Monday, February 27, 2012

Business as Usual: Packaging

So I think I excitedly shared with all of you about how I made my first sale for my Etsy shop.  I knew that I wanted to package it really nicely to ship, so I started coming up with ideas.  The package that really stuck out in my mind the most recently was the lovely one from Doubledutch Boutique.  When I received that package, I felt like I was receiving a present, and I knew that I wanted my shop customers to feel the same way.  But I also wanted to put my own handmade and personal touch on each package I sent, so I got the idea to make handmade envelopes to send my orders in.  I found some really beautiful paper at the art supply store recently and it turned out to be perfect for handmade envolopes.  This is not even 1/20th of the lovely selection.


After a quick Bing search, I found this handmade envelope template, which worked great.  I just had to scale it up in size to fit the paper width.  I also changed the black portion to light grey, just to save printer ink.  I cut it out, then instead of tracing it onto my fancy paper, I got my ruler and my cutting mat and my Exacto knife, and carefully cut it out by just laying the template over the top.  The reason I did this was that I wanted to make sure there weren't any pencil lines on the paper and because it is recycled paper, erasing could damage it.  It worked great.  I placed my items on the still flat envelope to make sure they would fit comfortably.  Then I took them out and addressed the envelope before folding it.  After that I scored the fold lines with my Exacto knife.  I folded the flaps, then glued the bottom and sides with an ordinary glue stick.  (It works fine, but you need to press and hold after gluing to make sure it will stay glued shut.)  I put my items in, then glued the top closed.  Next, I walked the 6 blocks in the pouring rain to the post office, waited in line for a while and mailed it off.  I hope that my customer enjoys receiving it as much as I enjoyed making it.  I actually had a lot of fun picking out which paper to use, wrapping it in bubble wrap and tissue paper, then making the envelope.  And I even got to reuse some of the tissue paper from my Doubledutch Boutique package.  Here are the pictures I took of the enelope process.

After addressing: all cut out and scored

double checking to make sure everything fits

right before I glued the top closed

I guess the point of this post is to say that as someone who loves getting mail, I am much more likely to order again from a certain place if I enjoy not only their product, but also their packaging.  I like it when a company puts in an extra effort to show customers that they care, and so I'm trying to embody that in my own shop.

6 comments:

  1. What a great idea! I bet whoever bought that is going to be so excited! :)

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  2. Wow, that envelope is really pretty!

    ...How long does it take you to make one? Maybe you could sell envelopes in your shop too? In packs of, say, 10 or more...

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  3. Gosh I would love to get such a thoughtful package!

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  4. This is adorable, and such a great idea!

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  5. That's actually a really good idea, Ellen. It took me about eight minutes to make this one, but that's including the time it took to resize the template, print it, and cut it out, so it really only takes about 5 minutes tops per envelope.

    Thanks everyone for the positive response. I'm going to start including a picture of the packaging with each product listing in my shop, so hopefully people will be more likely to buy things.

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  6. Great idea!

    Oh and as one of my fave bloggers I'd like to invite you to take part in the Into Geek carnival. Details here:

    http://www.intogeek.net

    ReplyDelete

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