I have been rather lazy when it comes to posting of late so today, hopefully I will make up for it with this tutorial!  Now, please don’t get put off by the many steps it has as I tried to show more steps in order to explain less and show more.  Now this isn’t going to be for the absolute beginner and wont explain every detail.

Ok, so on with the tutorial.

Step 1
Draw yourself a rectangle in the shape of your envelope.  It doesn’t matter too how big it is as long as it’s envelope looking.

Step 2
On a new layer, draw a square slightly larger than your envelope.  For this part it helps for it to be a different colour.  Take no notice of colours right now as layer styles will do all our colouring later.

Step3
Make a selection of the square and then smooth it.  This is where personal choice comes in to play, so make it as rounded or as pointed as you want your envelope lid to be.  Around 5px is what I used.  Invert the selection and remove the corners.

Step 4
Rotate the square 1/4 of the way around (hold shift while rotating).

Step 5
Using a “technical term” here, squish it down a little using transform.

Step 6
Select your envelope but keep working on our squished square layer and nudge it to the edges meet the envelope.

Step 7
Go ahead and delete everything below the top edge of our envelope.

Step 8
Duplicate our now envelope flap and move it to the bottom.

Step 9
On a new layer make a circular selection similar to that below and fill it.

Step 10
Grab the selection of the back part of the envelope (our first rectangle), invert and delete.  Duplicate our new shape and flip it horizontally.  Move our new 2nd shape to the other side of the envelope to create our side flaps.  At this point you should merge the 2 side pieces together.

Step 11
Now we add colour.  On any of the layers set a gradient overlay of a soft grey to white.  Copy the layer style your happy with and paste it to all the other layers.

Step 12
Create a new layer beneath that of the bottom flap.  Select the shape of the bottom flap and then fill it with black.  Apply a Gaussian Blur of around 1.5-2.  Grab a selection of the back part of the envelope, invert it and delete the unwanted shadow.

Step 13
Create a new layer beneath the side flaps and grab a selection of them.  Nudge the selection up 1 or 2 pixels and fill it with a light to medium grey.

Step 14
Beneath our bottom and side flaps create a new layer and draw a rectangle letter.

Step 15
Give your paper some colour.  It’s really up to you at this point but I chose to keep the gradient on paper.

Step 16
Create a new layer above the paper and create a 1 pixel border inside the edge of a slightly lighter colour.

Step 17
Once more another layer above the last.  Grab a selection of the paper and draw a darker to no-colour gradient on the top part of the paper.  Once your done and happy with the colour, shrink the selection by 1 pixel and delete what is left.

Step 18
Choose a darkish colour and draw some small lines (used 1px) to resemble some text.

Step 19
Go back to the paper layer and create a new one beneath it.  Grab a selection of the paper and fill it with black.  Gaussian blur it and play around with the amount until you get a nice shadow.

Step 20
Almost done!  Multiple select pretty much everything so you can invert the selection and remove the paper shadow that leeks outside of the envelope area.

Step 21
Make a selection of the top and back part of the envelope and on a new layer (beneath the paper) create a stroke of 2-3 pixels.

Your all done!  Play around with the colours on everything and see what you can come up with!  You could make a envelope for all kinds of occasions.  You can easily make a closed envelope but just flipping the top flap upside down!

Feel free to comment and if you “borrow” it for your website please don’t hotlink and do give credit where it’s due.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful! Happy photoshopping!

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