How to DIY your own tri-fold table card centerpieces

Now that my wedding has come and gone, I finally have a moment to post about one of my favorite DIY projects: our table card/centerpieces! I got the idea from a craft book (don't remember the title, unfortunately) and they came out pretty, effective, and so very VERY cheap.

We got married in a castle, so we named all our tables after mythical beasts. We also got married in January, so I wasn't feeling the floral centerpiece idea. These came out so pretty that they were THE centerpieces. I just stuck three votives around each one, and I was done!

Materials:

• GIMP (free editing software) or Adobe Photoshop
• 4″x6″ design, picture, photo or number that you want to include on the sides of your centerpiece
• 4.5″x6.5″ approximately matting paper, or thick paper cut to size (I found ours at our local craft store, which is all swirly and Medeival-ish and goes well with the theme. But you can pick whatever you want, or even buy regular-sized paper and cut it down to size.)
• 8.5″x11″ card stock or other stiff paper
• double-sided acid-free tape
• friends to help!

Step 1:
Fire up GIMP or Photoshop or other image editing software and get your image together. It could be something as simple as a word, number, photo, design that integrates your other wedding design elements, movie poster images etcetera. They should be 4″x6″. You can take them to a paper printing place like Kinkos or you can print them at home and cut them to size via a paper cutter or a regular craft knife/ruler combo.

Step 2:
Center each image piece on your matting paper. Secure the images pieces, with tape placed on all four edges, to the center of the matting paper. Doesn't have to be perfectly centered! No one will notice!

Step 3:
Take three pieces of card stock. Fold them all in half (hamburger-style, not hotdog-style) and crease them. You can simply use your fingernail, or go fancy with a bone folder. Tape the three folded pieces together from the inside (so no tape is showing!) to form a tri-fold thingy. It may gap at the edges. It's fine! No one will notice!

Step 4:
Take your six beautiful matted pictures (they have to all be the same so that one tri-fold card has the same thing on each side) and center them on all sides of the tri-folded card. Secure with tape as before.

Step 5:
Stand your table cards up and admire your handiwork! They can be embellished with ribbon (run through holes down the side, like lacing), gems, stickers or other doo-dads. OR you can just leave them plain and amazingly unadorned.

Step 6:
Put them on your tables and GET MARRIED!

Check out this post to snag some other non-floral centerpiece ideas!