One spreadsheet, one print job, and not a single hand cramp. Here’s the whole process, including the column names that won’t fight you.

Traci · 6 min read

You could open the template, type a name, print it, and then do that 199 more times. Or you could let Bulk Create do every bit of the typing while you go do literally anything else! Twenty minutes the first time through, about five every time after that.

Two things before we start. Bulk Create needs Canva Pro, and it only runs on an actual computer (sorry, phone people). On the free plan? Skip on down to the bottom...I didn’t forget about you.

First, the spreadsheet (don’t panic)

One row per envelope. Your top row holds the column headers, and those exact headers turn into the field names you’ll see inside Canva, so keep them short and simple.

Here’s the part everybody gets wrong the first time: every single line of the address needs its own column. Squash the whole address into one cell and Canva hands it right back to you as one long unbroken line of text. Not cute!

Leave the extra cells actually empty. One stray space in there becomes a mystery blank line in the middle of the address...and only on some of them, which you absolutely will not notice until all 200 are printed. Save it as a CSV, or keep it in Google Sheets and share the link.

Bulk Create will take 300 rows and 150 columns at a time, so a 200 name list is no problem at all. Longer than that? Split it in half and run it twice.

Now introduce Canva to your columns

What you’re looking for is any text that has outgrown its box. Long street names and beautifully hyphenated last names are the usual suspects. Fix those in the spreadsheet, never on the design...otherwise your fix helps exactly one envelope.

Look good? Choose Create designs.

Now the fun part

Download as PDF Print and you’ve got one page per envelope, in whatever order your spreadsheet had them.

Before that whole stack goes anywhere near your printer, print page one on plain paper and hold it up against a real envelope in front of a window. Trim the paper down to the size of your envelope first, so you’re comparing the same thing. Ten seconds! And it catches a wrong paper size before it costs you a thing. Then load your envelopes according to your printer’s settings, and go.

Print ten. Look at them. Then print the rest. Printers only ever jam the second you walk away to go do something else...every single time.

I have noticed that my printer does much better when I print in smaller batches instead of loading 100 envelopes and expecting it to pull in each one the exact same way. I do about 10-15 at a time. It takes a couple more minutes this way but it saves me envelopes and my sanity.

Not on Canva Pro? I’ve got you.

Merge & Print does the whole merge right here on my site. Paste your list in, see every address on the design before you print, and send the finished sheet to your printer. No Canva account, no Pro plan, nothing to install.

{{ mergeLine }} Try Merge & Print

Feed direction, tray settings, and the one test print that saves the whole stack.

Traci · 4 min read

Printers are perfectly happy with flat paper. An envelope is three layers of paper folded and glued into a slightly lumpy rectangle, and your printer feels personally insulted by it. Here’s how to keep the peace.

Use the manual feed slot

If your printer has one, and most do, that’s where envelopes belong. The main paper tray is built to grab thin flat sheets from a big stack, and it grabs two envelopes at once about as often as it grabs one.

No manual slot? Then load five or six envelopes at a time. Not twenty. The tray will absolutely hold twenty and it will absolutely regret it.

Follow the little diagram

There is a tiny embossed picture of an envelope somewhere on your tray or slot, showing which way the flap goes and which edge leads. It is not a suggestion. Most printers want the flap closed and facing up, short edge first, but yours might disagree, so go look.

Then match it in the software. In your print dialog, find the paper size setting and choose the actual envelope size rather than letting it default to Letter. A7 is 5.25 by 7.25 inches. If A7 isn’t in the dropdown, add it as a custom size at those exact numbers — here’s how.

Flatten everything first

Run your thumb along each flap crease so it lies flat. Fan the stack the way you’d fan a deck of cards to break up any envelopes that have decided to stick together. If a flap has a peel-off seal strip, leave the strip on until after printing, because warm rollers and exposed adhesive is a combination you do not want to meet.

Slow it down

Dig into your printer settings and look for a paper type option. Choosing Envelope, Heavy, or Cardstock tells the printer to pull more gently and, on a laser, to run a little hotter so the toner actually sets. On an inkjet it also buys the ink a second longer to dry.

If your printer has a rear feed or a straight-through path, use it. Every roller and turn between the tray and the tray exit is another chance for a fold.

The one test print

Print page one on a plain sheet of paper. Hold it up against a blank envelope at a window and look at where the address actually lands. Wrong size, wrong orientation and wrong margins all show themselves in about ten seconds, and you have spent one sheet of paper finding out.

Then print one real envelope. Then ten. Then the rest. I know it feels slow. It is much less slow than reprinting the whole stack, and I say that as someone who has reprinted the whole stack.

How to address a card when the household doesn’t fit the old formula, without sounding stiff.

Traci · 5 min read

Every December somebody emails me in a small panic about one particular name on their list. A friend who got divorced. A couple who never married. A nephew who goes by a different name now. The old etiquette books have an answer for exactly one kind of household and are no help at all for the rest.

So here is my rule, and it has never once failed me: address people the way they refer to themselves.

A married couple

If they share a last name and you know they like it, Mr. and Mrs. James Whitfield is the traditional form and plenty of people still love receiving it. If you have any doubt, use both first names: Anna and James Whitfield. Warmer, shorter, and nobody has ever been offended by it.

Different last names? Both names in full, on one line if they fit and two if they don’t. There’s no rule about who goes first, so put the one you know better first and stop worrying about it.

A whole family

The Whitfield Family is the easy one, and it saves you from deciding whether the 19-year-old counts as an adult this year. The Whitfields is the same thing with less starch. Both are fine.

If the household has more than one last name in it, skip the family form and list the adults instead.

Titles, when they matter

Ms. is the safe default for a woman whose marital status you don’t know or shouldn’t have to know. Mx. is the gender-neutral option and it is not new or strange, it just may be new to you. Doctors, judges and military ranks get their titles if you know them, and if you don’t know them, a first and last name is not a slight.

The awkward ones

Recently divorced. Drop the old married form immediately. Her own first and last name, whichever last name she is using now. If you genuinely don’t know which, that is a fine thing to text and ask.

Recently widowed. Many women keep Mrs. and their husband’s name for years, and many switch right away. Follow whatever she signs her own emails with.

Living together, not married. Both full names, either order. No and gymnastics required.

Someone who changed their name. Use the new one. Every time, no asterisk, no old name in parentheses.

And when you really don’t know

Ask. I promise it is less awkward than you think. “I’m addressing Christmas cards, how do you two want yours to read?” takes four seconds and people are usually charmed that you bothered.

And if you get one wrong, you get one wrong. They will still be glad you thought of them.

The merge file is already set up. Here’s what to do with it, in eight steps and zero jargon.

Traci · 7 min read

Word’s mail merge has a reputation for being a nightmare, and honestly it earned that reputation about fifteen years ago and has never quite shaken it. It’s fine. It has always been fine. It just uses words like data source and merge field and everybody’s eyes glaze over.

The good news: your download already includes the merge file, set up and pointed at the right places on the envelope. You’re only connecting your list to it. And it works on any version of Word, no subscription tier required.

Build your list

Same rules as always. One row per envelope, headers in the top row, and every line of the address gets its own column. Keep the headers plain: Name, Line 1, Line 2, Line 3. Save it as an Excel file or a CSV somewhere you’ll be able to find in ninety seconds.

One Word-specific warning: close the spreadsheet before you start the merge. Word gets strange about opening a file that Excel is already holding onto.

The eight steps

The three things that go wrong

Blank lines in the middle of addresses. Those are empty cells with a space typed into them. Go back to the spreadsheet, clear them properly, and re-run.

Every envelope says the same name. You previewed but never merged. Finish & Merge is the step that actually generates the set.

Zip codes losing a leading zero. Excel decides 02134 is the number 2134 and helpfully removes the zero. Format that column as Text in Excel before you type, or add an apostrophe in front of the zip.

Print your test page on plain paper, hold it against an envelope, and then go. Same as always.

Your printer almost certainly doesn’t have your envelope size in its list. Here’s how to add it, on Windows and on a Mac.

Traci · 4 min read

Not all printers are created equal — so my printer and your printer’s settings will probably not be the same. This is what has worked for me. But you might have to do some research on your own printer settings to get this right.

Open your print dialog, look at the paper size list, and you’ll find Letter, Legal, A4, maybe a couple of photo sizes. What you won’t find is your envelope. Most printers only store a handful of standard sizes, and A7 isn’t one of them.

So you add it yourself. It takes a couple of minutes, and once it’s saved it stays in the list for good.

Width or height first?

Width first, then height, and both boxes want the size of the paper as it goes into the printer. For an envelope going in short edge first, that’s 5.25 wide and 7.25 tall. Then set the orientation to landscape so the address prints across the long way.

If you get width and height backwards, everything still prints. It prints sideways. Ask me how I know.

On a Mac

On Windows

Windows hides this one level deeper, in the printer’s own settings rather than the print dialog.

One catch on Windows: a custom size saved in one program sometimes doesn’t show up in another. If it’s missing, add it from Settings → Printers & scanners, pick your printer, open its printing preferences, and set it there instead. Then it’s available everywhere.

The setting that undoes all of it

Back in the print dialog, find the scaling option and make sure it says 100%, Actual Size, or None. If Fit to Page or Shrink to Fit is on, your printer shrinks the whole design to suit its own margins, so the address prints a little small and pulled in toward the middle. It does it to every envelope, and no amount of adjusting the template will fix it while that setting is on.

Then test it

Print one page on plain paper, trim it to the size of your envelope, and hold the two up together at a window. If the address sits where you want it, you’re done, and you never have to do any of this again.

Label sheets don’t need any of this, by the way. They’re letter size already, so you just pick Letter and leave the scaling alone.

Still fighting your printer? How to stop your printer eating envelopes covers feed direction, the tray diagram, and why envelopes jam in the first place.

Paper weight, coating and color, and why the cheap bright white ones smudge every single time.

Traci · 4 min read

You bought a design you love, you got the merge working, and then the ink sat on top of the envelope like a wet fingerprint and smeared when you touched it. That’s not the template and it isn’t your printer. It’s the envelope.

Inkjet or laser, because it changes everything

A laser printer melts powdered toner onto the surface. It doesn’t care much what the paper is like, and it’s perfectly happy on smooth or lightly coated stock.

An inkjet sprays liquid, and that liquid has to go somewhere. It needs paper with a bit of tooth that can absorb it. Put inkjet ink on a slick coated envelope and it has nowhere to sink, so it dries slowly and smudges when it finally does.

So: if you have an inkjet, buy uncoated envelopes. This one sentence solves most smudging complaints I get.

The bright white trap

Those very cheap, very white, very shiny envelopes from the big box store are usually coated to look crisp on the shelf. They photograph beautifully and they take inkjet ink terribly. A slightly softer, warmer, more matte white will print far better and honestly looks nicer against a colored design anyway.

Weight

Too thin and the design shows through from the inside, plus the envelope arrives looking tired. Too thick and your printer starts making the noise. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot, and if the package says text weight rather than cardstock, you’re in the right neighborhood.

If you’re adding a liner, go a touch heavier. The liner adds bulk, and a flimsy envelope with a liner in it buckles.

Colored and kraft envelopes

Gorgeous, and worth knowing what they do to your ink. Colored stock absorbs more, so everything prints a shade darker and softer than it looks on screen. On kraft, anything pale more or less disappears, and white ink is not something a home printer can do at all.

Deep colors on light-to-mid envelopes, dark ink on kraft, and always print one before you commit to the box.

Buy spares

Whatever your number is, buy ten more than that. You’ll use two or three learning your printer’s opinions, one will get eaten, and you will remember somebody at the last minute. You always do.

From a sketch of a cocoa mug to four formats and eight liner sizes.

Traci · 5 min read

People ask where the designs come from, and the honest answer is that most of them start as something scribbled while I was supposed to be doing something else.

It starts with one thing

Cocoa started as a mug. Not a scene, not a theme, just a mug with a good silhouette and steam coming off it. That’s usually how it goes: one object I can’t stop drawing, and the rest of the design arranges itself around it.

The ones that start as a concept instead of an object almost never work. I’ve got a folder of those.

Then the type has to fit

This is the part nobody sees. An envelope has to hold a name and three lines of address, and that name might be Bo Lee or it might be The Vandermeer-Castellanos Family. The layout has to survive both.

So I set the type with the worst-case name in place, not the pretty one. If it looks good crowded, it looks great with room to spare.

Then it becomes four things

One design turns into a Canva version, a Word version with its merge file, a Templett version, and often a liner as a print-ready PDF in eight envelope sizes. They all have to look like the same design, and each one has its own rules about what it can and can’t do with type.

This is where a single design turns into a week.

Then I print it

Every design gets printed on a real envelope before it goes in the shop, because a color that sings on the screen can go muddy on paper, and a hairline that looks delicate at 100% can vanish entirely at actual size.

If it doesn’t survive my own printer, it isn’t going to survive yours.

What the post office needs, what tradition says, and what looks best on an A7.

Traci · 3 min read

Three people asked me this in the same week, so here we are. Short post, easy answer.

What the post office wants

The upper left corner of the front, same side as the delivery address. That’s the spot their equipment expects, and it’s the version most likely to actually come back to you if something goes wrong.

What tradition wants

The back flap, centered. For social correspondence — invitations, holiday cards, anything you’d hand-address — the flap has been the elegant choice for a hundred years, and it keeps the front of the envelope clean so your design gets the whole stage.

In practice, hand-addressed cards mailed with a stamp get there just fine with the return address on the flap. It’s only the returning-it-to-you part that’s less certain, because that’s not where anyone is trained to look.

So how do I choose?

Ask yourself whether you need to know it didn’t arrive. For a wedding, where a missing RSVP is a real problem and addresses are years out of date, put it on the front. For Christmas cards to people you speak to anyway, the flap is lovely and I use it myself.

Every design in the shop comes with a matching return-address template for both, so this isn’t a decision you have to make before you buy.

And “not at all”?

It will still get delivered. It just can’t come home if it doesn’t. Fine for a card you’re handing over in person, and a gamble on anything going in a mailbox.

The envelopes and label sheets I actually use, the exact product codes, and the one kind of envelope to stay away from.

Traci · 3 min read

The template is the easy part. What you print it on decides whether the whole thing goes smoothly or turns into an afternoon of jams and smudges. So here is my actual shopping list — the things I buy myself, with the product codes, so you can order and get on with it.

Envelopes

Any printable A7 envelope will do, as long as it’s the real size: 5.25″ × 7.25″. That’s what every envelope template in the shop is built to.

One rule, and it matters more than the brand: no liner. A lined envelope has an extra sheet of paper tucked inside the flap, and your printer will just eat them. Buy them unlined and add a printable liner afterwards if you want one.

There are plenty of good ones on Amazon. These are the pair I keep coming back to — thick and lux, and they feel like something before you’ve even printed on them:

Label sheets

I use Online Labels for every label sheet, and the templates are built to their sizes. Match the code to the template you bought and the layout lines up with no fiddling.

Printers

Not all printers are created equal & all printers are different — the most important thing is to make sure that your printer can actually print envelopes and that you can create a custom size because most commercial printers do not have your exact envelope size in their stored settings.

Here’s how to add one: How to set up a custom paper size.

Whatever you’re printing on, the settings matter more than the machine. How to stop your printer eating envelopes covers the feed direction, the paper size setting, and the one test print that saves the whole stack.

And if you’d rather not think about any of this, send me your list and I’ll set the addresses in for you.