DIY Tutorial: Shipping Envelope Banner

Hi everyone!

My Lash Bash, sponsored by Ipsy and Benefit Cosmetics, was this weekend, and we had a FAN-freaking-TASTIC time!  

In the week leading up to my Lash Bash, I spent some time creating some fun DIY decorations.  Now that my Bash is over, I wanted to share a little about how I created some fun decor on a very strict budget.

The day before my Bash, I wanted to create a banner, but wasn't sure what to do.  My printer was out of ink, and I had already spent all of my party budget, mostly on food.  I had checked my Dollar Tree for "Make Your Own" banner kits, or anything bright pink, but my DT didn't have what I was looking for.  I looked through my craft shelf to see what I had.  My eyes alighted upon my Ipsy shipping envelopes, that I had saved to reuse to ship packages when needed.  My stack was pretty tall, and I added up the letters in what I wanted my banner to say: Ipsy (space) Benefit, 12 letters. I counted my envelopes and saw that I had at least six, I knew I could do something fun with them.

Here is how I made this fun banner, step by step:

Ipsy Envelope Banner

Supplies Needed:

Envelopes, duct tape, curling ribbon, butter knife, scissors, pencil, sticky label paper, glass cleaner, sticker adhesive remover and paper towels

• Medium padded shipping envelopes, one for every 2 letters in your banner phrase.
• Plain paper or sticker paper.  I used shipping labels, but any sticker paper or plain paper will work (if using plain paper, a glue stick or spray on glue will be needed).
• Glass cleaner (to help remove the shipping labels
• Adhesive remover
• Scissors
• Pencil or pen
• ribbon
• strong tape (I used duct tape)

Peel off the shipping labels as best you can, and then spritz with glass cleaner.  Let it sit a bit until the cleaner penetrates the paper label.

The first thing that I needed to do was to wash the labels off of the shipping envelopes.  Those suckers are stuck on there good, so I peeled off what I could by hand, and then sprayed them with glass cleaner and let it sit. 

Use the back of the butter knife (non-serrated side) to scrape the label off.

Once the labels were saturated, I used a butter knife to scrape the label off.  The envelope were set out to dry- this took a few hours. 

I copied the logo from the Ipsy home page, and pasted it into Word.  I sized the image to fit the page.

While my envelopes were drying, I looked online for the logos of the brands I wanted to represent on my banner.  I copied the Ipsy and Benefit logos into Word, and sized them until it looked correct on my screen. 

When I sized the image up, it was blurry, but that didn't matter- I was going to trace the image, not print it out.

 I wanted each letter to be on its own triangle, so I tweaked the sizing on my computer screen until I thought it looked right.

You can see here where the adhesive is still on the envelope.

The adhesive from the shipping label was still sticky on the front pieces, so I used adhesive remover to take it off.  This stuff seriously STINKS; beware and crack a window to avoid a contact high.

Just spritz some on, and let it set a minute or two.

I used a paper towel to wipe the adhesive off.  After it was removed, the envelope was a bit oily feeling, so I rinsed it off and dried it with paper towels.

Remove the top portion, just under where the flap was stuck to the back of the envelope, and the two sides, close to the seal.  

After my envelopes were dry, I cut off both of the sealed sides, the top flap, the top of the back where the envelope was stuck together.  

Cut right on the bottom fold.

Next, cut the back from the front.  I now had two rectangles from each envelope.

Fold the rectangle in half, lengthwise.

I sorted my rectangles, and found the smallest one.  I folded it in half (like a hot dog) and cut the UNFOLDED side to create a triangle. 

I made one angled cut, starting at the wide end, and going towards the center fold.  This worked really well.

After I unfolded it, I needed to tweak my triangle a bit, to get a nice sharp point on the bottom.  If you prefer, you could use a ruler and draw the triangle shape perfectly on the back (silver) side of the envelope with a marker, and then cut it out.  I wanted my  banner to be unique, so I cut without measuring.  I AM Only Average, after all.

Use your first triangle as a pattern to cut the rest of your triangles.

I used this first piece as a pattern to cut the rest of the triangles, one for each letter.  As I needed 12 triangles, I used a total of 6 envelopes.

I held up one of the triangles to the logo that I had on my computer screen.  I was happy with the size of my letters, but if you are not happy with it, adjust the image accordingly.

As you can see, the label paper I used (something I bought a TON of on eBay years ago) is very easy to see through.  Tracing was a cinch!

I put my label paper (with the backing still attached!) over my computer screen and was THRILLED that the image could be seen through the paper.  

Don't laugh at my tracing skills.  I am NO artist!

I used a pencil to trace each letter onto the label paper. 

Cut the letters out, rounding corners if you want that look.

After tracing all of the letters, I cut them out, and then erased the pencil lines.  

Pencil lines, be GONE with you!

Carefully peel the label paper from the backing.  Fold over a TINY corner and work your way out.  Try not to tear your letters!

Next, I peeled the backing from each letter, and placed it on each down-facing triangle, as near the center as I could, one at a time.  

The sticker paper probably won't let you adjust your letters, so be careful when applying them to your triangles.

I laid out my triangles on my floor, in the correct order, and then flipped them over (now silver side up).  

I tore my tape into skinny strips. I got about 3 tape strips from one regular length of duct tape.

Curling ribbon was used to attach the letters to one another, using duct tape.  I wanted the letters spaced out, so I attached them to the ribbon about 2 inches apart from one another. Hints and tips for this step: Make sure to leave long tails of ribbon on each end, so that the banner can be adjusted in length to fit where it needs to go. Be sure that as you are attaching the triangles to the ribbon, that the ribbon is flat and not twisted, as this can adjust the way your letters hang from the ribbon.

And that's it!  It is MUCH simpler than it sounds, and if my printer wasn't out if ink, I likely could have just printed the letters onto my label paper, instead of tracing them, but I did want the look of the white letters on the pink.  

My finished banner, all curled up so that it could fit in a picture.

I am really happy with how pretty it turned out, and was shocked to find out that Ipsy had posted it to their Facebook wall!

That's about it for this tutorial; it was really easy and only took me about an hour, if you don't count the drying time for the envelopes.  I've learned my lesson with that- I will remove the labels now when I GET a bag, and not when I go to USE one!

If you make a banner using this tutorial, post a picture here and I'll add it under Inspirations :)

Until next time, my lovelies, stay AVERAGE!