If you've ever wanted to make envelopes for your junk journals but stopped before you started because you thought you needed a ruler, a bone folder, and some kind of precision — this video is your answer. Eight envelope styles, no measuring, no tools beyond scissors and glue, and every one of them made from whatever paper you have on hand: book pages, tea-dyed paper, scrapbook pads, coloring pages, even avocado-dyed paper pulled from a dyeing session you probably forgot you did.
What we cover
Eight ways to make envelopes entirely freehand — four shown in full tutorial, four as bonus ideas with links to dedicated tutorials. The four main styles are: wonky asymmetrical envelopes (freehand cut, any size), symmetrical corner-cut envelopes (same principle, cleaner result), the folded asymmetrical style using A4 or rectangular paper, and that same folded technique applied to 12×12 and 6×6 square paper pads. Everything is shown with real materials, real mistakes left in, and real embellishing from scratch.
What you'll learn
How to make wonky, freehand asymmetrical envelopes from any paper — including book pages, tea-dyed paper, and scraps — using four folds and four freehand cuts, with no marking beyond where your flaps meet.
- Long and narrow orientation (portrait)
- Wider, more typical envelope orientation (landscape)
- How to play with the top flap: centered, slanted, or slightly curved
How to make symmetrical corner-cut envelopes using the same folding principle — fold four flaps, then trim the four corners instead of cutting freehand. Cleaner lines, still no measuring.
- How to decide how much to trim the top flap down
- How to use the trimmed corner strips as embellishment material
- How to add a wonky top flap element to an otherwise symmetrical envelope if you want that mix
The folded asymmetrical envelope technique using rectangular paper — fold to find the middle, fold both sides in to meet, fold bottom up and top down, trim the inner triangles. No measuring at any point.
- How to eyeball a straight fold using a spare piece of paper as a guide
- How to trim the internal triangles so the flap opens and closes cleanly
- How to slant the top flap for a more interesting profile
- How to add a pocket to the envelope front using one of the trimmed-off corner pieces
How to apply the same folded technique to square paper — 12×12 and 6×6 pads — the method is identical but square paper produces a different proportion, and where you place your initial fold determines the final envelope size.
How to bind an envelope into a journal — leave the envelope open during binding, then glue it closed once the journal is fully bound.
How to work with doilies as embellishment — fold the doily to the back before gluing, or trim off the back half if you don't want doily showing on the reverse. Dab glue in small spots rather than trying to coat the whole surface.
How to embellish freehand with whatever's on hand — lace snippets, paper flowers, butterflies, brads, stamped paper pieces, distress ink, machine sewing. Shown in practice across multiple envelopes, not just described.
How to use book pages for small envelopes — including how to orient the page so the writing reads correctly on the front, and how machine sewing the sides makes a neat, sturdy finish.
Tips & gotchas
Leave as much as possible on the side flaps when you cut. This is the one mistake that's hardest to undo — if you cut your side flaps too narrow, you end up with a gap where the envelope doesn't fully close. I left one of those gaps in the video on purpose so you can see it. The fix is easy (a snippet of lace glued over it does the job), but the better move is to be generous when you're cutting. You can always trim later; you can't add paper back.
Mark where the flaps meet on the inside before you glue. Just a small pencil mark where one flap overlaps the other — it tells you exactly where to stop applying glue. Without it, glue wanders into the interior of the envelope and you've sealed it before you meant to.
If you end up with a gap, hide it. A small piece of lace, a strip of paper, a snippet of trim — anything goes on a wonky envelope. The aesthetic of these envelopes welcomes imperfection, and an embellishment placed to cover a gap looks completely intentional.
If your sewing goes crooked, add a second stitch. Two parallel stitch lines look deliberate. One wonky line looks like a mistake. This applies to machine sewing along the sides or across a strip embellishment — a second pass transforms it.
Inking takes the longest part of this process. Out of everything — folding, cutting, gluing, embellishing — inking the edges is what actually eats time. If you're short on time or making a large batch, skip it. But if you have ten minutes to spare, it's the thing that makes the most visual difference. Inked edges read as finished in a way that unfinked edges don't.
When making small envelopes from book pages, turn the paper upside down first. The writing on the front of your envelope needs to face the right way. If you fold without flipping, the text on the front panel ends up inverted. Flip the page, then fold.
For square paper envelopes, where you place your first fold determines the envelope size. Fold higher up the paper and you get a smaller envelope; fold lower and you get a larger one. Since there's no measuring, it's worth pausing before that first fold to think about the size you actually want.
Don't go looking for the perfect embellishment piece. It can always be better — there will always be a more perfect flower, a better-scaled butterfly, a snippet of lace that suits it more. Good enough is perfect. I say this and then spend three minutes in the video hunting for exactly the right thing, so I know this is easier said than done — but the reminder is worth keeping.
Once you have a few of each style made, they stack beautifully as a set in a journal, and the variety of shapes — long and narrow, square, asymmetrical — keeps a spread visually interesting without needing to match. The fabric envelope tutorial, the pocket envelope tutorial, and the flip-down envelope tutorial mentioned in the video are all linked in the description if you want to keep going from here.
