I like to contribute to vegetable and flower seed libraries in my local community. I also love exchanging seeds with people all over the world. For this I need, next to seeds, some envelopes to this as efficiently as possible. I use origami seed envelopes for this purpose.
As you know I sell little seed envelopes in one of my shops. And even though I love to use those when I do a seed exchange, sometimes they are just a little too big. Especially if you send 5 or even 10 tiny seeds via mail to the other side of the world and if you want to send 20 varieties or so in all different envelopes. You are then basically sending piles of paper with little content. And for those instances I prefer to make my own tiny origami seed envelopes.
Somebody asked me if I could show how I make these, and even though the internet is full of explanations, it’s really not much trouble for me to shoot a few images of the folding process. So here comes my super simple explanation for DIY origami seed exchange envelopes for the frugal gardeners amongst us.
The paper
I used standard size origami paper (15x15cm), which a friend once gifted me. As these pieces of paper are already square, it’s very easy to start the process from there. If you don’t have origami paper, you need to look for fairly thin paper which you can cut or fold into a square to start.
How big you make the square is up to you. I made very small envelopes this time, where I ‘ripped’ my paper square in four smaller squares. This way I got four envelopes out of one piece of paper. I ended up with 1 inch envelopes (in all dimensions). Which were perfect for my purpose: shipping out tomato and pepper seeds. If I would need to ship out pumpkin seeds or beans, I would have kept the paper as a whole and made the envelopes one size bigger.
The folding process
I can write complicated explications using words, but I thought that it would be enough just to share this picture with you. This one shows the whole folding process. It’s quite straightforward isn’t it?
There are only two tricky things in this folding process. That’s where you place the seeds (left picture) and how you tuck away the closing fold (right picture). That’s why I’m adding these two close-ups above. When you make sure that you place the seeds in the right pocket and you close it like shown above, everything will stay in place without a problem. You are now all set for seed exchange season, which is now reaching its high!