It's not easy being green

A fun and easy DIY project, just in time for St. Patrick's Day!

It's getting very close to spring! I know this because St. Patrick's day is just around the corner! I'm not Irish nor, as far as I know, is there any Irish roots in my family either. Doesn't matter though, I like any excuse to do some crafty projects!

Until I moved to Montreal, I didn't really know much about St. Patrick's day. Being the history nerd I am and being especially fascinated by the history of the Catholic church (I'm not Catholic by the way, just interested in the history) I am familiar with a number of saints, just not necessarily the modern celebrations. Additionally, pubs have always been my favorite type of drinking establishment, so obviously I've had some inclinations what it might be. But then I moved here and was promptly educated of what it really means to celebrate St. Patrick's day. I can tell you more about it another time, hopefully with some photos.

Today though, I would like to share a small St. Paddy's snailmail project.


For this project, you'll need all things green. I had patterned green paper, some green thread, green confetti and some St. Paddy's trinkets, including chocolate coins.

I actually went to the dollarstore to buy a few little St. Paddy's trinkets. As it so happened, the one I went to had nothing. It's was Easter all over the place. So I had to improvise. I actually managed to drop by another one later, so I got a few pins and balloons.

My whole idea was to try a few new things as well as go back to the see-through mail, so I used my last green plastic envelopes. Remember that I wrote a tutorial how to make these!



I am especially proud of my silly little confetti bags. I used glassine envelopes, wrote on them with a green marker and stuffed them with improvised confetti. I put in green paper snippets in different shapes, sequins and craft jewels.

Then I made shamrock shaped notes. To make one; take a square piece of paper. Fold in half. Fold in half again. Then use a heart-shaped paper punch as shown in the photo. If you don't have a paper punch, then just cut out a rough heart shape. Open paper.


I also made origami four leaf clovers in a few different sizes. You can find instructions online, I used this one.

I wrote little notes into the shamrocks and stuffed the envelopes with some green cheer. I also added some green paperclips and green thread to some of them. Just to keep with the theme, you know. The fancily shaped, pale green shapes on the envelopes are actually the address labels. I glued them on afterwards.

I only had 5 green envelopes, so I decided to send these to the few people I think would appreciate some unexpected St. Paddy's silliness. This is actually a preliminary project for something a bit larger coming up soon.

Oh, I really like sending mail on random holidays. As seen before...

So, are you celebrating St. Patrick's day?