Thursday, May 26, 2011

Handmade Recycled Mailers

I managed to get a bunch of these done last night.


Call me crazy, but I try to make all my own mailers. I follow this tutorial and they turn out pretty well, as well as free and gentle on our planet.

I start out with a whole big bunch of plastic bags (which always seem to multiply pretty quickly, despite always having at least 10 reusable bags in the trunk of our car at all times).


Setting up with two big pieces of craft paper, my iron, and something underneath to protect the floor…

Take heed, if you stop mid-ironing to take a photo of said ironing, you will burn a whole in the middle of your plastic. D’oh.



…that big bunch soon turns into a little stack of smoothed plastic fabric.


Sandwich those babies between some reversed brown paper grocery bags, stitch up the sides and – yay! – a free, recycled, handmade mailer.



If you devote an evening to making a bunch of these at once, you will get a bunch done and be set for awhile. No way would I make these as needed!

I get lots of great feedback from customers and the ladies at the post office for these, and I feel they add a nice little handmade touch to all orders I ship out.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

cool! although i am kind of confused how it works, exactly.

Heidi Grohs said...

LOVE this!! I have a charity where I embroider footprints/handprints for parents that have lost a child and I need to save some money on shipping!!!

You rock!!!!

joy said...

@Emily, you can reference the link in the first paragraph to the original tutorial. it explains everything in detail, and even has a video by Etsy on how to fuse plastic bags together.
@Heidi, do you have a link to your charity? That sounds awesome and really admirable of you!

Lena` said...

I love this! I think you can sell these shipping packages to people like me: totally about the product but know realistically they're not going to make it. Because not everybody is a DIY person, I rather support a DIY person.

joy said...

@Lena, I COULD, but I don't think I would - between Etsy, Amazon and EBay, this barely keeps me afloat. Plus, the time it takes me to make these, I could be sewing!

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