Homemade Envelopes

A friend of mine sent me a letter enclosed in the most gorgeous envelope the other day. I opened it up to find that it was actually a page from a calendar! Ok, I confess I've heard of this before, and I'm sure it's not a brand spankin' new thought or anything, but I've never done it, and I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet at that moment. So, I asked my friend how to do it, and I thought I'd share here with you.

Warning: I'm a tad obsessed with sunflowers.

Without further ado...so, you take a regular envelope and steam it to release the glue (it took me awhile to figure out how to do this. I actually ended up leaving the envelope on top of my cup of tea while it was steeping, resulting in an oil spot on the envelope from the essential oils in the tea...but whatever, it worked, right?

Then you pick out your subject (i.e. calendar page, scrapbook paper, picture, or whatever). I taped the envelope on, although I'd like to make a sturdier pattern out of a cereal box or something so that I can start just tracing on the paper. But this works for now:
Then, you just cut it out:
I realized after doing a few of them that it's much easier later on if you fold the two end pieces at this point, before you're finished cutting.
Then when you're done, you fold in the two side pieces, and make a really good crease:
Fold up the bottom and tape it up:
Fold down the flap, and viola, you've got some way cool envelopes!
I almost forgot to mention one of the coolest parts of making your own envelope out of calendar pages! You have the inspirational quotes leftover for scrapbooking!