All wrapped up - a little tutorial

I don't usually do tutorials on my blog.  Let's face it, most ideas I have incorporated that are DIY were stolen from some other much more talented, creative fellow blogger bride than myself.  I am all about using other ideas, not coming up with my own.

But Em, over at Burning River Bride asked me to share a little tutorial on how I created these little envelope wraps for our invitations:

I have to admit, it's really not a tutorial.  It was very simple indeed.

1)  I got the idea from some different web site blogs a la these styles:

2)  I asked my sister to create a .pdf file of a simple wrap using the graphic from our invitations...I paid an extra charge to the company who designed them for the design file so I could create other stationery elements like the wraps by myself.  The graphic file looked like this in .jpg format:

You can use any type of program like Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, etc to create the basic wraps.  My sister created them in Illustrator and saved them as a .pdf file.

3)  I bought the pre cut stickers for the wraps from here.  They were very inexpensive.  They were the 7.5" by 2" labels...5 per sheet.  They provide you the dimensions you should use and even provide some templates for some of the programs listed above.

4)  My sis added in our name and return address on the back side of the wrap and that was it.  After we created the main design on the labels and printed them all up, I set them aside.  Then I created a Microsoft Word document of labels and used the Mail Merge feature and the guest list I created in Excel to add all the addresses into a blank word document.  (I printed the wraps separately blank with only our return address on them and then printed the addresses on them separately using the Word Doc - it's just a matter of measuring out and setting margins really).

That's about it.  I used the BlackJack font for the mailing addresses on the front.  I have to admit, I did need to play around with the margins and placement of the wraps a little bit on some test samples I printed on paper as all printers print differently and never match up perfectly to margins you set.  At least not in my experience. 

Here was our finished product:

It's really easy...maybe a little time consuming, but overall, pretty simple to design.  Have fun with it!