Tutorial - Envelope Journal Ephemera Storage Book

hello everyone it's natasha from treasure books i recently uploaded a video showing these envelope journals or ephemera storage books and i was overwhelmed by the number of people asking me to do a tutorial so here i am with a tutorial we have envelopes and pockets bound into the book so basically these are filled to the brim with goodies and i will also speak about some of the different ways that you can use these in this tutorial we are going to do everything step by step including the cover and you can apply what you learn on making the cover to any journal that you make so everything will be explained i have my notes over here and everything is written down as well for you guys so you can take a screenshot so without further ado let's begin okay the first step is choosing your envelopes and the most important thing is that the envelopes have to be able to be opened up all the way in order to bind them into your book if they are sealed then you can't actually bind them so i actually make my own envelopes i'll be doing this in step nine but if you uh if you can find an envelope that you can pry open you don't have to make your own and sometimes they actually unglue during the tea dyeing process so you can try that and see how you go so this is my first step i have chosen the envelopes that i'm going to use the size i'm going to use and then the next step is working on my cover so i am using a cereal box the envelopes have to have a little room so i'm going to leave a little room around my envelope and that way you know they sit nicely in the book and everything is fine all right so i'm going to mark my cereal box and start cutting here we go so this will be the height of my journal and you can see i have left some space on the top and the bottom and now i just want to mark where i'm going to cut over here so just leaving a little bit of space but because i have my spine i need to cut that in two goes so the first thing i'm going to do is open this up and i'm going to cut this where i've marked it i just want to check that's going to be bound in there so you can see how i'm going to have space all around and now this side needs to be exactly the same so i might measure it and then mark it here okay so this is exactly five and a half inches from my spine so i'm going to mark half five and a half inches here and that's how much i need to trim off on this side here we go this is going to be my cover the next step i've got here which is optional is reinforcing the spine so this is not very thick cardboard so i want to make sure that my spine stays nice and strong because i'll be having lots of envelopes in there and i'll be stuffing them with things so i want to make sure that everything is kind of keeping its form so the way that i reinforce my spine you can use some leftovers from you know cutting these boxes or i'm using a quite a thick cardstock over here and i cut it to size and i'm simply going to glue it down on the inner spine just like that but i'm just wondering if i should do it on this side i'm actually going to turn it this way so that i have nice clear surface over here and i'm going to glue this piece on the inside of my cover just like so i'm going to use two different glues a little bit of glue stick and then a stronger glue to make sure that that's all nice and glued down properly and then once we bind it will also go through both this and the cover so our reinforcement is not going to go anywhere but i'm just applying a second type of glue just like this so it's exactly the same size as my cover here but then it has to be slightly smaller than my inside spine so that the book can be opened and closed properly i left just a tiny little bit of space on both sides just like that okay so for our next step the step number four i have decided to use this material to cover my book and i'm going to use a little piece of this to cover the inside of my spine first okay here we go so i'm going to glue this piece down on the inside of my cover it can be slightly shorter up the top and bottom but i want to cover the folds as well these folds here the reason why i'm doing this is because when the book is finished and you open it up this is what you'll be able to see you won't be able to see an unfinished inside spine you won't be able to see this or these sides here so that's why we're doing this step i'm just using this clear glue that's a school glue i guess because it's very easy to be spread if you're using fabric that is quite see-through or that is not thick enough and then the glue can spread sort of through the fat the fabric you'll be able to see that glue it's going to discolor the fabric so you want a really really thin area of glue and i'm just doing the spine first spreading it with my fingers just like that and now i'm going to pop my fabric down make sure it's glued down and now i'll pop some glue here as well on the sides and the same on this side and of course i prefer to use fabric because fabric will not tear with the constant opening and closing of the book and there we go that looks good now we're at step five and i'm going to cover the outer cover so this is my inner cover and now i want to cover this with my fabric you can use pretty paper as well but paper can tear so that's why i prefer to use fabric so i just want to check how i want my fabric to sit and i've cut it down larger than my book you can see i've left space all around and then when it's glued down it's going to look that's going to be my front cover and i'm quite happy with that so now what i do is i'm going to do exactly the same as what i did here and i'm going i'm going to do it section by section so i'm going to apply glue on my spine first and i really really have to be careful not to have too much glue that's going to seep through my fabric and discolor it so it has to be a really thin layer of glue probably best to have something underneath so i'm not getting glue on my fabric and i'm extending the glue slightly to the sides here and now i'm going to put it down or you can put fabric over the top turn it around and just make sure that that's nicely glued down if you're using a thicker fabric you don't have to worry about the glee glue seeping through if you're using upholstery fabric and just want to do this maybe a couple of times and now open it up to where it's being glued down and do exactly the same thing on the rest okay so the glue is applied you can see it's starting to dry a little bit so you have to kind of work fairly quickly and now pop that down and now we'll do the same thing on this side probably best to apply less glue than you need and then apply a bit more rather than like apply too much and then have to you know take it away here we go that's looking quite good and there's no glue seeping i have noticed inside here you can see in there there's some glue that sits through my fabric and that actually stays darker like that it doesn't bother me because it's on the inside but if it was on the outside right there on my front cover i would have to look at how i can sort of hide it or embellish it or i don't know hide the glue basically now that the outside is done i want to wrap this fabric on the inside of my cover there's different ways of doing this you can trim the corners and then do it that way you can do it this way this is the way that i like to do it so first i'm going to work on the corners so i apply a little bit of glue and this is my other glue this is a quick drying glue because once you pop this down you want it to sort of dry fairly quickly you don't want it to be opening up i do my corners first just like this and then i'm going to do the sides so now i need to apply some glue on the inside here and i might go with this glue again and spread it around just like i did with the previous steps and then really tighten that move it up and glue it down just like that and we will worry about these parts in just a moment so we'll do the same thing all around i might do this side next okay and now over here so before i continue when i'm at these sides over here i don't want my corners to overlap because that will create bulge so it's just a matter of playing around want them to sit next to each other like this so maybe i will open this up move that in like so and then see what happens and then just keep playing around with it until i'm satisfied so so far it's looking good and this is perfect example you can see here i've applied too much glue there's a little bit of glue seepage through my fabric and this will stay like this when it dries it doesn't bother me again because it's inside so i wasn't paying too much attention i wasn't being very pedantic like i was on the outside so that's still okay because we will be somewhat covering this anyway all right and now i will do exactly the same thing on this side okay the next step is to sew it all around but first i need to let it dry sewing is optional i personally like to sew and that's why i'm not giving these parts here too much tension if i wasn't sewing around i would make sure that everything is glued down so i would apply glue in here and under here you know you just play around with it you want it to sit you don't want it to be like this you want this to be sitting nice and flush right another option you have is to use book corners like this and that will you would do that as the last step and then that would make your corners also sit nice and beautifully so and that looks really quite nice on books just like that but i am choosing to sew because i like the look of sewing now that that glue is completely dry i can put it through my sewing machine i'm going to sew on this side on the wrong side so that way i can hold my corners in place as i'm sewing and i'm going to use a straight stitch all around and here we go i'm going to start on the back cover and just using normal thread and universal needle and here we go you can see those neat corners see how neat that looks and then of course this is the more important side the correct side looks really really neat okay so now what i'm going to do i might just trim off some excess that fabric that i've got over here and also if i've got any overlap there's just a little bit of overlap here it's bulging just a tiny little bit so i'm just going to trim that off and now for these bits here i'm going to apply just a little bit of glue underneath it doesn't have to be perfect but i just want a tiny little bit of glue there just to hold it down these are all of the boring details that seem as if you can get away without doing it and you probably could but i think it's these little details that matter in the end if you are wanting to sell your journals and if you're wanting to get a decent price for them it's all of these little details that actually do make the difference okay so the final step from making the cover is to cover these panels over here so you want to cut your paper to size i've already done that so we're not wasting time so you cut your paper to size you ink the edges you sew around you can see here i've done some sewing i didn't ink the edges might do that now okay edges inked so it's all in the details all right so you want to cut down to size obviously and it has to be you want to leave a little bit of space from the fold and a little bit of space from the sides so these are mine and now i'm going to glue them down so for this step i'm using yes paste i got this on ebay i really want a strong glue i don't want this to be peeling off at any time so yes paste works really well and i usually pair it with a little bit of my craft glue just on the edges but i would suggest you use the strongest glue that you have so i've just applied a really thin layer of the yes paste and i'm going to go in with my craft glue or you can use white glue or whatever you have and i'm just going to do those edges and the stitches so i'm just applying it next to the stitch and then the glue will spread to the edge and here we go so that's in place and now i'm just going to make sure it's adhered really really well press down on the sides as well and get some if there's any glue seepage i want to get that off right away okay and now i'll do exactly the same thing on this side and here we go so that's both glued both sides are glued and i'm going to lay it under something heavy so i just want to show you this see this here no matter how much how hard i sort of push down with my rag over there these little sides are kind of not sitting flush down you know on on the cover and that's probably because of the slight bulging of the fabric for underneath from underneath and that is why i want to lay it under something heavy like really heavy so then that can be pushed down you can see on this one that's completed see that completely flat with the cover that's what i want i don't want any of these edges to start coming off just a personal preference now for the envelopes there are lots of tutorials and templates out there on pinterest and on youtube on making your own envelopes if you don't have an envelope punch board like i do this is envelope punch board by we are memory keepers i wouldn't recommend for you guys to go rush out and buy this thing because it's not a magical tool it doesn't make the envelopes for you you still have to do the work i have already chosen the size envelope that i want which is this one here so i'm doing this one here i need my paper size to be 10 by 10 and then i'm scoring it four and a bit so i will go through that i mean this is not important but just so you can see how i do it the first thing i need to do is to trim my paper down to ten by ten okay so here's my paper that's ten by ten another thing that's not so great about this is the fact that you have to be very precise with your measurements otherwise the envelope is not going to work basically so now that i've got my paper at 10 by 10 it tells me over here i need my first score line to be at 4 by 4 and 1 8 of an inch so then i line it up here at 4 and 1 8 and i need my little tool here to score here we go and i make my first score line and also here is another little problem if you're making large envelopes that the board is not big enough so then you have to kind of just find a way you you see what i mean my paper is bigger than my board so i can't score all the way to the end of my paper more of a problem with larger envelopes okay and now i need to punch this here and now i'm turning i'm not looking at any of the scores over here anymore or measurements all i'm doing is lining up my score line with this little thing here so i just have to line it up so i don't need to do any i don't need to be checking any measurements anymore i'm just lining up punching and then do that again over here anti-clockwise look it took me a while to work this out even though there's instructions it took me a little while to remember how it's actually done i had to watch some videos as well because you tend to forget so and then line it up again it has to be pretty well lined up and if it's not then the envelope's not going to work and then this is what we get just like the picture here there we go there's the envelope so all i have to do now is fold i'm going to turn it this way so this will be the inside of my envelope and i'm just folding i mean look it's definitely easier than drawing out a pattern and then cut it out cutting it out by hand that's for sure so don't get me wrong i mean i'm pointing out the bad things because i don't want you to feel like you have to have this thing you don't have to but it'll be nice if you did you know okay and now i need to round this corner here there we go and now i need to trim this bit off because i like to be precise i'm going to use my ruler to mark where i'm cutting and there we go here is my envelope and it's looking pretty good and these are all of the envelopes that i'm going to put in my journal that i'm making and i'm using 10 envelopes and then i'm going to have two pocket pages so in total we will have 12 signatures and my spine is 2 and 1 8 of an inch just in case if you're wondering how many envelopes you can fit into a spine this project will take a lot less time if you're using a smaller spine and you only have say four envelopes in there okay and so i have ten envelopes and then i'm having two double pocket pages which is this here you can see pocket pages here and then pocket pages here and the rest are all envelopes so that's just what i've chosen to do just you know change it up a bit so for my pocket pages pretty straightforward but i'm just using one of my envelopes just for size because i want these to be exactly the same size as my envelopes here we go simply fold it down like that and i need to get rid of this here and now simply fold this in half and i'm just going to mark where i need to trim the side because i want everything to be the same size here we go i think i'm just going to trim off a little bit here to make this pocket a little bit shallower here we go that's a little bit better i like it a little bit shallower so now what i need to do is seal these edges over here you can do that with glue just so it's closed i'm just going to sew around because i like that look that's all and here we go i have just sewn the three sides with a zigzag stitch just to make it special and i have two of those ten envelopes and two double pocket pages our next step is binding so i like to make a binding template because we are sewing in so many different signatures i want the spine to look perfect like this everything's in order everything's straight there's no crookedness and it's just it looks nice that with the template just ignore these punches at the holes for now with the template i want it to be the same size as the inner spine so the same you can see it's a perfect fit and then you divide it into 12 because we're doing 12 signatures if you're doing 10 signatures you divide it into ten i divided it into twelve lines and they're all exactly the same with the part for now don't worry about these holes yet okay so it's just the first template so now we need the template number two it sounds complicated but it's not i'm just using scrap piece of paper so the template number two has to be exactly the same height as your envelopes because i'm using this template to bind my envelope into my journal okay and so now what i do is i fold it in half i find the middle the middle here and then usually i just randomly sort of pick a spot like this and then make a fold there so basically what you get is then you mark your foldings the middle and then you get two markings here with the same space away from the sides so now that you've got this you grab your first template you've got your lines you only have these lines so you don't have these horizontal lines you only have the vertical lines and then you line you pop your piece of paper down you line it with one of your lines and you mark you see so you mark where you you will be poking the holes so we've got middle here here okay you run a line across and where they all meet that's where you poke the holes into your spine god i hope this is not really confusing so let's say you're starting from scratch you would measure your inner spine and then you would cut it down and you get a blank piece of paper like this then you can use your calculator for this step let's say it's two and a half inches two and a half inches divided by twelve so you have to make a mark on i can't work in inches let's say it's how many centimeters so 6.2 centimeters divided by 12 and i have to mark at 0.5 so then i will go ahead and i will mark at 0.5 say something like that so i have divided it into 12 equal parts i guess and then i do the same up the top and then i meet the lines here we go 12 lines the next thing i want to do is grab a scrap piece of paper and it has to be the same height as my envelope there we go same height as my envelope i folded in half just to find the middle because i'll be doing a three pamphlet stitch so i'll fold it in half and then maybe about an inch over here somewhere i do this get another fold so when i open that up i have three i don't know if you can see one two three folds and i'm just going to mark these this is my template for punching the holes and i just write a t as in top so i know always that's see here as well that that's the top rather than this way now that i've got this i grab template number one and i center it so i have to find the center of my lines over here i line it up and i mark and i might do that same thing over here i line it up so it's in the middle i'm not doing a great job because i'm not really lining things up i'm just demonstrating and then i do this so that's the template complete here is my proper template here so i line it up onto my spine that's good and i want to hold it in place while i'm poking the holes into the spine so i'm just going to use these clips and once again just make sure that's looking good and here we go so i'm poking holes at every point where the lines cross okay there we go and now let's have a look you can't really see anything but there we go that's all in there and that's pretty much how you make a cover for any book really and make the markings for your signatures but of course it's much easier when you have three signatures or two signatures than when you have 12 so that's why this is sounds a little bit complicated this whole template business okay so now that the holes are poked into my spine the next thing we need to do is bind each envelope so i'm going to start with this one and then i'm going to really speed up this process and going back to template number two this is my template here so the sides that i cut is the side i'm binding in because it will look like this so i need to always make sure that i'm putting my template to that side rather than this side and i really need to make sure that it's nice and centered and then i'm using my markings over here to poke a hole okay i have my thread ready this is going to be my number one envelope so i am going to bind it into the very first set of holes so i'm starting in the middle here it is my first set of holes over here and simply do a three pamphlet stitch to bind my envelope in okay i want to make sure that everything is tight i want that envelope to be tight i don't want it to be moving around so let me just say that this is a little bit time consuming it sounds very straightforward you just bind some envelopes in no big deal like 10 10 minute job right but as you can see it's not a 10 minute job and that's my first envelope now i'm going to go in with my second envelope and so on so i have placed them in order that i want them so i want three envelopes and then the pocket page and then four envelopes in the middle and then the pocket page and then three envelopes at the end and i'm just binding them in one by one i'm going to speed up the process or rather i'm not going to film this next section because i'm going to be doing exactly the same thing i might film just one so first i'm using a template to poke the holes into the envelope and then i'm binding my second envelope right next to my first one starting in the middle over here there we go that's bound in we need to tighten don't go too crazy because you might rip through the envelope and i like to just tie a knot and a bow inside and here we go all of my envelopes are bound and that took 28 minutes just so you guys don't think that everyone else can make journals quicker than you and before i continue i just want to ink the edges just a tiny little bit on all of my envelopes so those are my envelopes all by bound in and that's the spine and everything is looking nice and neat and even so the next step is gluing the envelopes shut so what i do i just have a scrap piece of paper that i'm going to place inside like this so that if there's any glue seeping it's not going to seal things that shouldn't be sealed and then apply a little bit of glue here and here and close the envelope make sure there's no glue seeping of course and then pull this out and that is it on to the next one there we go and i'm going to finish gluing everything off camera and then i'll be right back now that everything is glued and dried i can go ahead and fill it up with goodies let's see how much i can fit in there in my first envelope i'm going to put in some doilies and i made this mini little booklet like a little mini journal and that's going to go in here and i had an idea that this could be like a 12 month type of a planner thing so each envelope and pocket can be for a month and then you can have bills or little journals for every month in there something like that in the second envelope i'm going to put envelopes just some different types some are embossed like this one here some are tea dyed some have the writing paper inside but i think it's fun to have a supply of envelopes for our journals and also one of these scrappy little staggered notebooks that i made and i have a tutorial on and that can go in this envelope now for this one here i'm going to put in some different types of laces but because i'll be selling these journals i want to put things in there that can be used for journal making embellishing and all that sort of stuff so i wanna all different types of things but i want it to sit really nice and neat in there that's better okay for my pocket over here i'm going to put a paper bag in there a little coin envelope that i made some extra paper and this wrap around little envelope it's just fun to have all these different things and in this one i'm going to put some of these pretty papers that can be used this one is t dyed and embossed and inked and then here journaling spot that looks really pretty okay so for my next envelope i'm putting these wallpaper wallpapers i was going to say wallpaper samples but i guess they are samples and they are all folded in half so they can be used as journal covers some of them have writing on the inside like here and usually i just cover that with scrapbook paper i line them with scrapbook paper to make a journal so it will be fun if you're using this journal for a yearly type of thing you can make little booklets out of these now in this one here i'm going to put this some writing paper a handmade tag and then a little pouch what did i put in here some beautiful embossed paper really pretty and that all lives in there now for this one here i've got some little sewn images another paper coin envelope this one here is like a little pocket that can be glued on a page like that and then i've i'm including these samples of leather or whatever material this is not leather and i like to use these i sort of cut them down and use them as book plates in my journals so that goes in there in this pocket here i'm going to put a whole heap of journaling spots and things like that and then also this cork a little thing that i also like to use as a book plate on journals okay it's getting pretty chunky okay now for this one here i am putting this this is um just sewn onto some tea date paper it's like a journaling spot for a journal and then i'm gonna place this card in there this can also make a nice cover for a journal a mini journal that can go in there and then one of these envelopes with these little things in there i have a tutorial on these ones as well origami envelopes all right so here i'm going to place just all different types of things some stickers some sewn images again onto some paper a little card over here and a little handmade butterfly i also have a tutorial on these they are beautiful page embellishments or even something like this on an envelope looks great and this one here i'm placing five different size cards this little tiny one and then going to this giant one over here and in this last pocket i'm going to put a whole heap of bits and pieces some tags some of this tea dyed stamped cardstock a little zone tag and just all sorts of different things that can be used to embellish let's see it is looking quite chunky and it weighs nearly half a kilo so so much fun and i have two of those i'm going to list them in my etsy but i'll just do one listing but the covers are different and the things inside are similar but you know some differences so there you go this project can be done many different ways you could have two signatures for example in here and then two envelopes in the middle you can bind in an envelope in the middle of a signature as your middle page so i mean there's so many things that you can do and you can use the steps that i use for this cover to make any type of a journal so this is just one way of doing things so i hope you have fun with it i'm going to place these sheets side by side now so you can take a screenshot if you want to here we go i would absolutely love to hear your thoughts about this project please leave me a comment down below and like the video if you like the video and here is the last page if you have any questions please leave them down below and i want to thank you again for spending some time with me today and i'll see you in my next video bye

Channel: Treasure Books

Views: 325,252

Rating: 4.9608555 out of 5

Keywords: natasha from treasure books, natasa from treasure books, envelope journal, ephemera storage book, how to bind envelopes into a journal, junk journal cover tutorial, junk journal tutorial, junk journal cover from a cereal box

Id: E5_HL7kdNmU

Length: 36min 20sec (2180 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021