Letter Writing Etiquette 101

It's almost National Card and Letter Writing Month and I am so excited to start playing! We just have to get past choosing our MARCH challenge winner (voting is still open by the way!) and April Fools Day (one of my favorite silly holidays!)... and then we are off to sending snail mail all month long!

So, I thought since I have the whole week off of work and just shipped two kids off to Grandma's for the week; that i would give you a few tutorials on how to write and send some great letters.

We will start with Envelope Liners..... so here we go!

Step One.... start with a cute card and envelope. either a pointed flap or a square flap will work.

Step two... Choose a light weight paper to line the enveolpe. A piece of scrapbooking paper, newsprint, book print, tissue, vellum... something thin.

Step Three.... open the envelope and place it over the piece of lining paper. Turn the patterned side of the paper down because you are going to trace onto it, flip it over and then insert it in the envelope.

Step Four... trace around the flap of the envelope and the entire length of the envelope - minus about 1.4" at the bottom, so that when you slip it in, the top of the flap is still exposed so that you can lick and seal it.

Step Five... when you cut around the traced lines, cut just inside of the lines. This way you have trimmed it up a bit so that it will slip into the envelope easily and leave a nice border.

Step six... Turn the liner over and slip it inside the envelope. Crease it where the envelope folds to make sure it fits snug. If it won't slip in easily, trim it all a bit more on each side ( not too much!). When it's slipped inside, grab a glue stick and glue down the linner paper to the envelope flap.

That's it! Follow this great card all the way to it's mystery recipient in the Phillipines. Our next tutorial will be on embellishments and addressing.