Lovely letters

As I wrote earlier I write many notes to my daughter lately. And as I already made her a mailbox for the notes I thought that I should write proper "letters". Up until now I just wrote a few words onto a slip of paper. I figured my daughter might enjoy it to get "real letters" in an envelope with a stamp and address label. :-)
However, since I write quite a few notes a day using regular paper envelopes seemed too wasteful to me. Even though I really liked the "mail kit" ...
So I thought why not make an envelope out of felt?! I still got loads of felt lying around ... :-) and I figured I could make little address labels out of felt as well and stamps and attach them with velcro. Well, and that's what I did.

If you want to make some for your kids as well - it's really easy!

To make the envelopes:

Figure out how many envelopes, address labels and stamps you want and what colors you want to use.

If you make more than one envelope it probably helps to make a cardboard template. At least if the envelopes are supposed to have the same size. :-) If you want to make a regular sized envelope the easiest way to do this would be to use a paper envelope for making your pattern. I made two very small envelopes and therefore just made my pattern up.

You use your pattern to cut the felt.

Now you have to figure out what size your address label should be. Of course you can do this using your template. But if you did not use one - the easiest way to do it is pin together the envelope and establish where the label should go and what size it should have.

(In the picture you can see one of the address labels I made. I just couldn't wait until I finished the envelope. :-) You don't actually have to make them before the envelope. You can start either way - as long as you figure out the sizes of the envelope and the label beforehand.)

Where the label is supposed to go you sew a bit of velcro. You also sew a bit of velcro where you want to put your stamp later on. When you're done it should like this:


or folded up like this:
Now you can sew the envelope togehter. Because my template was very simple I only had to sew two sides and I used a running stitch. But you can use pretty much whatever stitch you like.

Done! You can embellish your envelope which ever way you like. Depending on what you want to do it might be easier to actually do this before you sew it together. But I did it afterwards. I also added a button at the back to close it. You don't have to do this however, you could also use velcro or just make an envelope that gets "tugged" together.

To see a picture of the back of my envelope just scroll down to the end of this post.
To make the labels:

Basically all you do is cut out two rectangles out of felt for each label you want to make.

To one piece of felt you sew the other bit of the velcro - so it will stick to the envelope later. On the the other piece of felt you embroider an address. I just used the names of our family members and our dog. :-) Again you can use any stitches you like. You can see the front sides of my labels here:


After you're done with this you sew the two pieces together - so the front will show the embroidered address and the back will have the velcro and will stick to the envelope. This is what the back of the labels should look like

To make the stamps:

This is basically the same as the labels. Even easier. You just cut your stamps out of felt, sew a bit of velcro to the back and embellish the front. I did not even cut out two pieces of felt for each stamp. Of course if you want to make it really pretty you can do this.
Here you can see the envelope - not embellished yet - and one stamp and one address label.


And you're done! :-)
This is what mine looked like ...

when taking the picture I had only finished one envelope but I was planning on making a second one. That is the green bit of felt in the photo. :-)

And here a picture of the backside of the envelope.

I am really curious what my daughter will think of them! :-)






*This post has been entered in the "Best Creative Craft Ideas from 2009" contest at Flower Showers Crafts.*