Invitation Creation, Part 1: More DIY Pocketfolds

It's time to reveal our invitations, which will be going out in early April. They've actually been done for a couple weeks (DIY win!), thanks to help from my family and the fact that these are scaled back versions.

Yes, I had to scale back my invitations design. Partly because Mr. Cola wasn't happy about spending so much time at his office laser cutting, partly because, well, they were going to be crazily time consuming. But don't worry, I'll still show them to you, after I detail the ones that will actually be going out to our guests!

If you haven't noticed by now, I'm pretty into my paper products for this wedding, and I love everything to all tie together. I wanted our invitations to have a similar feel to our Save The Dates, so I used the same paper, and made a similar-but-different pocketfold, to go with our STD pocketfolds.

Here is how I made these pocketfolds, if anyone else would like to give them a try. To start, I printed out my outline on the back of my 11" x 17" paper. You can find the template to print the outline for the 5" x 7" pocketfold in the DIY Section of Weddingbee here.


I then cut the pocketfold out with my X-acto knife, and repeated 85 times:

Next, I rounded the cover point, for a softer look:

And then cut little wedges out of the pocket tabs. This allows them to fold in much easier:


Now, on to the folding, for which I broke out a handy lighter to use instead of a bone folder. Start by folding the two tabs in:

Then, use a ruler to make a straight crease right above the tabs, and then fold it in on the crease:

Next, measure the half way point between the bottom of the folded pocket and the other edge before it slants down to a point. The whole distance is 10 inches, so make a mark at 5 inches, as a folding guide. Use the ruler to make another straight crease, and fold.

Then, just fold the pointed cover in, and you have your basic pocketfold shape.

You can either now just glue the tabs to create a pocket, or you can add some extra details if you like. I choose to wrap the pocket in ribbon, just like I did for our Save The Dates. Cut your ribbon to about 9 inches, so you have an inch extra on either side to glue around the pocket tabs:

Glue the ribbon to the front of the pocket first:

Then open the pocket, and glue the ribbon to the tabs, followed by gluing the tabs to the pocketfold:

Pocketfold, check. Decorated pocket, check. But I still felt the pointed end of the pocketfold was a bit plain, so I added a purple punched flower to either side:

And then the pocketfolds were done! :)

Next up, I'll share what I did with the inserts and some fun with the laser cutter.

Have you considered making your own pocketfolds to save on the cost of your invites?