DIY Pocketfold Invite Update.... Envelopes

Now this part of the invite making has become a mission. Note to blog readers and potential invite makers. Measure your invite and then order your envelopes and make sure there is wriggling room for the invite....

Envelope Sizes - Credit to Data Guide

I originally ordered some Onyx (black) star dream C6 envelopes from one of my favourite eBay craft suppliers called Mr Craft Australia. I've got a lot of star dream paper from him and it's great as he posts everything pretty fast and I get it within a week or two and the paper is great quality. 

Squeezing...

Any way back onto the subject of envelopes. They arrived a couple of days ago and I ripped off all the packaging as I was pretty excited to see whether they would fit or not, tried to stick our very nearly finished invite sample into them .... and it didn't fit... I was so annoyed!! I'd not read the measurements of the envelope properly and after re designing the invite just after I'd purchased them thinking they would be under 160mm in length.. they weren't.

The mutilated invite  (my photo)

So after amputating and very nearly mutilating my beautiful invite sample that I was very proud of, by a couple of cm's, (the edges are so very uneven and it looks so short now, sad face), I ended up managing to squeeze it into the envelope but wasn't able to get it out afterwards and had to rip the envelope apart to get it out. The photo on the left is my poor hacked invite. It's very nearly finished. Just waiting for some thicker red ribbon to use as a belly band instead of the thin ribbon currently on there. So epic fail on my behalf...

Potential greeting card template as it fits well

No one wants to have a pretty invite that they can't get out of the envelope and I didn't really fancy having people absolutely destroy the envelope to get into the invite. And I don't really want to have to redesign my invite again as I was very very happy with it. So back to the envelope drawing board for me.


I happened to have a greeting card envelope on the lounge room table so pulled that apart and thought right... I can make a template out of this as it will fit the invite in it, went to scan it and realised that it wouldn't fit onto an A4 size sheet of paper. Potential template photo shown as above. So I then thought that I could trace around the greeting card envelope template and put it on a piece of card and use that as my template and trace it onto A3 Star dream paper. Problem is... as I worked out yesterday and last night... this was going to be a very expensive task. As it would cost round about $75 for 40 sheets of paper including postage and that wasn't even enough to make 50 or 60 envelopes....

Kaskad Raven Black Envelope - Amazing Paper

So back to the internet searching for envelope sizes. I found a envelope size called an E18. It ranges from 120- 130mm by 180 - 190. So I figured that would be the perfect size as my invite dimensions are 110ish by 170 ish, give or take human cutting error.  

There were so many internet web sites that were selling E18 size envelopes but the majority of them were only sold in gold, white and silver metallic and the other ones were black matte envelopes as shown in the photo above which I wasn't to sure about. I really wanted a black metallic envelope to match the invite paper but hey beggars can't be choosy can they...

KK Galvanised Envelope - Amazing Paper

I put in an order at Amazing paper in enmore road, Newtown, and the lady just called me back regarding them. I asked whether she had any other colours in that size and she said that the silver would be the closest to the black, as shown in the photo on the left. So I asked whether I could have a sample of the black matte envelope and the silver metallic envelope. She said yes and that she would post them today, so I'm looking forward to getting them in the mail this week hopefully and can then decide whether the matte will go ok with the shiny invite or whether I can team a silver shiny envelope up with it instead. It's so much better than ordering 50 envelopes and finding out that they don't look any good with your invite... So happy with Amazing Papers service so far...