And here's what I did with my bar trip...

And here they are. The long-awaited directions for making you're very own fabric covered pocketfold invitations.

As a disclosure, I found the original directions on how to make these here. However, I found the pocketfolders to be a tad small, and I found some easier and less wasteful ways to build the actual folders, so I thought I'd share my way, too.

Enjoy!

p.s. I still have aout 12 yards of black dupioni silk fabric if anyone's interested. *hint* *hint*

Note: I'm going to echo the original designer's (Tanya) warning to test your fabric before you go buying the entire stock you'll need for this project. You'll want something that will stick to your cardstock with adhesive, but that the adhesive won't bleed through. Like she mentions, stretchy fabrics won't work well, and neither will heavy fabrics (i.e. velvets, suedes, etc.). You'll also want to test the fabric with whatever cutting tool you're using to make sure it doesn't fray. To be honest, silk dupioni CAN fray - quite extensively - because of the nature of the interwoven threads. That being said, it looks so entirely awesome when it's finished that I highly recommend it anyway. ;)

Stage One

Determine what size you would like your actual invitation (the part with writing on it) to be; you can then extrapolate from these measurements. When I ordered a sample pocketfolder from www.cardsandpockets.com, I realized that the size of the pocketfolder was 5x7, making the inner invite quite a bit smaller; I wanted our actual invite to be 5"x7". I knew I wanted this larger invite, and I knew I also wanted one layer of backing betweeen the invite and the pocketfolder. So I took the size of the invite, added 1/4" all around for the backing, and 1/4" for space between the backing and the edge of the pocketfolder. To make a pocketfolder for this size invite, the cardstock needed to be 17.975" x 8" (the missing .025 is to make folding easier and make the folds lie flat). This will give you a pocketfolder with the following dimensions I doubled the width on these when I ordered the cardstock so that I could cut two pocketfolders from each piece, meaning fewer cuts and less wasted silk.

Stage Two Order your supplies - see my last post too see exactly what I ordered.

Stage Three Lay your fabric out, and place your cardstock on top of your fabric. I was able to get two sheets of cardstock - or four pocketfolders - per each "row" of fabric (I could have fit three pieces per each row had I turned the last piece on it's side, but then my neurotic brain would have had a fit, because one piece of cardstock would have had the threads from the dupioni going vertically instead of horizontally - use your own judgment as to whether this would annoy you). Cut out your cardstock and silk, leaving at least 1/2 inch between each piece of cardstock, and between the edge of the fabric, like so:


Stage Four

Tanya had it right. If you can do this step outside - do it outside. It WILL be messy. If you can't do it outside for some reason (like you're staying at a beach house and sand is flying everywhere, or you live in a major Metropolitan area (e.g. Manhattan) it can be done inside, but you'll need to do it in a non-carpeted area, and you'll probably still want to have a few old newspapers handy to lay down to soak up the overspray.

You'll want to lay out the fabric near (but not so near as to be contaminated by overspray) your spraying area, and smooth it out as best you can. Then, lay the cardstock on the ground (or newspaper if doing inside) and LIGHTLY mist the cardstock with your adhesive, following the directions on the can. Like Tanya said, "IF YOU CAN SEE THE CARDSTOCK GETTING WET AND DARKENED FROM THE ADHESIVE, YOU'VE USED TOO MUCH." Try to avoid streaking and wet spots - these will just soak through your fabric. The cardstock should just look slightly tacky - in my experience, it developed a *slight* sparkle sheen when it had the right amount of adhesive on it.

Stage Five

Turn your cardstock over, and carefully place it sticky-side down onto your fabric. LIGHTLY tap the cardstock to make sure it sticks, then immediately flip over the fabric and cardstock and smooth everything out. Note: DO NOT try to smooth it out until you flip it over - trial and error told us if you smoothed it out on the cardstock side instead of the side you can cause irremovable wrinkles. If you're doing two pieces of cardstock per piece of fabric, it helps if you smooth from the center of the two pieces to the edges of the fabric. Tanya recommended letting this dry for at least half an hour, and if you have the time to kill, it's probably best. We were trying to power through as many as we could in our short time at the beach, however, and found that fifteen minutes was plenty, especially if you were doing them in batches.

Stage 6

Using your cutting instrument (I used a Fiskars handheld rotary trimmer), cut your cardstock in half, and trim away the excess on the HORIZONTAL edges. While Tanya set things up to cut some of the cardstock away along with the excess fabric, I simply used the metal yardstick lined up against the very edge of the cardstock to cut away nothing but the fabric. This is definitely easier with two people (because of the need to hold the yardstick steady while applying pressure with the cutting instrument), it can be done by one person if you need to.



Youll end up with stacks of cardstock looking something like this (the ones at the bottom):


Notes on this step:

(1) Tanya recommends using an exacto knife because her rotary trimmer was dulling to quickly cutting through fabric and cardstock. I found that the exacto knife "ripped" at the fabric too much, so we switched to the handheld rotary trimmer. And because we were primarily cutting fabric (we only made one cut to each piece of cardstock - to cut the two folders apart), the blade lasted a reasonably long time. When you notice that your fabric isn't cutting cleanly, it's time to change the blade - otherwise the fabric will start to fray.

(2) Tanya also recommends that if you do happen to notice the blade not going all the way through the fabric, to use your scissors to cut them apart to prevent fraying. This is a tip worth saving /repeating. Repeated tries with a dull blade will definitely fray your fabric.

Stage 7

Using your fingertip, spread a *small* amount of your liquid adhesive onto the cut horizontal edges of your pocketfold. As Tanya noted, YOU MUST PERFORM THIS STEP TO KEEP YOUR EDGES FROM FRAYING! The brand of glue that I used really did take about 30 minutes to dry - sometimes longer.

Note: All of my pictures of finger smearing from this part are blurry. BUT I can say that Tanya's way definitely was the best. If you hold the bottle with your thumb and first two fingers, you can smear the glue with your ring finger from the same hand, and keep from covering yourself or your pocketfolds in unwanted glue. It took me a few tries to get to the point where I could comfortably hold the glue while smearing, but once I did, everything went much more quickly.

Also note that if you're doing this step on more than one pocketfolder at a time, you will need to have a place to lay them all out to dry. And you CANNOT stack them on top of each other. You will inevitably get *some* of the glue on either the cardstock side or the silk side, and when you lay one on top of the other, they stick together. We learned this the hard way and had to throw out to otherwise beautiful pocketfolders. :(

Stage 8

Now it's time to cut out the "folder" and "flap" portions of your pocketfold and glue your edges. For our pocketfolders, I used the following measurements:


I had originally planned on using the rotary cutter to cut out the necessary portions, but soon discovered that a round blade doth not cut corners well. ;) Scissors really are your best friend here. Then you'll need to do the same gluing you did on the long (horizontal sides) to your flap and folder:

Note: Your life will be MUCH easier if you make a template first so that you'll have the template pieces for the pocket and flap to trace for each one, instead of measuring each and every single pocketfolder.

Stage 9

Almost there! Now (after letting this new round of glue dry, of course) it's time to fold your pocketfolder. Using the chart above, I drew lines on the cardstock side using a pencil, then scored each of those lines using a ruler and the back side of a common household butter knife, then used the bone folder on the fabric side (gently!) to make the folds as crisp as I could:



Stage 10

I have no idea how I didn't get pictures of this, put the final step in creating your pocketfolder is to create the actual pocket. This is where your adhesive tape comes in useful. I placed strips of tape as shown in the diagram above (the red lines were the adhesive), folded the pocket over and pressed again with the bone folder, and......TA DA!

A "finished" pocketfolder. Of course, I don't have my invites or inserts yet, I haven't glued down the invite backing, and I haven't attached the ribbon or the name card to the ribbon, but here's what they look like in their primal state:

Nifty, eh?

Hope this helped someone else. If so, send me pics. I'll create a lovely DIY gallery of all of our wonderful fabric-covered pocketfolders. :)