My New Favorite Thing: Security Envelopes

Each year I make thank you cards for people that give my husband, Dan, a tip during the holiday season. Each year, I also wonder if I have time to create a pile of handmade cards, doubt if I have any good ideas, and consider not making them.

As with all work I create, this project comes with constraints, some self-imposed, others more imposed by life in general. 

• I must be able to make the cards by hand (aka no printer)
• The materials for the cards should be things that I already have and relate to USPS and the area where my husband delivers mail.
• I must repeat the design quickly, many times over.

I may be late to the party, but in 2022 I realized that security envelopes contain exciting patterns. After this discovery, I started collecting and asked others to do the same. I didn’t have any specific plans for the piles of envelopes that I began to manage, but I was sure I needed them. 

It was time to develop this year’s design, so I started by looking around my studio. What supplies did I already have? What materials would make an interesting connection to USPS? The card design seemed like the perfect opportunity to put the patterned paper to use, but what would I do with it?

First, I decided to make a more abstract design and cut a slit in the paper to mirror mail slots. The thank you would pull from the slit. After creating several of these, I wasn’t pleased. My paper selection was flimsy and appeared cheap, and the design seemed too abstract for my audience to enjoy. 

 I scrapped the idea, and I moved on to the next. I had higher-quality paper already cut into what would work well as a card, so I decided to explore that. Previously, I used the form to matt mini post-it note paper weavings; I liked the idea of presenting the card as a mini matted work. 

After making one, I quickly remembered how cumbersome it is to cut the frames, and I still wasn’t very interested in the result. 

At this moment, I wanted to tell my husband that I had no ideas. Therefore he would need to find a way to thank people on his own. I kept that thought to myself and revisited an earlier idea I’d abandoned because I thought it was too complex and time-consuming. 

On one rainy day, my husband snapped a selfie ( or, as I said last night amid my creative breakdown, a selfie of himself, and immediately declared myself as old); photos of my husband are rare. In the image, he’s draped in his raincoat, satchels filled with letters hanging on each hip, and feet complete with rubber rain shoe covers. I wanted to recreate the image. 

After a quick sketch, I broke the image into shapes, created a pattern, and carefully selected an envelope pattern for each area. I noted that I had a limited supply of blue PPL envelopes, my favorite.

Creating a face, legs, and detailed shoes would take too much time and require more materials, as that would be an overkill pattern, so I decided to keep those as elementary shapes and continued creating them. 

I’m unsure if the recipients will realize the figure is made from envelopes or know that it’s an abstraction of Dan, but when my creation leaves my hands and my home, it’s up to the audience to interpret.