Paper pockets

 Paper pockets seem to be all "that" lately, at least on several of the blogs that I visit on a regular basis.  I am always trying to figure out a way to keep up with the trends by making it myself.  I am also an instant results kind of person.  I don't want to have to order something and then wait for it to arrive before I can start playing around with the vision I have in my head.  So, this little tutorial is all about my attempt at making my own cute paper pockets.  You could also modify it to make envelopes since you are creating it to the size of your "filling".  My pockets needed to hold 2 recipe cards (see the previous post)  I needed to make a bunch of them and I wanted them to reflect a certain theme.  Here is where serendipity played a part, I was at Target to pick up that universal tool, duct tape, when I happened by the dollar bins.  There I found small rolls of brightly colored holiday wrapping paper.  So I picked up a couple, along with my duct tape.  I thought the paper would be the perfect weight for my pockets.

First I measured the length and width of my recipe cards and added an inch to the length and then doubled the width and added 2 1/2 inches.  This way when I wrapped it around the cards I would have some overlap to glue together.  I took the paper and rolled it out on my large cutting mat and used my rotary cutter and quilting rulers to cut it into strips.

 Next, I wrapped it around the 2 cards and creased the bottom to get my folds.  I unwrapped it and cut notches where the two fold lines intersected on each side.  (see below)

 I added a small square of white text paper to the top edge of the pocket to reinforce the area where I was cutting a thumb notch.  Then punched the notch with a circle punch, just using half of it.

 I folded the two outer flaps on the bottom of the pocket up toward the top of the pocket.

 Then folded the two sides over, making sure the overlap covered the printing along the side of the paper.

 Unfolding the top side I applied tape and then carefully folded it back over.

The final step was to apply tape to the bottom flap and fold it up to create a nice clean looking bottom edge.

Done!  It seems like a lot of steps but I was able to make 100 of them in a very short amount of time.

Hope you found this tutorial helpful.  As I said above, you can modify this to fit any size project and by adding more to your length measurement you can also add a top flap to make it into an enclosed envelope.  Let me know if you try it or if you have any questions.

Have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon.