Envelope Mini Book Tutorial: Lucky

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

I hope you've all got green on! I like to focus on the tradition of feeling lucky today, and wanted to share this quick and simple project I made to help remind me of how blessed I am and how it really is just the basics like family, friends, and your own special place to call home that are important in life.
After Christmas one year, I bought two packages of premade cards and envelopes at a huge discount. The card dimensions are 5.5X4 inches, this is a standard premade size. I had visions of sending beautifully handmade cards the following year. Things never go according to plan, so they've sat in with my crafting supplies forgotten until I cleaned things up. I realized they'd be just the thing to help me make this envelope mini book.You will need five envelopes and two and half cards. Yes this means that you will have more cards left than envelopes but spare cards are useful for a whole bunch of things, like gluing or sewing up two sides to make pockets for scrapbook pages.

Fold each envelope back like this. Lay them down one on top of another like this. This will give you an idea of how they'll go together. Imagine you are going to lick the first envelope and then set another one down right on top of it folded the same way and facing the same direction.Here is another way to visualize it. These two have already been glued together. If you lay them down this is how they'll look. The one on the left, has had it's flap glued to the second envelope on the right. You can use glue or go the old fashioned route and lick them. If you lick make sure you immediately stick it to the following envelope or they won't stay together very well.

VERY IMPORTANT: Put glue only on the area that you would normally lick to seal. Otherwise your envelopes will be glued shut and that wouldn't be very good at all☺ You want to be able to slide things in and out of your pockets.

Remember those card blanks? Normally you'd fold them in half to make a card. This time cut them in half using the prefolded edge as a cutting guide. Cut five one for each pocket that you just made out of the envelopes.

Cut patterned paper to fit on the fronts, I cut mine to 5X3.5 inches, this gives me a half inch border on each side. You can simplify things and skip this step. You'll be covering most of the patterned paper with journaling, but you will have to adjust your margins from my dimensions.

I did mine on white cardstock within a text box measuring 4.5X3 inches. This again gives me a half inch border all around and looks very pretty. Using a text box in a word processing program also helps me because I print it out with the thin border around it and that tell me exactly where to trim around the journaling.

When picking your patterned paper a little print works best since you'll be covering most of it, this way parts of the pattern will show and be recognizable, in this case as polka dots.

Cut the tabs for your cards, mine are 1.5 inch circles. I used my circle cutter by Martha Stewart.

Glue on circle tabs and patterned paper. To get the spacing correct, I attached in this order: top tab, bottom tab, middle tab, remaining tabs. Add title stickers to tabs.

This is when you'd also add your journaling boxes on top of the patterned paper. I chose to hightlight five things that make me feel lucky, but elected not to share the journaling as it's private. Then I picked out five pictures that represent each thing.

Add your pictures to the backside, so that the different orientations wouldn't distract from the design. I thought it would bother me if the letters and pictures weren't in the same direction. This way I can add my journaling cards, with the text in the same direction as the title stickers. You turn over the card to see the picture.

While writing this tutorial I realized I forgot to take a picture of the next step, which is to slide your cards into your pockets. I think you can get an idea of what that would look like from the finished project pictures.

Now it's time to make your covers. You will need chipboard cut to the size of your envelopes Lay it on top of a piece of patterned paper about half an inch or three quarters larger on each side. The amount of over hang is up to you, just make sure you have enough to fold up and over.
Crease each side, clip each corner as shown. Do not cut it right against the corner, cut a little bit above the corner or your corners won't be completely covered when the paper is folded up. The first time you do this cut farther out than you think you need too. You can make adjustments as you fold up, but as they say once cut off it's gone, so error on the side of caution.

I always start by folding up the longer side, I have no idea if this makes it easier or turn out better, I am just a creature of habit. Fold up and glue down.

Fold up other sides, check to see if the ends come to points, if not very carefully trim a little bit down. Fold up and glue down. In most cases you would then cut another piece of paper to slightly smaller than the size of the cover and glue on to cover up the center. You do not need to do that for this project. No one will see that.

I used double sided patterned paper with this project. The inside cards have the polka dot side and the covers have the striped side. I love how the two patterns are different but work together because they match perfectly.

Glue the front cover to the first envelope. This one will have the V shaped opening facing up. Then glue the back cover to the envelope with the last flap on it.

I had intented on adding a white ribbon to tie it up with, but found I'd used mine all up. Oh well, this one is pretty flat because I didn't add any other embellishements to the inside cards so stays together well without it.

If I had, had ribbon I'd have attached by sandwiching it in between the last envelope and back cover and had it come up over the top and around the bottom to tie in the middle. In stead, I used this cute little leprechaun from my supply stash. I think he added just the right festive finishing touch to my quick and simple design. If you make your own version, let me know because I'd love to see it.Featured on One Pretty Thing and shared at: Blue Cricket Design and