New day for an envelope

At work today I had to send off a package. It was of course right as I was trying to get out the door and I couldn't find an envelope with the bubble wrap padding built in to protect the DVD I was sending. Being that I work for a charity and that we spend 60%+ of our time thinking about climate change I thought I could reuse an old one and save on waste. I rustled through the cupboard of old envelopes to see what I had to work with. The winner was a huge bubble wrap envelope addressed in size 90 font to a Campaigns Officer I'd never heard of - it could easily have been over 5 years old. With a giant black marker I vigorously crossed out her name, cut the thing to size, wrote the new recipient address on a post-in and taped it into place. I also had to tape 3 of the 4 sides shut since I had effectively created a whole new work. It was quite an operation and I hope the person it's going to appreciates that I saved one envelope's life in the process. This is the sort of thing that works at a charity but perhaps not at a consultancy, and hopefully the recipient will be relieved to know that our supporters' hard earned cash doesn't go to frivolous things like new envelopes.

But I'm not really an envelope martyr. I do love reusing old things and hand making my stationery. The last time I bought a card at a store (vs making it) was probably around the same time above envelope was originally shipped to our office back in 2004. There's just something sweet about handmade paper goods that trumps brand spanking new in my books.



Browsing some blogs today I was encouraged to find that I'm not alone. And I was shocked to see that you can sew brown paper bags. This is amazing. I'll definitely try it at home. Would it be too much to take my sewing machine into work? I'll have to think about that one...