Friday, August 15, 2008

REUSE FLYERS INTO ENVELOPES

Unwanted spam flyers are so prevalent here in Singapore, I receive about 15-20 pieces of flyers a day mostly property ads or handwritten notes looking for apartments. They annoy me, I don't think anybody here ever looks at them.

In addition, today I received coupon flyers from Burger King, Pizza Hut & a supermarket. Because 80% of Singaporeans live in high-rise apartments, and we share a common letter box area in the void decks (ground floor), so it is very easy for people to choke 100+ mailboxes in a few minutes. Our post office is not helping either, I believe they are culprits of unwanted mail too; you can pay them to distribute flyers on your behalf. The post office itself stuff their corporate flyers telling us to buy computers or cellphones from them =/   

With all that paper trash around, here is a way to make use of the nicer ones... as envelopes! 

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Step 1: Fold the paper into 2, leaving an excess which will later be your flap.


 
Step 2: Fold the 2 side edges, about 1.5cm





Step 4: Open the folds, and on the lower part of the paper, trim off the 1.5cm sides, pivoting at the first crease.



Step 5: Do the same for the other side and you should have this



Step 6: Trim off  the sides at a diagonal. At the crease where the flap is, cut it perpendicular to the crease line.



Step 7: Add glue or double-sided tape to the sides.



Step 8: Glue them down and you should have this.



Step 9: The flap you can have a few ways to neaten them; here I decided to cut a rounded corner.



Done!  This is the front. It's some ad for jade fengshui thing.


Use them for anything like packing supplies for orders! I hand-make all my envelopes using wrapping paper too.


6 comments:

Bubbles said...

I can understand how annoying that can but I can't imagine receiving so many at once, we must receive about 5-10 a day but luckily the UK is going green. So we have a bin for your general household waste, a paper bin which also has a box in it for tin and glass and plastic bins. We also have a bag that we fill up with bits of garden waste. We can also phone the council to come and pick up bigger things like beds etc... so it all just goes into various sections.

Its a good idea to make envelopes and reuse them in this way, I've seen in done with magazines (since I've received some)

PAC said...

Awesome post!

Unknown said...

I love making envlopes -- it became a small obsession for me for awhile. Good work!

earth and sun folk said...

these are great...i love making and receiving them! great post :)

Joey's Dream Garden said...

these are lovely! You seem to get nice flyers in Singapore, here in the UK they're pretty boring... maybe i'll start saving them. What I do is open out an envelope and use it like a template on nice wrapping paper to make a pretty envelope when I want to package something nicely, like a birthday card or a gift voucher, much nicer than boring old white envelopes supplied with the card or voucher!

Distressing Delilah a.k.a. jenn said...

Those are cute! I WILL be trying that soon!