Hello everyone! This is Ann Nicole with Canterbury Card Designs, and I am so excited to be a guest blogger today here at Prickley Pear Stamps.
Today I am going to share with you how to make one of the new RIP strip envelopes that are so hot right now, but without buying an expensive envelope die that will only create one size envelope. You can use the Zipper die set to make any size rip strip envelope that you need for your cards. For larger size cards, you will need to start with a 12″ x12″ piece of paper, but for a standard A2 card, you can use an 8 1/2″ by 11″ sheet of paper. Below, I have outlined the step-by-step process along with pictures for your reference.
1. To begin, place your card about 1″ from the bottom of the paper.
2. Place a pencil mark about 1/4″ from both the left and the right sides of the card. ***If your card is bulkier, I would add a little extra room at this step so that your card will easily slide in and out of the envelope with ease.
3. With a scoring tool, score along these 2 lines.
4. Now, measure and score about 1″ from the bottom of the paper. Fold and burnish all of your scored lines.
5. Fold the 2 sides together, as well as the bottom up, and this will create the bottom of your envelope.
6. Repeat the same process with the top. I generally make the top flap a bit larger than the bottom. You want enough room for the die to fit, as well as any stamped image. Generally, I make this about 2″, but you can play around with it and make it to your liking.
7. Now, you will cut out all of the corner squares (marked in the above pictures with the “squiggly” lines).
8. Fold the sides in and the bottom flap up. Take a ruler and place it in the corner of the bottom fold and draw a diagonal line. This will leave you with a triangle when you cut it out. Turn the triangle that you just cut out over and place it on the other side of the bottom flap. Draw a line and then cut this triangle out. This is a super easy trick to assure that you have the same angle cut out on each flap of your envelope.
9. Glue the sides together at this time, and then fold the bottom flap up and glue this down.
10. Repeat step 8 with the top flap. At this point, if your top flap ends up being larger than you like, you can always trim it down. Once you have the top flap size to your liking, select one of the zipper dies and place it on the top flap. Once you have it where you would like it, secure it down to run through your die cutting machine.
Once the RIP strip is die cut, you can take a pair of scissors and cut the last little piece of the semi-circle out if needed (this is only needed if you are slightly off in your placement of the zipper die cut prior to running it through your die cut machine).
The last thing to do is place some double-sided adhesive on the upper portion of the top flap. Insert your card and voila! You are done! Now you have a fancy RIP strip envelope without buying an expensive die set that only makes one size envelope!
A huge thank you to Sharon at Prickley Pear stamps for having me as a guest blogger and allowing me to share a great way to use her amazing products!
