I love mail art, who doesn’t? There’s nothing better than receiving some good old-fashioned, hand-addressed mail, especially when it comes with art attached! Writing letters can be therapeutic and is a great skill to teach our kids — why not make it fun?! I’ve pulled together a bunch of really awesome ways to address you next envelope.
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Mail Art: 16 Really Cool Ways to Address an Envelope:
First, Make Your Own Envelope — this punch board makes it easy and fast! Next, choose your favorite way to address it:
Recycle a Map — Have an old map? Cut a strip and wrap it around the center of the envelop and write your address boldly on top {idea from Oh So Beautiful Paper}.
“Cheaters” Font — Use this carbon-copy trick to make your handwriting look like you have the best in town. Grab the template, a gel pen and try! {idea from Everything Design ish}.
Use Vintage Envelopes — and write the address in a cursive font.
Make a Tag Shaped Stamp — {idea from oh! crafts}
Play with fonts like this Fun Garden Letter Font — {idea from mamacjt}
Draw a doodle with the address in the middle like this Bow and Arrow — {from Naomi Loves}
Looking for something simple and still cute? This “Shoreline” Wave is perfect! — {from FLOURISH}
Create Polka Dot Lettering by writing first with a thick black marker and then coming back over it with a silver sharpie — {from pushing the envelopes}
Using a Doily — using double sided tape, tape a doily to the middle of your envelope, if it’s too big fold over the edges and wrap it around to the other side of the envelop. Write the address in the middle of the doily on the front of your envelope.
Polka Dot Envelope — Grab an ink pad and a pencil, use the eraser side of a new pencil as your stamp and create different colored polka dots all over your envelope.
Address Something Other Than an Envelope:
6 Unusual things you didn’t know you could mail.
- Throw a label on Boxes of Candy — {from Sometimes Creative}
- Stuff a Paper Towel Tube full of goodies!
- Flip flops — use a Sharpie {or a address label} and address the bottom of the shoe.
- Write you address and message right on a Frisbee.
- Beach Balls — can be mailed inflated or deflated.
- Send a Hug — from Paging Supermom.
When sending unique stuff, just keep it under 13 ounces . . . then it qualifies for first class mail and should ship for under $2 {just a smidgen more if stamp prices go up again}.
And while you’re working on fun mail, get your postman a little something too! Here’a a fun idea with a free printable from Who Arted?
If you loved this post, you’ll also want to check out one of my favorite ebooks: Learn with Play, a giant collection of hands-on kids activities. Worth absolutely every penny because of the hours and hours it will help entertain the kids! (If you prefer paperback form, you can also buy it on amazon here.)
Learn with Play
150+ Activities for Year-round Fun & Learning
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Thanks for including my snail mail on this list. I’m in amazing company – what a great collection!
I’ve been decorating my envelopes for years, even the ones I send to my Church for any reason (those are pretty, but more subdued than snail mail to friends). I usually take my cues from decorated envelopes on the market, decorating everything but the center, and the corner where the stamp goes. I’ve never run into any issues with the post offices, and the mail carriers always get a kick out of seeing my newest art work 🙂
This is really cool! It reminds me of a postcard exchange program I do called postcrossings.com
My friend told me about it a few years ago. It’s really cool you get to send postcards to people all over the world. It’s cool to see what people send you and what kind of postcards people like. I have a box of over 50 postcards I’ve received in the last few years. My friend puts her cards in a scrapbook and her 5 year old loves looking at the pictures.
What a cool idea!
These are very cute but most of them will not endear you to the post office and could potentially slow the delivery of your mail. Postal reading machines are set up for a straight line, parallel to the bottom edge address and anything that can’t be read by the machines is kicked out for human readers to sort. I’m sure if you live in a small town or rural area where a lot is done by hand, they will love your artwork, but large city offices where 90-95% is done by machine will be problematic. Just a warning! 🙂
Excited to start sending creative mail
I love all of these!! I wish I would have seen this before Christmas 🙂
I pinned it so hopefully I’ll remember these to use all year long.
Thanks for sharing!
dont forget to make the bottom 2 lines of the address printed in dark ink and plainly readable. Most mail is read by optical readers not people.moves faster if it is machine readable.
While cute most of these ideas are pretty irritating to the post office which is an important point to consider.
This past summer I spent a lot of time decorating envelopes and sent to friends who needed cheering up. Some were were sent back as “not suffient postage”???????? These are regular sized envelopes. But turned on their sides creates a whole new pricing package. seriously???? Its the same size, left or right, up or down. Beware!
I had no idea that orientation would make a difference on price. I’ll have to look into this.
Maybe it’s a State to State postal regulation? If it is, it’s very unfair. I think it’s understood that no one expects the post office to change the way they’ve been processing mail. And is most of processing done by hand? Guess I can look that one up myself…..
The USPS sorts by machine every letter that it handles, unless extra postage is paid for a “non-machinable surcharge”. This surcharge (which amounts to just paying for an extra ounce) is added for square envelopes, envelopes where the address is written on the “short edge”, or envelopes that are not uniformly flat (i.e. contain a pen inside, something rigid like a cd, or extra stuff on the exterior.) When you mail things like this, they need to be hand-cancelled, hence the surcharge. This is to make sure the sorting machines don’t get jammed up, and that your piece of mail arrives to its destination intact. Also, if the piece is over 6 1/8″ x 11 1/2″ inches, it qualifies as a large envelope, or “flat” and the postage is slightly higher.
G’day,
we could always decorate the back of the envelop, with drawings etc….imagine the surprise of the receiver to flip the envelop to see the artwork, just a thought.
I live in Australia, and our postal system is mostly by machine as well, tho where I live, in a village, they hand sort. I wonder if by taking the envelop into the post office, and asking it to be hand franked, would they charge extra. I’d thought it was all part of their service anyway….doing this is like ‘taking the time to smell a rose’, life is too short to neglect the finer points that count towards happiness.
Cheers
Colleen
Mail carrier here. 🙂 If I may, I’m going to step in and address your “6 unusual things you didn’t know you could mail.”
1. Boxed candy. If it’s not going to be placed in a sturdy box make sure the box the candy comes in is sturdy enough.
2. Stuffing a paper towel tube. These tend to get bent or ripped. There really isn’t any way around it unless it’s wrapped entirely with some really sturdy tape.
3. Flip flops. The sticky label the PO uses won’t stay on. If you don’t want these lost in transit I’d suggest a box or bubble envelope.
4. Frisbee. Same as the flip flops. A message in permanent marker is clever. The label will most likely fall off in transit.
5. Beach balls. Same as 3 and 4. Plastic isn’t the best thing to place these labels on. And an inflated ball will be smashed by your neighbor’s 40 pound bag of dog food.
6. Not sure what to say about mailing a hug. 🙂
Bottom line. Packaging items the wrong way will cause your package to arrive broken or get sent to our missing address warehouse (I forget what it’s called) in Georgia (for labels that go missing or get destroyed). Always assume the snow globe/glass cups/fragile item is going to get a 30 pound box thrown on top of it and prepare your package accordingly. If not, don’t blame your mail carrier for the damaged parcel they deliver. It’s not their fault. 🙂