Fold the sides in, being diligent to fold exactly from corner to corner. Being exact is what will make your envelopes crisp and even and not lopsided-looking.
Fold the bottom the same way - corner to corner.
All folded and ready for gluing!
Take a look at where the sides and bottom overlap - glue goes in the overlap area. If you get glue outside that overlap area, you'll glue flaps shut or glue two envelopes together when they're stacked. I've shaded to show where the overlap areas are. Glue ONLY goes within those shaded areas.
Within that shaded area, you'll lay a line of glue close enough to the edge to make the edges tight, but not so close that glue squeezes out into areas you don't want it. I've drawn a squiggly black line to show where to set the bead-line of glue.
Use as thin a bead of glue as you can. It doesn't take much glue to hold paper flaps together, and too much wet glue will squeeze out where you don't it and warp the paper. That doesn't look nice.
All glued!
Now it's time to fold down the top flaps.
The five-dollar-bill fits inside very nicely.
I secured the top flap down with a dot of glue.
Don't forget to close your bottle of glue! Glue evaporates pretty quickly, and thickened glue is harder to work with when you're trying to get a very thin bead for envelope flaps.
These pretty envelopes with triangular flaps work well for smaller envelopes where you have space to spread it out on an 8 1/2x11" paper, but larger envelopes sometimes require squared flaps to make them fit. To see if something will fit in an envelope made from an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper, lay it on the paper and wrap the paper around it. You have to be able to get the paper all the way around it with a little left over to glue. Sometimes it works by turning to a diagonal, sometimes it works by using narrow rectangular flaps. (I'll show how to make a rectangular flapped envelope another time.)
Of course, you're not limited to 8 1/2x11" paper. I've used gift wrap, grocery bags, manila folders, light cardboard from packaging, poster board, and pretty bags from nicer department stores.
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