Who among us hasn’t signed a greeting card for a loved one or friend, addressed the front of the envelope, and then, when we try to insert the card for mailing, find we have brought home the wrong-sized envelope. “Arrggh!” Or, even worse, addressed the card and completely botched up the address. Last week, I had just such an incident with a greeting card envelope. In this case I placed the return address label in the place where the postage stamp was intended to go. Double “Arrggh!”

What to do? I didn’t want to go out and buy a whole new card just for the sake of the envelope. So, I did what we all would do…I searched the house for an extra envelope. I found what appeared to be a likely candidate only to discover it was a fraction too small. I had no other choices, so I made the envelope do by extending its dimensions. Did you know you can do this? It was the first time I had been desperate enough to try. If the card is less than a 1/4 inch too big this will work…any bigger, you will need to create some extensions with paper to make your envelope larger.

Here’s a step by step illustration.

Open the envelope. You will find the bottom corners seem to have the most glue. I got around this by sliding a trusty scrap of old credit card between the layers.

Your envelope will now look like this:

Fold one side again, extending the edge a few fractions of an inch. If you need more room, fold out the opposite side too.

Glue…

Tape…

Or use stickers to firmly hold the edges down. “Voila’,” a larger-sized envelope. It doesn’t look perfect, but in the real world, who ever notices what the back of an envelope looks like before they open up the card?