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?

Suit-Able Menswear

(Sheesh, could Mr. C look any happier about his suit? I paid for all of them, after all!)

Yup, that's right, we're going with suits for Mr. Cola and the groomsmen! A more casual look goes perfectly with the feel of our wedding, and plus, the cost was about the same as a tux rental, and now the guys get to keep their suits.

Last weekend, we took a page from Miss Button's book, and headed to Kohl's to look for inexpensive suits for the guys. We were looking to spend around $150 to dress the dudes, since that's what we paid for the bridesmaid dresses, but Kohl's didn't have anything we liked in a heather or charcoal grey, although their prices were pretty great (buy 1 get 1 half off). So we headed over to Sears next, and found some nice suits for the right price, however they only had two out of the six sizes we needed (we were also going to buy my dad a suit, since he doesn't have one and my mom wants him to wear one). I was too nervous to buy some of the suits at one store and hope they had more at another, and the Sears stores are always such a mess, I knew it wouldn't do much good to have them call another location.

So on we went down the road to the next mall, to check out J.C. Penny's selection. They had a pretty big assortment to choose from, but most were in the $170+ range; there wasn't anything that was the right color and right price. But across the street at another Sears we found what we were looking for: charcoal suits in everyone's sizes, and on sale!


The jackets were on sale for $83.99 each, and the pants were $35.99.

Mr. C had had about enough shopping at that point, so we headed home, and the following evening I stopped by J.C. Penny to buy ivory shirts for $21.99 each.


I struck out with ties at Pennys, since they only had 4 or less of every color, with no stock hiding in a back room. So I headed to yet another Sears, and managed to find ties that went together, but were different. 2 of one style, 2 of another, 1 by itself (that I stole off a mannequin) and one in the sale bin that would work for my dad. From far away it's hard to even tell the difference between the ties, except my dad's in the bottom of this picture:


My dad's tie was on sale for $5.99 and the other ties were $16.80 each. So before tax, we spent $158.77 each to dress the guys in our wedding. Not bad, I have to say!

What are the dudes in your wedding going to wear?

(all photos in this post were taken by me)

How To: Origami Hearts/Flowers

As many girls do, I used to pass a lot of notes in school, and would always try to figure out cute ways to fold the notes. Someone long ago taught me how to fold 8.5 x 11 inch paper into a heart. Which of course I reserved for passing notes to only the cutest boys ;) ! And when you fold four, you can combine them into a flower!

(A single folded heart, photographed with my shoe-a-day calendar. All photos in this post were taken by me.)

I'm still trying to figure out a way to use these for our wedding, maybe to decorate the front of our out of town boxes? But in the meantime, I thought I'd share this little origami tutorial that I learned in 6th grade.

Start with an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper (or larger/smaller, as long as the aspect ratio is the same):


Fold up one side, so the bottom makes a point:

Open it back up:

Fold the other side up, making another point at the other bottom side:

Open it again:

Push the sides in where your folds criss-cross:

And flatten down to make the bottom have a center point:

You can see how I folded the sides in a little better from the opposite angle:

Next, fold down the front side flaps, so they are lined up with the point at the bottom:

Then, fold the upper sides in, so the angle lines up with the angle of the flaps you just folded down:

Flip it over:

And gently raise it up to make a faint crease where the bottom of the diamond shape is on the now bottom side:

Fold the bottom up so that the bottom is lined up with the faint crease you just made:

Where you just folded the bottom up, fold each half up to make a point at the center bottom (these will be the bottom of your heart):

Now fold the top triangle flap down over the bottom parts you just folded up:

And tuck the bottom flaps into the top flap you just folded down, to hold them in place:

Finally, fold the top two flaps down at about a 45 degree angle (these will be the top points of your heart), and tuck them under to hold them in place:

Flip it back over and you're done!

Fold three more, and you've got a flower:

I would recommend using a bone folder or the like to score your folds as you go for a flatter end result. This also works better with thinner card stock or text weight paper; heavy card stock would result in a much thicker heart.

Can you think of any other ways to incorporate this in a wedding, as either a heart or flower? Fold a giant one to use as an engagement photo prop? Fold a love note to give to your fiance on your wedding morning? String them up and hang as decor instead of bunting flags?

I would love to hear your ideas!