Mayra's Handmade Pocket Fold Wedding Invitation

At LCI Paper, we continue to enjoy the Share Your Creativity submissions that our customers are sending in. Earlier this week, I spoke to Mayra in California about her elegant pocket fold wedding invitation that she made with our Autumn Hay metallic card stock and other items she found locally. Here is my interview with Mayra.

To save the audio to your computer, right click and "save as."

Here is a transcript of the interview:

Let me ask you first, are you married yet or is your wedding coming up?

No, my wedding’s coming up. It’s on December 18th.

Ok, so you started your invitations plenty early. That’s good.

Yes, I started early, very early because I wanted to finish them on time just in case anything went wrong.

When did you decide that you’d like to do them yourself?

When I started looking at pricing for invitations, it was crazy. It was too much.

Yeah. Were you just going to stationery stores or did you actually talk to designers?

I went to stores. I spoke to a couple of designers in Fresno. Also online, I would look online.

Now, this isn’t your first project like this is it? Because your invitations look so professional to me.

No, that was my first time. (laughter)

Really! Ok, alright.

Yeah, that was my first time. I need to get into the specifics here then, because there are so many unique ideas in your invitation.

Let’s start with the outside of the pocket fold where you have the monogram badge with yours and your husbands initials right?

Right.

Yeah, how did that come about?

Like I said, I researched a lot. I would go online and look at pictures, magazines of invitations and they would have something similar and I’d just change it up a little. I just added something that I liked better than what they had.

Did you make the pocket fold?

Yeah.

Or did you order the pocketfolds?

No, I made them myself. I made everything. I made the cutouts for the invitation and then whatever I had scratch from that I used it for the pocket.

Ok, wow. It’s just unbelievable to me that it’s your first time doing this sort of thing. You had never made a pocket fold before?

No. (laughter) Like I said, I would go to stores and I would pay attention to see how they would make the pockets. One of my cousins got married in July and he had an invitation similar to mine but he got his made from somebody else. And he had a pocket and I paid attention to see how he made the pocket and then I made it myself.

Interesting. So you decided on that rather than just buying our pocket folds for example. You bought our metallic paper.

Yeah.

Was it the Beargrass? I can’t remember what color you got. Do you remember?

No I got the Autumn Hay.

Ok, yup. Well, really great job on that. It looks so professional.

Thank you.

Yeah! I guess we’re still talking about the monogram badge. It has a pink ribbon that wraps around as well.

Well, the ribbon I did buy at a craft store. I think it was Michael’s or Beverly’s. I don’t remember what... I went to a lot of craft stores for these invitation for the stuff I needed for them. I also had to buy the card stock—the pink card stock paper that I used--because you guys didn’t have something similar to that color of ribbon. I just, I don’t know. I was just layering stuff, I don’t know.

Well, how did you do the stencil work? Because you have kind of a white backing and the card goes over that and sort of tucks in under your stenciling, is that right?

Yes. I bought some punch outs, the stencil punch outs that they sell at craft stores. I wanted it to look a little more elegant and I thought it would give it a little more of an elegant look. If I wouldn’t have used it, I think it would have looked a little too simple.

Mmm. And then the jewels that you have in the corners—are those little plastic decorative jewels?

Yeah, they’re just simple jewels you can buy anywhere and I just glued them on there, on each corner and stuff.

Ok. So you’ve sent them out already?

Yeah, I already sent them out.

What reaction are you getting?

Oh, everybody’s telling me that they’re beautiful. I have a couple of cousins that are getting married and they want me to help them make their invitations, their friends and stuff—even for their daughters’ Quinceaneras and stuff like that, they want me to help them.

You know, I’ve interviewed quite a few invitation designers and this is how they get started.

(laughter) Yeah, well, I don’t know if I’ll design invitation for the future but... It takes a lot of work, a lot of patience too.

Certainly.

And you have to have the right tools. If I had the right tools for everything, I think it would have been easier because I did everything myself with the things that I had so that I wouldn’t have had to spend so much money on them.

And is your fiancé happy with them?

Oh yeah, he loves them. He actually helped me too. He was helping me do everything for the invitations.

Why did it take the end of the interview for you to admit that?

Umm...

I’m just kidding.

I don’t know! (laughter)

No, that’s great to hear that he was so involved.

Is there anything else that you wanted to mention about your invitation that you’d like people to know or have we covered it?

No, just that if somebody decides to make their invitations, to do it on time. It takes a lot of patience not to give up. (laughter)

Ok, that’s good advice.

--

Thanks to Mayra for taking a few minutes away from her wedding planning to talk to me about her homemade invitation.

Joshua Birch