Envelope liners add elegance and a high-quality feeling heft to any envelope! They also look deceptively complicated to DIY, so today I’m writing a short and sweet tutorial over how to make your own.
1. Gather Your Supplies
To make DIY envelope liners, you’ll need an envelope, any pretty piece of paper, scissors, and a pen or a pencil. Be sure to address your envelope before making the liner! The reason it’s best to address the envelope pre-liner is the liner may make the surface of the envelope less smooth than it could be, which could lead to bumpy writing or unexpected spatters.
2. Trace
Now, open your envelope’s top flap and trace around the entire envelope over your piece of paper.
I recommend tracing around your envelope in pencil because you can erase any rogue pencil marks! It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that you might accidentally write on the envelope as you’re tracing around it. (I used a pen — which shows up well in photos — for today’s tutorial.)
3. Cut
Now, use some nice, sharp scissors to cut out the liner. Try your very best to cut inside the lines you traced so you’ve got about 1/8″ – 1/4″ (3 mm – 6 mm) between your cut and the lines, as shown below.
Once you’ve cut the liner out, it will look something like this:
4. Insert, Fold, and Glue
Finish up by inserting your envelope liner into the envelope. If the liner covers up too much of the adhesive at the top of the envelope, simply cut a bit more off the bottom of the liner and stick it in again! Once everything looks good, fold the top flap of the envelope (with the liner inside) down. Then, fold it back up and glue the top part of the liner to the envelope, preferably with a glue stick.
And that’s all there is to making DIY envelope liners! It’s a very simple and rewarding project.
Video
I put together this super short video to show you all the tutorial steps above in action. The video illustrates exactly how easy making a DIY envelope liner can be!
The envelope liner paper in the video is from The Letter Writer’s Complete Resource.
Inspiration
I want to reiterate that you can use any piece of paper to create DIY envelope liners. It’s entirely possible to breathe new life into paper goods by transforming them into an envelope liner!
So, whenever you see a piece of paper that catches your eye, save it for later! It might be just the thing that a future snail mail presentation needs.
Here’s a suggestion if you are sending out a lot of one type of envelope (e.g. for wedding invitations): you can make a template using the process outlined above, then trace around that template to create several envelope liners. I can’t think of a better way to add style and a little bit of extra protection to snail mail!
I hope that you enjoyed reading this short tutorial! If you have any questions about creating DIY envelope liners, please feel free to ask. Thanks very much for reading and enjoy the rest of your day!
Warmly,
