This tutorial is about creating a brown envelope in Adobe Photoshop from scratch. I am using Adobe Photoshop CS3 but in this tutorial you can use lower versions as well. You can download the sample PSD file from the link at the end of this tutorial.

Final product

Brown Envelope

Step 1

Create a new file with a width of 400 pixels and height of 600 pixels. You can set the resolution from 72 or higher then set the Background contents to Transparent. Make sure your foreground color is set to # F0B95C and background color is set to #FFFFFF (White).

figure 1.0

Select the rounded rectangular tool or press U twice if shape tool is on the rectangular tool. Set the Radius to 3 pixels and start drawing a rectangular shape filling almost the entire layer. Let’s name this layer – envelope.

figure 1.1

Step 2

Draw another rectangle shape but this time just about 180 pixels in height from the top edge of the envelope layer. This will serve as the flap of the envelope. Remember that we are still using the rounded rectangular tool.

Use the Direct Selection Tool (A) then select the lower left corner of the flap. Move the selected nodes to the right for 10 pixels by doing Ctrl – Right Arrow. Now, select the lower right corner of the flap and move the selected nodes to the other direction (Ctrl – Left Arrow).

figure 2.0

We need to apply a drop shadow on the flap layer to create an effect that it’s indeed the flap of an envelope. Use these settings:

figure 2.1

After doing so, we need to create a clipping mask. You can do this by selecting the Flap layer then hold Alt and Ctrl then press G (Alt+Ctrl+G).

figure 2.2

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