DIY ENVELOPES - No Measuring No Tools!

hello everyone it's natasha from treasure books in this video i'm going to show you four ideas on how you can make envelopes no tools and no measuring required and then at the end i'm going to show you four bonus ideas on making some envelopes but first of all i'm going to show you what you can expect to learn from this video and then we'll get started with the tutorials we are going to start off with making some wonky envelopes like this and i'm calling them wonky because they are non-symmetrical and they are freehand very very simple and easy to do any size even tiny little ones from book pages like this and you can very easily play with your design and you know adding different elements and all that sort of stuff then we are going to use the exact same principle to make some symmetrical envelopes like this we are using book pages we're using you can use any paper that you have on hand some tea dyed paper like this and it's using the same principle as the freehand one but they're not freehand they're kind of you know symmetrical and even looking and this is the one that we're going to make in the tutorial and it just happens to be my favorite one idea number three is this one here you may have seen these done before so they are asymmetrical and it's using a different principle than the first two that we do and this one here is the one that i'll make in the tutorial and then we're going to use this principle to make these envelopes and for these ones i'm particularly excited about these ones because we're using six by six pieces of paper it's a great way to use up your paper pads and then these ones here are 12 by 12 so 12 by 12 pieces of square paper so we're using rectangular for these ones and square for these ones let me just say that there are many different ways of making envelopes these are just four that i have chosen to show you because i feel like it it's the best kind of design for you know making junk journals and adding ephemera pieces into the journals and all that sort of stuff but there are many different ways of making envelopes and you don't need any tools you just need your glue and your scissors all right let's get into the tutorial okay so the first type of envelope i'm going to show you how to do are these asymmetrical wonky type envelopes you can have them running this way long and narrow they look really quite interesting in a journal because they're so you know different so let me just show you something this is i guess the principle of making these envelopes and once you see it it will all make sense and then when you see me do it it will make perfect sense so let's pretend this is the paper we're going to do and then we're going to make four folds no measuring and then we're going to make four points where they meet the folds and then we're going to freehand cut so what an envelope needs well this particular style anyway it needs four flaps two on the side and two top and bottom and then you just fold the envelope so i'm going to make one long and narrow one and i'm going to make one that's like this so we'll start with this one first now let's make those folds so i'm not going to measure obviously i'm just going to eyeball and make my four folds and you can play around with this part how you want it to look so i'm doing approximately an inch i just want my sides to be somewhat similar in size and then we're going to fold up i'm going to go about maybe about here and then this will be my top flap fold down and you can see my measuring isn't well no measuring so you know things are sticking out but that's fine because we're not striving for perfection and we don't need everything to be perfect i'm just going to mark where the folds meet just so it's easier for me to cut and now i know i need a flap here here up the top and here so the top one will be you know i can play around with how that looks so i can play around with it i can have it you know somewhat in the middle i can have it slanted to one side i can have it slanted to the other side or i can do like a little bit of a wiggly thing there i mean there's just so many things that we can do but now i'm going to start cutting just freehand and what i want to make sure is these side flaps i want the side flaps to i want to leave as much as i possibly can on the side flaps you can see that's my one side flap and then i'm going to the the top flap i might slant it to one side like that and now my other side flap and then the bottom and here is what i have and now you'll see when i close the side flaps and the top there is my envelope i'm going to ink the edges just so you can see it better and when i'm inking the edges i don't need to ink all of the edges because it will be glued down so i'll just ink top of the flaps see how you can see it there better and now just ink all around and here we go so you can see a little bit better there my wonky envelope and now to glue what i do so that i don't make a mistake and have glue go where it's not supposed to i just mark on the inside so you can see just sort of where they meet i'll just mark a little bit you can see those two marks that i've made and now i know that's where my glue needs to go up to so i'll grab my glue and just put a little bit on the side here up to that mark and on the other side and close my envelope and there we go envelope done it's not dry yet so that's fine and then we can go ahead and embellish i have some ready-made little embellishments i don't know anything will do you know a bit of lace whatever i'm quite happy with this so i'm just gonna go ahead and glue that piece down if you wish to embellish of course and there we go that's it for that one now i'm going to do this long one a long wonky envelope and we are doing the exact same thing that i have just done but we're turning the paper this way i might turn this side because it looks better so now i'm going to do my side flaps try and make them similar in size and this will be my bottom just approximately usually i'll leave the bottom longer than the top and then the top there we go and now i'm just going to mark and now i'm going to start cutting so i'll start over here somewhere now with the side flaps i mentioned before we want to leave as much as possible of the side flap so i'm not going to go in and cut this much right and i'll tell you why i have made that mistake with this envelope it's no big deal but you have a gap here i should have left that side flap or should have left more and then you wouldn't have this gap so that's the only reason why so every time i'm cutting the sides now i want to make sure as much as possible to leave as much as possible and now maybe i'll slant this one i think i might have a gap on this one because i slanted it too much and i'm going to leave this in just so you can see the mistake i guess so let's see i i think there's going to be a gap on this one okay here we go so you can see a little bit of a gap there and i'm actually going to hide that and i'll show you that in a moment but first i'm going to just mark here where they meet and apply my glue see now i see where my glue goes up to here we go so that little gap there really doesn't bother me but just in case i just grabbed a little bit of a snippet of a lace that i have and i'm gonna glue that on there they're wonky envelopes so anything goes really and then i have this little just a snippet of some sort and i'm gonna glue that on top of there and that looks quite nice already just to leave it as is or maybe add a little something in the middle the first thing that i had on hand and there we go that's it done i think they look quite nice and you can just go to town with embellishing here i've done a little bit of sewing i don't know if you can see it just you know just adds a little special touch when i was doing the flap here i just kind of you know you can use your border punches as well to make it i don't know whatever you know anything anything goes and also great for using up book pages i just use this is the size of the book page so quite a smallish book page and i just made these little envelopes and you can just go to town with this i think out of all of these ones that i made the wonky ones this one has to be my favorite because i use this paper that i've tea dyed and then just added some splotches onto it and it looks really quite rich and then i embellished with a bit of lace and a little bit of something here just some strips of paper and a focal point and i think it looks really nice so this one has got to be my favorite all right let's move on to the next one okay now for this one this one really is no brainer because we're using the exact same principle that i've showed you here but we are just cutting instead of doing the freehand cutting we're just cutting the four corners off and then once again of course you can go ahead and use book pages and i'll show you how to do this inside bit as well no measuring it's very very simple you can play around with your little closures and how you want them to you know this is also from a book or a magazine music paper just go ahead and grab whatever you have on hand this is also from a book play around with any punches that you have you know all that sort of stuff all right let's get started i'm going to use another one of my splotchy papers and once again you can do the same thing you can do them long and narrow or this sort of design what would you call it i don't know so i'm going to make the same folds again eyeballing you know to make sure that they're similar in size on both sides exact same thing okay i'm folding up i want the bottom to be larger than the top and then fold it this way and you can see it's not it's not looking great you know and it doesn't have to open it up and now i'm just trimming these four corners off so i don't really have to mark anything here but i will just to stay consistent you know there's my little point here and i'm just gonna trim everything off corner number one all right my corners are off and now i also keep these strips because i can use them for the embellishment and now you can see when i close this there we go there's my envelope i need to make a few adjustments so the first thing i'm going to do you can play around here you can have this part going all the way almost all the way up or you can trim it down like this so fold it down and that's what i'm going to do i might just fold this part down just to make it a little bit shorter because why not and now to make everything look uh you know nice i'm going to mark where they meet see how i made that little mark here and now i'm just going to trim this part off from this corner to the mark that i made so from this corner to this mark see to make it look more presentable it doesn't have to you don't have to do this but you can and you don't have to draw that line i just drew that line to show you so i'm cutting from this mark that i made to the this point here at the corner and there we go you can see right there i'm going to ink the edges so here i'm just inking the tops i don't have to ink things that are not visible and i'm just going to go ahead and glue that down so i know that my glue has to come up to about there and because i folded this top down i might just pop a little bit of glue in there just to hold it shut like that just to hold it in place and then just approximately you know i'm gonna go with my glue up the top maybe i'll put a little bit of glue here we're just gluing the sides down you can sew them whatever you know and now i'll go ahead you know have this little bit sticking out here i might just trim that down a little bit and now i can play with the top leave it as is do a little something whatever you know i might do the edges at the corners here around the corners because i like that look ink everything and there it is my envelope so i think you know maybe i'll embellish it using these strips i'll just pop them on like this take it to my sewing machine or glue them together here we go i've just popped it through my sewing machine it really would have been better if i use these leftovers that i had from the previous one because they're a different color but it's okay maybe just haphazardly crazily go over it a little bit with my ink ink blender i think it's called here we go maybe add a little bit of something i should have sewn this straight on what else have i got i don't know just playing around that's a bit crazy-ish but i'm gonna do it and i'm just gonna sew right through everything so the sewing will show on this side but that's okay i don't mind that look here we go i really like it actually maybe it's not um you know maybe i didn't do a straight straight job you can see it's a little bit slanted that's fine it doesn't bother me but here we go if that if that's something that bothers you you can always make it look okay by adding another stitch which is what i just did to make it look intentional so you have two stitches you know if you do something wrong you can there's ways that you can fix them but generally i don't worry about that sort of thing i really like how this turned out so now that you know that principle really quite simple you've probably done it before it's just a matter of adding little bits and pieces to it and i really love this one as well from a book page see it looks really pretty i've done the same thing here just added a flower i mean a butterfly you know music page quite fun all right let's move on to the next one i have to say this one is my favorite definitely by the way i forgot to mention you can make this one long as well if you want if you prefer that look so when you're cutting your paper you just turn it i mean you know you just turn it to the side you you have your narrow folds here and your wider folds here maybe i'll do one just real quick i'll use this coloring page and it is a rectangular and i'll just make my narrow strips on the sides and then these folds here will be wider and then it will i will end up with this size envelope but let me just cut it all off there we go and i'm not going to trim this one down i'll leave it long so there's only a tiny little bit here i have to trim off i don't even have to do it but i'm going to you don't have to do anything you you don't want to do add my glue trim off any boo-boos because we're not measuring and we don't care now if you want you can add the wonky element here why not here we go so you can have your symmetrical and perfect on the inside and then you can have a bit of a wonky wonk going on on the top flap let's just quickly add all these bits and pieces and i'm going to make them go this way and that i couldn't resist and i took it to my sewing machine so i can glue that on there and i thought maybe i can use this is just a stamp that i've stamped on a piece of paper i like it add a bit of glue this is just for some inspiration because now you already know how to make the envelope and then the embellishing part it doesn't have to be anything exquisite it can be if you want to if you want it to be i think this looks quite exquisite and then here we go and then when you have something like this stacked in a journal with little journaling spots or extra paper or extra little goodies you know printables images whatever you like to use and it's clipped into a journal perfect it's that perfect little touch all right let's move on to the next one all right the third way it's these asymmetrical definitely asymmetrical you can see but they're not they have straight lines and you may have done these before you may have seen tutorials i've seen a few tutorials on youtube but i won't be able to say who i've actually watched because i've done these years ago and i don't remember who i've watched it's not my idea but i'm going to show you how to make them if you don't know so what we need is an a4 size paper or whatever size paper as long as it's rectangular just for these ones i might use another one of my splotchy papers and this is how it's done again no measuring the only first thing you have to do is fold it in half and find the middle and we're finding the middle so i'm just going to you know make a little mark there and if you're struggling to see you can just mark a little spot and that's my middle and now i need to fold the bottom side up and you're trying to you can eyeball this but you want it to be straight so what you can do is pop another piece of paper next to it to make sure that it's straight but i usually just go you know i just kind of wing it and usually it turns out well so you've made your first fold and now you do the opposite side and you just meet the paper so you meet them like this okay and now this let's say this is going to be my bottom i want this side to be folded a little bit like this so my little triangle here is sticking up and i like that look you can trim that off if you want to but as long as you have a little bit of a fold here perfect so you have a large fold here and then a little bit of a fold here and now we're going to do this one here and just kind of align everything they don't always align sometimes if you didn't do that fold properly you know you might have this bit sticking out and that's fine if you do it's not ruined you don't have to throw it out you can just trim it off so you can see here this is your top flap and i really want to get rid of this part here you don't really have to but i'm going to get rid of this part here you can see this triangle right there and maybe this little one here as well just so it's easier for that to open and close and i'm going to keep that little triangle there because i've used it in embellishing where is it you can see here i've used a triangle left over from making this one to embellish this one so especially if it's nice paper you can and here you can see these triangles i've used those triangles to embellish this envelope if you haven't done it before it might seem a little complicated i wish i could write the instructions down but i wouldn't know how to write the instructions down so i might just do one more after this one all right and now with the gluing i do the same thing i'll kind of mark myself with a sort of meat just underneath so that way i know where to stop with the glue and also you can play around here you can slant this if you want you know i haven't done any of mine i can't believe left all of them straight because it's just another step but why not for this for this one i might just trim a bit there why not let's see what happens there we go i trimmed the bit yeah looks even better you'll see it better when it's inked i don't know if i finished what i was saying before if you haven't made it before if you haven't seen it before it might seem like it's complicated and and you know too much work but once you made two or three it's it's really so really easy really really easy okay i've added my glue and now you can go to town with this and embellish whatever you can do whatever you know comes to mind i really want to use this corner piece that i've cut off i have an idea it just popped into my head so i'm going to make this a pocket because the whole pocket on an envelope i mean what's wrong with the pocket on an envelope so i'm just going to glue down these sides add a little tag maybe something like this i should put these here for a little bit more eye candy i can do little tag things up the top like that you know i'm not gonna bother right now but i could and i feel like i need a little bit of something here maybe butterfly maybe flower let's see i like that better i'm just gonna glue that on maybe a little blingety bling jam in the middle just pop a bit of glue i've done that for the other envelopes and i really like that look so i'm just going to go ahead with that there we go quite nice i like it a little bit of an interesting oh here we go i've done those flowers here this is a book page then a little closer here wrap around closure i have a tutorial on how i do these and i'm going to link it down below like i like using the little triangle see here put a little triangle because the whole envelope has that straight lines but you know triangly kind of feel so adding more i kind of like it i'm going to do one more i'm not going to embellish i'll just quickly show you again just one more time and we'll speed it up just so i can kind of make sense and sink in i guess i might use this purple paper this is from my easter egg dyeing uh okay first we're making that middle and now i'm going to i marked it there and i'm going to fold my first fold to the middle of the paper and hope for the best i'm going to go ahead and do the same on the other side here we go that's all you have to do and now it's just really logical next step would be we're going to fold this bottom piece down but i want a little bit of a fold here so i'm not going to fold right there where that point is i'm going to go up a little bit here we go and then same up here all right and then we go back inside and we trim these bits these little triangles if you forget to do it it's still fine there we go all trimmed then you can ink then you can glue you can trim this down you can trim this down let's see you can do this i mean they don't have to be they can be anywhere you want them to be here we go trim that make it shorter you can do play around with the triangle or not you can do whatever you want so with the glowing you just mark where you can go up to add your glue and there you go all right now let's move on to our next one and guys this is going to be so easy to do these are your typical envelopes okay and there's many different ways of making envelopes but because we've learned we are doing making these ones exactly the same way as the ones that i've just shown you the only difference is i'm using 12 by 12 sheets of paper here and six by six sheets of paper here so really good to use up your pads especially papers that you don't really like very much like this one it's not particularly you know fabulous for my liking it's a good summer i don't know paper but whatever you know let me show you how to do it we're going to do a 12 by 12 first and let's choose a paper that's not particularly terrific looking like this one for example i mean it's not bad don't get offended please i've had some comments that i shouldn't call paper ugly because you know how offensive to the designers so pretty pretty paper okay i like the paper perfect for this envelope i'm going to make so we are doing the exact same thing as what i've just shown you so the first thing we're going to do that's going to be the outside so i'm going to turn the paper this way and i'm going to find the middle i'm going to mark myself a little mark over here so i know and then i'm going to fold it in half i mean yes not in half but i'm going to make a fold here try and make it straight we're doing the exact same thing as what i've just shown you before but we're using square paper it doesn't have to be 12 by 12 it doesn't have to be six by six it can be whatever square paper you have and now with the other side we're just going to meet the two together so with the other one that i was showing you because it was rectangular they were sitting next to each other because this one's square we're just kneading them together right here in the middle see they meet and now i mean look at this you just fold the top i mean the bottom flap up and then you fold the top flap down and there you go the reason why they will differ in size i don't know if i mentioned that you can see here how some of them are different in size they're not exactly the same you can see here this one's a lot larger than these ones here so that where you make your fold will determine how big your envelope is if you go if you only make the folds down here see how i've made the fold here you could have made the fold there and then it would be a longer larger envelope or where you make this stop that determines how big the envelope is i know that makes sense well i hope it makes sense and now what i'm going to do exactly the same as before i'm just going to trim off these two little triangles so there are other ways of doing this of course there's many different ways of making envelopes you could have a cardstock piece of paper that you put in the middle and then you make your folds that way you know that's another way but i'm not demonstrating that in this video because i just did it this way and i'm just fixing some little imperfections and i just also want to show you this one here came out wonky and you can see because i chose this pattern it's got lines you can actually see that the lines are weird they're not straight and this side is longer than this side and that's fine because i added this doily up the top just to kind of take away from that all right now i'm going to trim this off this little triangle here you can leave it or take or don't up to you so i made i just marked where i need to cut i'm just going to trim that off and there we go glue here i'm going to ink because inking adds a little bit of you know something i think out of this whole process of making envelopes it's the inking that actually takes the longest so you can totally skip that step if you want to but it just makes everything look so much nicer see when it's inked all right here we go and now i'm going to add my glue i don't need to mark anything because they're already meeting here i like to add the glue start here and then go up the top and there's my envelope and i should have mentioned before i glued it but i guess i can open it up and mention it people also ask me people who haven't seen my video where i explained this process how do you bind an envelope into a journal you leave your envelope open you bind it into the journal and then once you've got your journal bound and ready to go then you add your glue and you close your envelope i have shown it in the video before i hope it you know makes sense and i think this paper looks so much nicer as an envelope than it would as a page in a journal so it's not ugly it just has its specific purpose in life which is to become this envelope and now you can become a little bit creative if you want to and use that little you know this one here that you had left off maybe you can glue it there on the inside makes it even more special i like it and i'm gonna do it i didn't do it on the other ones because i didn't get that idea i just popped into my head now because i was thinking i'm just to throw this piece of paper away and then i thought hang on a minute what if i glue that back in there i like that and now as you can see with these large envelopes i started with the doily because this one was all wonky and not straight and i really liked that doily look here i have laid two doilies this one was avocado dyed and then i added this flower and i think it looks really nice so i might go with doily again and i'm going to show you how i do the doily so i'm just going to find where i'm going to pop the doily so it can be up here not going under the you know the flap or you can have it hanging down a little bit like that you can play around whatever i like it here so i find where i want it and then i fold that doily to the back or you can if you don't want doily on the back unnecessarily because see how mine have the doily at the back and i like it so that's why i do it but if you don't want to waste your paper doilies you can just trim that piece off and then use this side for another envelope and now i just add doilies are kind of you know they seem hard to glue but they're not really so i'm holding into place and then i'm just going to add a little bit of glue here and there maybe on these bits just a dab of little glue plop it down glue it down here we go do the same for the back and then the embellishing part maybe i can do something with this one that i was looking at before yeah i like that it's perf even though it's not a whole flower it's cut in half you know if i went looking for the perfect piece for this envelope it will take all day because it can always be better no matter what you do it can always be better but we're not striving for that kind of perfectionism and good enough is perfect maybe i can add another flower here you know i could just keep going but i won't i don't know i feel like i need something there you know this one's got a flower i don't know i feel like i need to finish this off what can i do now that i said don't waste your time looking for that perfect piece that's exactly what i'm doing but i just don't feel like it's finished there we go i can secure that on with the brad and the bread will be showing through it has been showing through oh no i didn't secure okay so that one's not showing through are any of them showing through no they're not well this one will be why should this one be the same as the other ones so i'm gonna layer these two little flowers on this one's destiny in life is to be different than everybody else see does that bother me it does not does it bother you i like it and i'm quite happy with how it turned out so i will just quickly do exactly the same thing with the six by six what a perfect way to use up our little notepads paper pads let's choose one from here so maybe we can do this one all right let's just do the quick version find the middle fold your paper up the best that you can and then fold this one in to meet its little friend see maybe the lovers the kissing and then we're gonna fold up oh i like this dark here so i want this to be my top flap so i'll fold and then fold this one down and there's your envelope the gluing obviously comes easy i'm just going to get rid of these ones here here we go so you can see it's not it's not absolute perfection because it's not it's not it wasn't the same on on both sides but when i trimmed it down this one here mates and this one goes a little bit beyond just to make it appear that it's symmetrical but it wasn't to start off with all right and now i'm gonna add a little bit of glue here and here and then these lovers can have a little bit of privacy there we go get a room envelope then this one also strives to be different than all the others so we might round this flap here because i haven't done it on these ones those ones are all pointy and then i can go ahead and embellish it again same with that flower but i forgot it wants to be different than all the others so i might put this little center instead of the bling that i did on the other ones it has its own personality and there we go real quick and easy and fun to make it doesn't take long at all and it's just one way of making an envelope here are some more ideas and i've already done tutorials on these and i'm going to link them down below just ways of making little envelopes this one is using book pages and whatever type of material you have i was using this type of lace you can use a see-through lace you can use whatever you have and they look really quite nice but these ones look a little bit gypsy gypsy-ish and then you know so i will link this tutorial down below then i've also done a tutorial on these ones as well they're not really envelopes per se but they're kind of falling that within that category and these are six by six the little ones you can make any size as long as you have a square piece of paper and this big one here is actually a 12 by 12 piece of paper and this one here as well i have a tutorial on these you probably might have seen it or you have not it doesn't matter you may have made them before they're an origami type thing and they were actually used for drinking cups so they're not envelopes they were like made for i don't know drinking cups on the go a bonus idea number two all right here is another one i also have a tutorial on these and this was quite a popular tutorial and basically what they are is they are flip down envelopes well are they envelopes they could be if you just glue the sides but all of these ones here i have left you know as journaling uh spaces for when you have this in your journal and this is this idea is really great to use up all of your little bits and pieces oh there's little ones there's this one here see you flip down it's so simple but sometimes you know see it's got a little stopper here so that's that's also an idea that you can use for an envelope have a little closure or a little stopper so i've done all of these tutorials before so i'm not gonna you know redo it but if you are interested you can have a look at a link this one here i didn't do a tutorial because it's so straightforward i just kind of did it for my own personal use see little envelopes look at them they're perfect they're like little i always need little envelopes you know and i'll just quickly show you how to do them i was using a book page not this one but and i got rid of the white bits because i i like the you know the writing to go all the way i didn't want to have the side white bits it's just what i did so i just got rid of them i just use my ruler the only thing is uh the front of your envelope will have writing going the correct way but the back will have the writing going the wrong way and i'm fine with that so what you do when you're making your envelope if you're looking at your piece of paper you need to turn it upside down so that you have the right incorrect way at the front and now i'm just going to make two little two little what i don't know folds right there and then this one can go i'm just eyeballing it here this one can go here i was doing it like this to make it stronger and then we fold the flap down and there we go a little envelope so what i did with these ones i took it to my sewing machine i'll just glue glue these down and you can glue the sides down here and i just took it to my sewing machine and i sewed all around you can see here or you can just sew just the sides here we go i just sewed this one because i can't help myself and there we go great way to use up book pages don't just go ripping into books it's another thing people get upset about i have quite a few books that i have saved from extinction this way i'm giving them second life so there we go i hope you guys feel inspired and you're gonna start cracking on making some envelopes so remember these two are the same principle that's the wonky one and that's the symmetrical one and then these ones here again same principle this one we're using rectangular paper and this one we're using square paper have a look at the other tutorials that i have mentioned and link down below in the description box please let me know what you think about this video are you feeling inspired any questions you may have any comments please comment thank you for watching and i'll see you in my next video bye

Channel: Treasure Books

Views: 84,633

Keywords: DIY ENVELOPES - No Measuring No Tools!, fabric envelopes, diy envelopes, easy diy envelopes, Flip Down Envelopes, junk journal, journal ideas, diy embellishments, ephemera for junk journals, embellishments for junk journals, ideas for junk journals, ephemera making, mini envelopes, how to make an envelope, use up 12 x 12 paper pads, natasa from treasure books, pocket envelopes, treasure books youtube, 6x6 paper projects, 12x12 paper project, origami, mini envelopes diy

Id: 6u0D34pRLOc

Length: 37min 16sec (2236 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021