Amy is going to show you how to make a Pocket Folder invitation using LCI Paper's Fuschia Pocket Fold which is manufactured with exclusive Gmund brand paper, imported from Germany. The pocket fold has a center panel for attaching an invitation and a pocket where you can place your response card, response envelope, and possibly a direction card and reception card.

"Pocket folders are a popular invitation wrap because they are convenient and stylish as well as versatile. They can be used for a wide variety of events and functions. They make a nice presentation for a formal wedding invitation, and with the right color choices, work great for corporate events and fundraisers too. Fuschia is the brightest color we've added recently, and I expect it will make an impact with the trend toward flashier, chic colors for weddings. It's also nice to show how a fuschia pocket fold can be used for a more informal event such as a surprise birthday party. There is really no limit to the creative combinations you can make with this kind of wrap."

The individual project components are (1) our Fuschia A7 Pocket Fold, (2) our 4 7/8 x 6 7/8 Radiant White Invitation Card, (3) our Radiant White A4 Response Card, (4) our matching Fuschia A4 Response Envelope, and (5) our Fuschia A7 envelope.

Click here for our full line of Pocket Folds in a variety of colors and finishes.

This project is something you can do!

Joshua Birch
josh@lcipaper.com
Follow LCI Paper on Twitter

It's LCI Paper's first ever, Do-It-Yourself video! Today, Amy will show you how to embellish our Radiant White Slim Folder with a Japanese Chiyogami Band and a Faux Wax Seal to make a beautiful and memorable wedding program.

Amy came up with the idea to wrap one of our folding programs with a chiyogami band while she was revamping LCI's Wedding Program section.

"We had never used these colorful bands with our programs before, but they seemed like a nice, flashy embellishment that could hold insert pages in place while adding some pizazz to an otherwise plain program."

For this simple project, the only required tools are a ruler and scissors.

Here are the materials you'll need for the project. Start with our Radiant White Wedding Program Slim Folder. This is a standard sized, eight and a half by eleven card stock for easy printing in your printer at home. It comes flat but it's pre-scored so that it's easy to fold after you've printed your custom details.

We'll embellish the program with our Red and Pink Stars Japanese Chiyogami Band. It comes in the size of one and a half by fourteen inches.

Our final embellishment will be our Red Hearts Faux Wax Seal.

Enjoy the How To video!

Joshua Birch
josh@lcipaper.com
Follow LCI Paper on Twitter

If Mary can do it, so can you! :-)

Is there a special event coming up that you’re in the early stages of planning? Chances are, in this economy, you’ve at least given thought to designing your own invitations. I had the opportunity to speak to Mary, who lives in Wrentham, Massachusetts, about her first experience with choosing paper, envelopes, and printing her own invitations. I think her story is interesting, especially if you’ve been thinking of taking the plunge and trying this yourself.

“It was my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. It was back in June. We were trying to keep our costs low planning the party, so the first thing we thought about was just making our own invitations. I didn’t have a lot of experience, but I had heard from friends who had gone and bought paper and just made them at home. I did it without a special software package like a card package or a newsletter package. It was just Microsoft Word. I picked a nice cursive font. And then I picked the font size and the color and it came out beautifully!"

“I chose cards and envelopes that were simple and elegant. When I put the cards in the printer, I just had to line them up and make sure they were spaced correctly when they came out of the printer. It was trial and error as far as where I wanted the text and clipart to land on the paper. I wasted a few cards, but I had plenty of extra. That was fine.”

Printing on the envelopes?

“No, I did not venture that far. To me, that was another step. I hand-wrote them. And that can look nice too, for weddings and anniversaries.”

When Mary had finished her invitations, she approached the golden couple.

“It wasn’t a surprise, so I showed my parents. I said, ‘What do you think? Is this kind of what you were thinking of?’ They thought it was great. What’s so amazing is you can’t tell that you just did it at home. I know people that order birth announcements which are beautiful, but you can pay a lot of money to hire someone to do that. And I couldn’t tell the difference. So I was so pleased with the whole process.”

Did you get any feedback from your guests?

“Yeah! I did. They were surprised I’d done them as compared to calling up the local place. So that made me feel good.”

Mary recently discovered LCI Paper’s vast specialty paper offerings. She’s already thinking of what her next project might be.

“And then to know that there’s more paper selections... I think that makes a difference too. If people really want to be creative, now they’re not limited to just playing it safe. So I’ll tell a lot of my friends. With all the Brownie groups and Girl Scouts, you know, they get crafty. They want to know these things and where to find things. If an organization wanted to send letters to the troops over in Iraq, if you had a certain type of paper, it just would make a difference. It sends a different type of statement.”

Joshua Birch
josh@lcipaper.com
Follow LCI Paper on Twitter

LCI Paper is now posting short, concise updates using the free social networking service, Twitter.

When describing the Twitter experience, many people use the term micro-blogging. What is micro-blogging? Well, you already know what a blog is. You’re reading one right now. A blog (short for web log) is just a web site that is regularly updated, and where the new updates show up first. A micro-blog is a service where those updates are much shorter messages than regular blog posts. In Twitter’s case, each update is limited to 140 total characters--the size of a cell phone text message.

When you create a Twitter account, you “follow” your choice of other Twitter users. For example, start by visiting LCI Paper's Twitter page. You’ll find a list of recent updates that LCI has chosen to share with all of our followers. These short messages include links to recent blog posts, links to new products, and other interesting company news. If you decide that you’d like to be kept up-to-date on the kind of information that LCI is pushing out with our Twitter posts (called “Tweets”), then you can choose to follow us. From then on, anytime you log into your Twitter account, you’ll see LCI Paper’s updates. From there, you can find new, interesting people and companies to follow by clicking on their Twitter pages and seeing who they are following.

Here’s a great video called “Twitter in Plain English.” It will explain why you might want to follow people and be kept up to date of what they’re up to.

LCI recently created our Twitter account, and as of this writing, we’ve sent out Tweets on our new products and new blog posts. The founder and CEO, Larry Chase, sent out a Tweet about a forthcoming issue of our e-mail newsletter. He wanted to let people know that the newsletter would have a new look and an exclusive discount for e-mail subscribers. This is the kind of advance news that LCI will continue to send out via Twitter. So if you’re the kind of person that likes to find an avenue to the inside track of a particular company or organization, subscribing to their Twitter feed might be a great way for you follow them.

Follow LCI Paper on Twitter

Joshua Birch
josh@lcipaper.com

As you shop at LCIPaper.com, you can complete your order with one of two checkout options--LCI’s own secure checkout system or Google Checkout. When shopping on the web, a customer might want to use Google Checkout so that they don’t have to create accounts, remember passwords, and enter shipping and other personal information at the different sites where they shop. They also might enjoy the convenience of being able to track all of their orders and shipping via their Google account.

When a customer completes an order using Google Checkout, they are often solicited by Google for their feedback on the purchase. LCI Paper’s founder and CEO, Larry Chase, noticed, “We were actually getting a lot of nice reviews that I thought would be helpful for other customers or potential customers to see.”

Encouraged by the overwhelming number of positive reviews that LCI’s customers had submitted to Google, Larry decided to make the actual reviews available on the company’s web site. And it was either all or nothing. “It’s all monitored by Google. They handle everything and they put up all the different reviews. We had a choice to connect to it and let people see everything that’s there, or none of it.”

Clicking on the Google Checkout link at the top of any LCIPaper.com product page brings you to a list of ten randomly sampled reviews of LCI’s performance. As of this writing, on each of those ten reviews, the reviewer gave their LCI Paper shopping experience a perfect five out of five.

I asked Larry about his reactions to reading the Google Checkout reviews that have come in this year. He immediately directed his attention to his staff. “I think of it more as a reflection of people that are here because we get a lot of comments about the service that customers receive on the phone. When customers have questions, someone actually answers the phone and answer their questions as well as taking and shipping out the product in a timely fashion. Sometimes, without the reviews and without getting the feedback, you don’t really realize some of the things that you’re doing well, and that your customers do appreciate some of the things that you do for them. I think it’s good for the people here to see that information, to know that they’re doing something that’s making a difference.”

Joshua Birch
josh@lcipaper.com
Follow LCI Paper on Twitter