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?

Saving The Date, Part 1: Handmade Pocket Folds

The design of our STDs (it still cracks me up that we can call it that! I know, I'm 10 years old.) evolved over about a month or so. I always knew I wanted to do a magnet, since I always loved receiving them, but had a hard time figuring out if or what we needed to accompany them. I did a poll on Weddingbee.com, and a lot of people said just sticking the magnet in an envelope would be good enough, but somehow I just wasn't convinced.

I then found this cute post using photo corners to attach the magnet to a card, and I was hooked on that idea. I was also smitten with pocket folds, but man, are they expensive! So I started thinking, what if I just made my own pocket folds, with the magnet inside? There are quite a few tutorials out there on how to make them, but my problem was the size of the paper needed. I was already set on using this paper from LCI Paper.


But it only comes in 8.5 x 11 (for $20.51 for a 50 pack) or 27.5 x 39.37 (for $232.51 for a 100 pack). I really didn't want to spend that much money for 100 of the large sized sheets, plus it seemed like they would just be too big and too hard to handle easily. So I decided to make my own template for a pocket fold made out of the 8.5 x 11 paper.

I started with a cutting mat, ruler, pencil, x-acto knife, lighter and a sheet of paper.

Using the lines on my cutting mat, I placed the ruler at 2.5 inches from the bottom of the paper (paper is lined up with the cutting mat lines, in landscape). I then lightly drew a line at the 2.5 inch mark, all the way across the paper, and made little hatch marks at 4, 5 and 10 inches. I cut along the horizontal line from the left side of the paper until just after the 5 inch mark. I also used the line on the mat to make a hatch mark at the top of the paper at 10 inches.
Next I moved the ruler to the side so the two hatch marks at 10 inches were lined up, and I cut down the side with the x-acto knife, until I hit the line that I'd drawn across the whole sheet of paper.

Then I moved the ruler over to the 4 inch mark on the horizontal line, and cut straight down from this mark.

What you're left with is this shape.

And here you can see how I cut all the way over to the 5 inch mark on the horizontal line, making a tab.

Now it's time to get out the lighter and make some folds. I know you scratched you head when you saw the lighter on the supplies list, no, I'm not burning paper, I just used it instead of a bone folder. It works just as good, and I didn't want to spend money on a folder when I could easily use something from our junk drawer! Start by folding over the left side, making a card shape, scoring with the lighter to make a clean fold.

Unfold the paper back flat, and then fold along the horizontal line so the pocket is folded up.

Flatten the paper out again, and using the x-acto knife, cut out little angled pieces off the tops of the tabs. This will help the tabs fold in better.

Next, fold the two tabs in. This is also a good time to erase the hatch marks at the bottom of the sheet.

Re-fold the pocket up.

And then re-fold the front, making the final product 5 x 6 inches. After all of these folds and re-folds I used the lighter to make nice crisp folds.

This is what it looks like inside, with the tabs forming a pocket.

So we've got the basic shape of the pocket folds done, and I COULD just go ahead and glue the tabs and be done. But nooooo, that would be too easy! So I added an additional element: ribbon! I used the same lilac satin ribbon from the card box, and layered it with chocolate grosgrain. Since the STDs are 5 inches wide, I cut the ribbon into 7 inch strips.

And I am crazy, so I had to iron all the ribbon.

After ironing, I glued the satin to the grosgrain, and then glued the layered ribbon onto the pocket of the pocket folds, and secured the tabs to the inside of the paper.

The finished pocket:

Stockpiling pocket folds. I had to make 82 total (and grrrr, Mr. Cola snuck in a couple extra invites, so I had to go back and make three more).

I ended up doing these in sections, to make the process more streamlined. So I did all the cutting first, then the folding, then the ribbons, etc. I also grouped these in sections of 5 pocket folds, to make it a lot easier to keep track of how many I was making.

Next up in part 2, I'll show you what I actually put in these pocket folds!

Did you end up making your own template for one of your wedding DIY projects?

(all pictures in this post were taken by me)