Lego Party Invitations and Envelope Tutorial

I've been kind of a deadbeat blogger lately. Lots of party preparations and birthday celebrations around here.

I blogged the other day about the party theme--LEGO. We are all about Legos here, or the boys are. Including the daddy-type boy. He's the worst of them all! So, when the idea was brought up to have a Lego party a few months ago, he was almost as excited as the Little Man himself!

I printed the invites and added the following papers to up the LEGO ante. I should have found LEGO paper, but didn't have time. I liked how these turned out.

The blue background is another piece of paper--the invite itself is only three layers--white cardstock with the printed invitation details, blue cardstock and lined scrapbook paper.

Once they were finished, I realized I didn't have envelopes. I was looking frantically at the PaperSource website when Little Man in his wise-beyond-his-years-voice said, "Why don't you make envelopes?" Duh.

So I did!

Again, I used what I had on hand---which was black checkered flag wrapping paper, though any paper could be used. I thought the checks looked like blocks...or kind of LEGO-ish.

You'll need these very complicated (not!) supplies: wrapping (or other) paper, tape, scissors and a positive attitude. Okay, you don't need the positive attitude, but it will make the project even more fun!

Start by cutting your envelope paper to size about 1 1/2 times longer than your mail and about 3 inches wider. Then place your mail (the invite) a bit less than halfway down the paper so that the mail will be fully covered by the bottom half of the envelope paper. Fold the left and right sides over the mail. Like so:

Fold the bottom half up over the mail. At the top of the envelope at the very top portion of the mail piece, notch two cuts along the top so that the mail will be easily removed upon receipt. In the photo below, I added arrows to show where to cut.

Once the notches are cut, fold over the top to make the envelope flaps.

SO easy, right?

Next, tape the envelope closed, or use an address label to close it.

Since my envelope paper was both shiny and too "busy" to write the address on directly, I used an address label.

And then I realized two things. The Sharpie was out of ink and my hands are ug-ly! Alas, the Sharpie problem I was able to resolve. I'm stuck with the hands. Oh well.

The final product looked great!

Cute, huh? Little Man came up with an awfully cute idea! I want to make all the envelopes from here on out--they are cute, cheap and so much more interesting. I will add that I used 2 stamps because I didn't know if the almost-square shape would go through the machines in the post office. All the invites arrived, though, so it was no problemo!