

3 comments:

Norman said...

Classy stuff, I should say.

...also, my made-up word for the verification is 'menlene.' No idea what it would mean if it were a real word.

Jessie said...

Why thank you.

Sounds like a new, space-age chemical for sealing things.

Dorathea said...

How did I miss this post? That's so cool!