Wedding Wednesday: DIY Invitations

It's once again Wedding Wednesday!  Today I will be walking you through how I DIY-ed our invitations.

When I started looking at invitations for our wedding, I began by looking online for inspiration.  I kept coming across invitations that looked like little folders.  I thought they were a great way to keep all the information organized for guests.  After doing some research, I found that they were called pocketfolds and came in various colors, shapes, sizes and formats.
After pricing out what I wanted with a few vendors, it was looking to cost about $5.50 per invitation (That was going to be around $500 just in invitations, not including any postage...yikes!)

I decided to go in search for a cheaper option that would have the same look.  On a recommendation from a few people on my regional theknot.com board, I went to a paper wholesale place in the area that many people go to for stationary, invitations and scrap booking supplies, Hollo's Papercraft .

While there, I found these awesome pocketfolds in a sparkly plum color.  I also fell in love with several beautiful papers.  I bought enough paper supplies to create one test invitation.
1 ivory scrolling patterned cardstock (8.5x11)
1 moss green solid cardstock (12 x 12)
3 linen lined cardstock (8.5 x 11)
1 RSVP card sized envelope
1 sparkling plum pocketfold
1 sparkling plum inner envelope

I then made my way over to my local Hobby Lobby and purchased the following additional supplies:
1 sliding paper cutter with a perforation and regular blade replacement
1 silicone cutting mat
1 xacto knife
1 bottle ZipDry glue

After carefully measuring the pocketfold, I began cutting the papers.  I knew I was going to have up to 5 inserts in the pocket with information, so I cut those first since they were going to be varying heights, but the same width.  They were made out of the ivory linen cardstock and I made each insert 1/2" smaller in height than the last.  This created a tiered look.  Inserts that were not being distributed to everyone were the shortest so I could easily not include while still keeping the clean layered look.

I then started with the ivory scroll cardstock as my background paper and cut it to size that was 1/8" smaller on all sides than the middle of the pocketfold.  I used the sliding paper cutter to do this.

I then cut the moss green cardstock 1/4" smaller on all sides than the ivory scroll.  Finally, I cut the ivory linen cardstock down 1/4" smaller than the green cardstock.  In the images I've attached you'll see my measurements on my sample were a little off :)

Using the ZipDry, I pasted the ivory scroll to the pocketfold, visually centering the paper before the glue dried.  I then did the same for the green and ivory linen papers.

The photo below was an actual invitation, but it gives you an idea as to what it looked like.

After finishing my test, I realized that the ivory scroll paper, while beautiful, was far too expensive to use a full piece of paper as my base background.  I decided to instead do a picture frame approach.  I cut the ivory scroll into strips of paper 1/2" wide, mitered the corners with my Xacto knife at a 45 degree angle, and then glued the strips onto the pocketfold so it created what looked like a picture frame of the ivory scroll.  I then pasted the rest of the cardstock on top as usual.

The process was painstaking, but by cutting down how much of that paper I was going to use, my per invite cost went from $2.35 to $1.35.

Additionally, instead of purchasing my pocketfolds from the paper wholesaler, I found the matching pocketfolds and envelopes for cheaper at Cards and Pockets.  Mine were the Signature pocketfold in Sparkling Merlot.  They arrived quickly and in excellent boxes that kept all of the invitations organized.

Here is another photo of the finished product.  I added a "B" printed on cardstock and mounted on plum paper to the opening corner of the pocketfold (if you had the pocketfold closed, it looked like a sticker holding the pocketfold closed)

I printed all my paper at Kinko's.  Since it was all black and white, I paid $0.10 per page.  I was able to fit 3 invitations on a single sheet and all 5 inserts on one sheet.  Each invitation used 1 and 1/3 pages of printed paper.

Tips:

1. If you are going to DIY your invitations, start early.  I started assembling these in November 2011 for mailing in April 2012.

2. Make sure to shop around for your products.  I found the pocketfolds online for much cheaper

3. Buy enough extra supplies so that you can make several mistakes.  At the end of the day, I had 10 extra pocketfolds, but at least I had room for mistakes.

4. Make a mockup and keep it near you during assembly.  It helps to prevent mistakes if you can visually see what you are attempting to make.

5. Keep in mind that your postage is going to be based on weight, so if you have inserts like I did that not everyone needed (i.e. Rehearsal and Picnic), be sure to have an envelope that includes all inserts weighed for your final postage

6. Don't forget to provide return postage for your RSVP!

-Danielle