Making Envelopes and Liners with the SU! Envelope Punch Board

One of the coolest tools that Stampin’ Up! has in its arsenal – and you can have it, too! – is the Envelope Punch Board. With this tool and some paper, you can make danged near any size envelope you need! And, with this tutorial, I’ll also show you how to make a customized liner – that can match, contrast or otherwise complement your hand-crafted card masterpieces.

Take a look-see:

1. On the Punch Board, find the size of your finished card. For this example, we’re making an envelope for a standard A2 card (4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″).

As you can see, the paper size for a 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ card is 8″ x 8″. But, we’re going to add 1/8″ to accommodate the extra bling we almost always have on a card. If your card is one layer – and has no “extra” stuff on it, you could use the straight 8″ x 8″. Either way, the score line measurement – in this case 3 1/2″ – will remain the same!

2. Place your cut paper onto the Envelope Punch Board, lining up the left edge with the Score Line number we found in Step 1.

In this case, line up with the 3 1/2″ line

3. Use the punch “button” in the center of the board to punch your first cutout. Then, use the included bone folder to score the diagonal that’s cut into the board.

4. Rotate the paper 1/4 turn counter-clockwise, and line your first scored line up with the little pointy thing that’s coming out of the punch button in the center of the board.

Punch again, and score the second line.

5. Repeat two more times, so that you end up with four score (and seven years ago….oh, sorry!) lines and four punch outs. Looks like this!

6. Using the outside of the center punch (the corner rounder), punch your flaps. Some folks only do the top flap (if you do that be sure that you’ve picked a flap that can be the top – that has to do with the shape of your card and where/how you want to slide the card in and how you want to close it up!) but I like to do all 4.

7. If you’re making a liner, then proceed with this next step. If you’re not, skip to step 13 and finish up your envelope. If you’re doing a liner, you’ll need to measure the envelope before you fold it all up and stick it together. Here’s what you’re going to measure:

Measure from the center-of-the-tip of the top flap, to the center if the curve of the notch on the right side of the top flap.

In this case, I got 4 3/8″.

8. Cut a square piece of the paper you plan to use as the liner to the dimensions you found in Step 7 (so…. 4 3/8″ x 4 3/8 for this liner). Then, put it back on the punch board, lining up the left side with the line that corresponds to “your measurement from Step 7″ minus 1/8”. So….in this case, line the left edge up with the 4 1/4″ mark.

9. Punch the center punch.

10. Flip the paper over (so it’s upside down) and punch the opposite corner.

11. Find the “top” of the liner – you can tell which one it is because the curves of the punch outs follow the same curves of the punch outs on your envelope. Then you do the corner rounder on the top of your liner.

This is how it ought to look when you’re done!

See how the punch outs go together? If we’d punched the other point, the curves would have been cattywompous. Which IS a sort-of-word but , since it means “All Messed Up, In Disarray, A Mess”, is NOT something you want in your envelope!.

12. SNAIL the liner to the envelope. Then go back to your trimmer, line it up and score the liner – you’re going to score in the same spot as the scoreline was on the envelope (you’re just making it so the liner is as cooperative about folding and closing as the envelope itself will be).

Here’s how it should look

13. With that, you’re ready to fold and gently (!) burnish all your score lines. You can use Sticky Tape or SNAIL to adhere the various tabs together. You just want to be sure that they’re all really stuck together! You can either fold the sides in first and then attach the bottom flap on the outside of those, or you can fold the bottom up first and attach the sides to it on the outside. I prefer the first way.