When I asked folks to send me bags of items to work with in this project, I really had no idea what I was going to get. Some people went above and beyond, and sent me boxes full of stuff, with little notes attached. I’m really enjoying the reading that goes along with opening these packages.

This week, I rooted around in the box Shannon Arnold sent me, and pulled out this stack of Shutterfly envelopes. These are meant to hold photos, and they have a nice, big clear window on one side. Shannon stuck a Post-It on these, asking if there’s any way to make art from them.

Something to know about the way I see things: if they’re flat, and there are more than two of them, I’m going to make a book from them. In my head, Shannon didn’t send me Shutterfly envelopes—she sent me a book kit.

The envelopes had a few visual pluses and minuses. On the plus side, that great big window, and also the fun color palette: white with pink, yellow, kind of a periwinkle blue, and a little orange. On the minus side, all the Shutterfly promotional blubs written all over them. I planned to use the color palette and the window, while covering over most of the text.

First off, I whipped out my one inch hole punch, and punched a hole along the spine of one of the envelopes, about an inch down from the top. I used this first punch as a pattern, and traced its placement onto the other envelopes. I flipped it, and traced again, so there would be a second hole, the same distance from the bottom.

I flipped my punch over, and lined up my traced holes to punch them. I often work with punches laying on their backs like this, so I can see what’s in the window. They work just as well flipped over—just give them a good whack with your hand, or if you’re sensitive, a rubber mallet.

The nice folks at Shutterfly had tucked another promotional piece inside one of the envelopes, so I decided to use it as the pattern for my inserts. I cut four, one for each envelope, from heavy white cardstock.

On the window side of the envelope, there was just one line of Shutterfly text, and it was pretty narrow. I cut a 3/8″ strip from heavy paper, and ran it through my label maker, writing out a quote. This is easy to see when you’re up close, but if you really want it to pop, you can rub inkpads, chalks or even a pen over the embossed surface to make the letters more visible.

One swipe of the gluestick is all it takes to stick this down—and the first bit of text is now covered.

I had kind of a funky piano hinge binding in mind for this book. I cut the points off some bamboo skewers, and glued them down to the open fold of the envelope.

Once the glue was dry, I refolded the envelopes over the skewers, stacked them, and clamped them together with a chip clip. This will hold them in place while I’m fiddling with the binding.

I chose a few colors of craft thread (DMC’s term for the perl cotton they’re marketing to crafters) that matched the envelope, and wove them through the skewers. Over, under, over, under, and when you get to the end, wrap around and come back.

After half a dozen rows, I tied the thread in a knot, and clipped the tails to my desired length, which was short. You might choose to leave the tails long, and hang beads or charms from them.

After wrapping a couple of colors on either end of the book, I started wrapping through the punched holes. This is a little trickier than doing the ends, because you occasionally have to reach inside the book to poke the threads through. I sat in front of the television and listened to the news while I did this, because it’s a little tedious.

With the book bound together, it was ready for a little decoration. I just tackled one envelope, because in the back of my head, I was thinking I might want to send this around my deco group and let some other artists play with it. Maybe your book will all be decorated by you.

My first step was to do a collage on one of the inserts, to fill the front window. A few pieces of paper, a little stamping, and some faux postage, and I had a nice little piece to slide into the first envelope. (Rubber stamps by Invoke Arts. Faux postage from Ten Two Studios.)

A little more collage went on the flip side of the envelope, and the inside flap. The back of the envelope had text on it, which is now artfully covered by some paper scraps, another faux postage stamp, and some rubber stamping. The inside flap was completely white, so I stamped directly on it, and then layered over another stamped piece done on yellow paper.

The outside flap also had text to cover. The envelope is made from heavy enough paper to support collage, or even some lightweight attachments like tags. This could turn into quite a nice little collage book with some work.

Here’s my finished book: