When I first started making cards, I had no idea about sizes. I made up a design, created the card and then I tried to find an envelope to fit my custom card. Sometimes I would make an envelope from templates I found in magazines. This took too long so many times I would skip the envelope and just give the card naked. So I got smart and started to save odd sized envelopes and making cards to fit the various sizes of envelope I had on hand.
Then I found out that if you stick to the standard size (4.25″ x 5.5″ for a finished card) you could buy A-2 envelopes in bulk that fit the card! How genius!
Part of my crafting “philosophy” is to make the most of what you have, or get the most of your card stock. This is due in part to being a hoarder and to the idea that one day you might not be able to buy card stock so you should conserve right? Since the majority of my scrapping is done as 12×12 I usually only buy 12×12 card stock. But when I started getting serious about making my “standard cards” I was cutting down my big sheets of paper and feeling like I was making a lot of cuts and wasting card stock. One day I mentioned this issue to my super crafting friend, Lori aka “Stamper Lori”, aka “Card Queen”. And she explained why we still need letter sized card stock (8.5″ x 11″).
If you pay attention to your cuts you can cut a letter sized sheet in half, landscape or long ways. Or cut the 11″ length of paper at 5.5″. Then you can score these two long pieces in half or at the 4.25″ mark!
How smart is this? One cut, two folds = two standard sized cards!
