Dressing the Christmas Card Envelope
Each year I send out a Christmas letter with a photo of my family to all those on my list. As I’m sure many of you know, this can be very time consuming, especially as the list grows from year to year. This year I decided to address envelopes first, then stuff them later when I had the picture and letter ready. Here is how that process unfolded:
- I purchased red envelopes. (Yes, I should’ve bought these last year after Christmas when they were half off, but somehow didn’t get around to it.)
- Because the envelopes were red and dark, I thought I should add address labels in white so that the addresses would be clearly visible.
- I purchased labels when I bought the envelopes. The backgroud was white, but they had a busy red & green border. (Mistake #1.)
- In the meantime, I sent my husband to the post office to purchase Christmas stamps. I told him I didn’t care what they looked like, as long as they were “Christmasy.” (Mistake #2.) He came home with cute little stamps in red, green, blue and purple, all in different patterns.
- My return labels had yet another design on them in all sorts of color combinations. (I used several labels I had leftover from years past. Mistake #3.)
Once I put it all together, here is what my envelope looked like:
How NOT to dress a Christmas card envelope
As you can see, this is a complete hodgepodge of styles and colors with three different designs and three different color schemes. Now who would want to open that envelope?
Now, see below for a better look:
The first change was to use a plain white address label. (Now why didn’t I think of that BEFORE I covered all my envelopes with an impossible design to work with?) After that, all I had to do was to insure the colors on the return address label and those on the stamp coordinated. Yes, coordinating designs would’ve been nice too, but we don’t live in a perfect world. Again, the problem began when I chose to use the address labels with the busy design and attached them FIRST before coming up with a synchronized plan.
Needless to say, if your (and my) greatest problem is trying to come up with a coordinated design for your Christmas card envelope, I’d say we are very blessed. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s riviting blog on coordinating your paper product lines. (Not!)
