DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Ideas

As you might be able to guess, we send quite a lot of snail mail in our line of work. Whether it’s thank you notes, catalogs, color samples, or a letter to our loved ones, we try to make all of our outgoing mail a treat for the recipient to receive. Since we have holiday cards on the brain, we decided to come up with some fun and easy addressing options suited to the season. They incorporate fun lettering styles as well as stamping and we just love them all! Want more DIY addressing styles? Check out our first envelope addressing post here. Have fun with the designs and happy addressing! –Bailey and Emma of Antiquaria

DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Ideas by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Option One: Do Not Bend Pennant Stamp + White DIY Pointed Pen Calligraphy Addressing. White stamping and white calligraphy ink really pop off of this gorgeous fig colored envelope. While it takes time to perfect using a pointed calligraphy pen, feel free to experiment also with white or silver gel pens for a similar (and easier) effect.

DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Stamp your Please Do Not Bend Pennant Stamp on the lefthand side of your envelope, just a hair above the center. With your pen, draw a line to the bottom with white ink.
DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Next, address the envelope to your loved one using a pointed calligraphy pen and white ink. Start your addressing right below the pennant stamp, as shown above.

DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Let the addressing dry completely (with white calligraphy ink this can take a few hours). Once it’s dry, add your postage and then stamp our Long Live Snail Mail Stamp to the left. Feel free to play with the lettering style of addressing on this design! A simple hand-written block print with white or silver gel ink also looks lovely (see below)!
DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Option Two: Zig-Zag Stamp + Bold Brush Block Lettering. Adding a line of pattern along the bottom of the envelope instantly adds an air of “fun” to the design. When paired with an easy brushed address, the effect is bold and will stand out instantly among the bills and junk mail!

Mint-AddressingDIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Print your zig-zag stamp in black ink along the bottom edge of the mint colored envelope. You’ll want to make sure that each printing is close together but not overlapping.
DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

With a black brush pen, write out your loved one’s name. We decided to make big block letters for their name (with the mint color showing in the center) and a simple italic print for the address. Once the address is done, add your postage and our Long Live Snail Mail Stamp to complete the look!
DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Option Three: Deliver To Banner Stamp + Hand-lettered Script. Bailey actually designed this adorable “Please Deliver To” stamp to use on her save the date a while back and we think that it makes the perfect snail mail statement on this coral envelope when combined with red addressing. The fun part of this design is that you get the look of calligraphy but with simpler tools! A common felt tipped pen made this gorgeous script. Incredible, right?

DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Start by stamping your Deliver To Banner Stamp on the left hand side of the envelope, a little above center. Angle it so that you can nestle the lettering in underneath it. To make the hand lettered script, use your prettiest cursive and write the name across your envelope. Then, draw a second line along each letter, creating the thick and thin look (as shown above). Refer to a favorite script font for letter shape and style, if needed.

DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Once you’ve done that for the entire name, color in the letters so that they are solid red. Finish out the addressing with a simple italic print for the address. We also added a fun flourish underneath the last address line to gussy the envelope up even more! Draw it in pencil first or practice on a scrap piece of paper if you need to before executing it on your envelope.

DIY Tutorial: Holiday Envelope Addressing Styles by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

While we think all of these styles would be perfectly suited to holiday greetings, we also think that they could be adapted and used on save the dates and Invitations as well! Play around with the techniques and find out what you like best with the cards that you’re sending. We hope that you have just as much fun addressing your cards as you do selecting them!

Materials and Resources

Special Delivery Stamp Kit: Deliver To Banner, Long Live Snail Mail and Do Not Bend Pennant

Feathers & Arrows Stamp Kit: contains the zig-zag stamp

Calligraphy Starter Kit

White Calligraphy Ink

Calligraphy Resources: Setting up your Tools,  Lower Case Alphabet by Bailey Rivera, Calligraphy Supplies

Brush and Felt Tipped Pens

For envelopes, we discuss many different envelope resources and options in a previous post, found here.

Current USPS Postage

Vintage Postage

Photography by Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Ilana + Gregg’s Modern Outdoorsy Wedding Invitations

I featured the outdoors-inspired save the dates of Ilana from Sugar and Type over the summer – and I’m so excited that Ilana is back today with her wedding invitations! Ilana continued the playful outdoor vibe from the save the dates, combining modern design elements with kraft paper envelopes and plaid patterns!

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From Ilana: When we started planning our wedding, we knew it’d be playful and outdoors, and it was so fun to apply that vision to our invitations and wedding stationery. We wanted the wording to be friendly, casual, and a bit silly. I used kraft paper envelopes with a custom plaid liner to match Gregg and his groomsmen’s shirts.

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We definitely wanted to include a map since our ceremony was in the middle of a park and we didn’t want anyone to get lost! We included an itinerary for our out of town guests, and a list of our favorite places waiting for them in their hotel room when they arrived so they could explore the area! We really wanted a cohesive feel with our save the dates, so we took the one bike from that piece and added a second bike to symbolize our journey together.

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  The fun part was the text messages and phone calls we got asking “should we dress like we’re going to play with puppies in the park, or for a wedding?” We had a great and fun day and I can’t wait to share more pictures from it!

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Thanks Ilana!

Design and Envelope Addressing: Sugar and Type

Letterpress Printing and Edge Painting: Greengirl Press

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers or visit the real invitations gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Audra Zaba Photo

Lindsay and Ryan’s Illustrated Wedding Ceremony Programs

We saw Lindsay and Ryan’s beautiful wedding invitations from Melissa of Atheneum Creative earlier this morning – and Melissa was also kind enough to share the ceremony programs that she designed for this beautiful wedding! We so rarely get a peek into a full ceremony program so I thought it was worth highlighting in case any of you are on the hunt for some ideas and inspiration. Melissa created custom portrait illustrations for the entire bridal party and illustrated the order of the ceremony. So fun!

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Thanks Melissa!

Atheneum Creative is a member of the Designer Rolodex – you can see more of their beautiful work right here or visit the real invitations gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Chelsea Davis Photography

Lindsay + Ryan’s Modern Boho Wedding Invitations

Happy Monday everyone! I’m so excited to start the week off with this bright and colorful wedding invitation suite from Melissa at Atheneum Creative! In addition to all the wonderful pops of color, I’m loving all the fun details in this suite – from hand lettered hang tags to custom illustrations!

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From Melissa: I loved this wedding! The color, the illustration, the type, everything! Lindsay and Ryan had a boho style wedding and the sky was the limit on the amount of fun and color for the whole day!

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We knew were were going to incorporate a lot of hand drawn elements, a lot of illustration and tons of color – so for the save the date we started with an illustration of the couple that really represented their style and personality.

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We had fun with the invitation wording and also brought in the love of the couple’s favorite movie — UP.

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We incorporated a block with Lindsay and Ryan’s hand lettered names on the envelopes and hang tags. A pair of birds (which came from matching tattoos on the bride and groom) also represented the couple through all the wedding stationery. We took tons of elements from the save the date and invitation to create a lot of the day of materials like napkins and stir sticks.

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Melissa was also kind enough to send over the ceremony programs that she created for Lindsay and Ryan’s wedding – so we’ll be seeing those in a separate post coming up soon!

Atheneum Creative is a member of the Designer Rolodex – you can see more of their beautiful work right here or visit the real invitations gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Chelsea Davis Photography

Happy Weekend!

Hello! And greetings from Exhaustion Town, population: my family. Between the newborn and the toddler, we’re not faring too well when it comes to sleep these days. Anyone else experience major sleep issues when their toddler hit the 2 year mark? Sophie now goes into complete meltdown mode each night towards the end of her bedtime routine – and I’m having minor little panic attacks thinking about what this might mean for us as we try to get Alice into a regular night routine over the coming weeks. All advice is welcome! But in the meantime…

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Bouquet photo by Megan Gray (aka Honey & Poppies)

…a few links for your weekend!

This week on Oh So Beautiful Paper:

Check back soon for this week’s cocktail! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you back here next week! xoxo