Collaborative Paper Crafts: What is an Envie?

Mail Art for Beginners

"Envie" is short for envelope and is really a form of paper crafts. A decorated "envie" can be traded as its own Land Mail Art Object (LMAO), or as part of another LMAO trade.

An envie is one of the most obvious art forms exchanged as a Land Mail Art Object. The envie exchange is typically a one-on-one trade between two artists.

Paper Crafts: Creating the Envie

To begin with, an artist may have a Land Mail Art Object to trade besides just the envelope. Then the artist finds other envelope orLMAO artist to trade with, or simply to send in addition to another LMAO exchange.

A true envie exchange should include some original art work directly on the mailing envelope itself.

Buy or Make Your Own Envelopes for LMAOs

There are two different types of envies that an envie artist can trade.

An envelope artist can purchase commercially-produced envelopes to decorate and alter.

Or, an envie artist can create their own envelopes from scratch. Any type of paper used in paper crafts can be used to create an envelope for exchange.

For example, it can be created out of any of the following materials:

antiqued paper
handmade paper
recycled magazines
newspaper
card stock
shiny paper
letterhead

Purchase or make the paper crafts material to create your own envelopes to exchange in the mail.

Using Paper Crafts Techniques

An artist can decorate the envie any way they wish.

The best envelopes are the ones which tend to be complete works of art on their own. Of course, the envelope may have some mail art inside, such as an ATC or a jam card.

Some artist who are very heavy into Land Mail Art Object (LMAO) will mail their art in what I like to call an "envie light." An envelope light has some decoration on it, but not to the extent of a full-blown envie.

A full-blown envelope will have nearly every bit of available space covered with a color and design.

An envie used to carry a piece of Land Mail Art Object (LMAO) can be decorated to match the LMAO artwork inside, or it can be decorated with completely unrelated artwork.