Today ended up being a ‘let’s overcomplicate an envelope’ day. At first I’d planned for my metal tree decorations to just slip into an envelope and be done with it. But then I thought – I’m expecting customers to feel that they are buying a premium handcrafted item… and a white envelope just didn’t hack it. So I’ve spent the morning designing the perfect packaging, and this afternoon cutting them out and putting them together in readiness for the Christmas Fayre.

The design process went something like this: needs to remain flat packed until needed. Needs to fold up at the stall, without needing glue to fix. Hanging chain can hold the decoration upright, but needs a little notch in the back plate, and can be hidden. The decoration should be visible within the package, but securely held in place. A description of the process would be nice to include, and the details of the artist.

And so it came together. I adapted a CD mailer template, reducing the size and adjusting the tabs, and adding a circular window. The window is covered with a square of acetate glued at the corners with Pinflair. The backplate has my business card on it, attached with repositionable photo glue so it can be removed for reference. The description of the item is printed onto a label. Both of these are on the reverse of the backplate, over which the hanging chain is hooked. All that’s left to do on-stand is fold up the bottom tab, fold in the sides and tuck into the slot, slip the decoration in with the backplate, and then fold the top tab down and into the slot to complete the package.