To slightly dress up our simple Save The Dates, we decided to line the envelopes in which they were sent.
I knew that colored paper liners can be made or bought, but wondered whether we could make them out of fabric. Joe had been poking around online (what, Joe, really?) and read about this nifty little machine, the Xyron. How the Xyron works (we have the 900 model, they’re available in smaller as well as larger and fancier models) is you basically run a sheet of something between two rolls of something else and they adhere nicely into one on the other side. Nice description, eh? Well, I didn’t get more specific because basically, you can feed in thin sheets of whatever will fit: paper, card stock, fabric (aha!), photos, etc. And Xyron sells cartridges that either laminate, create stickers or create magnets with whatever it is you’ve fed through. Pretty nifty. And relatively affordable.
We retrieved a lovely Kaufman batik (red, yay!) I had acquired (as luck would have it, a lot of!) last year, and cut it into strips to feed through the Xyron, adding a permanent adhesive backing to it.
Then, using a simple template, I traced out as many liners as would fit on each strip.
Cut them out with my trusty rotary cutter…
Trimmed off the curve at the tip of the liner…
Lined up the tip on the flap of the envelope…
And slowly smoothed the liner into the envelope, removing the backing in stages…
(With the help of my bonefolder…)
Phew! Done… I definitely got better at easing the fabric in smoothly after several, several tries. So apologies to any recipient readers out there who received slightly bumpy and/or crooked versions…
Then we made some closure stickers since opening fabric-lined envelopes with a regular letter opener might be a little difficult. I had a lot of fun making these - and it was great to head to the post office and send these off!
