If you've been following along with the Tri-Fold series, this is the one we've been building toward. Day 7 brings all the ideas from the past six projects into a single folio — a structured 12×12 creation with pockets, a bakers twine button closure, tags, decorative corners, and rhinestone embellishments. Even if you haven't watched the earlier days, this one stands completely on its own.
What we cover
Starting from a single sheet of 12×12 scrapbook paper, I fold it into unequal panels to create a flap-style folio with two pockets. From there, we close the pockets, build out a decorative front cover with buttons, bakers twine, and bling, and fill the pockets with tags and small embellishments. The final result is a fully finished, ready-to-gift folio — and I show the whole thing, start to finish, including the embellishing decisions as they happen in real time.
What you'll learn
How to fold a tri-fold folio with unequal panels — instead of dividing a 12×12 sheet into three equal four-inch sections, folding at slightly asymmetric measurements gives you a shorter front flap that feels more like a cover and less like a third panel. It's a small shift that changes the whole feel of the project.
How to decide how deep to make your pockets — the height of your initial fold determines pocket depth, and you choose based on what you want to tuck inside. Shallower pockets keep contents visible; deeper ones hide more. Either works; it depends on the project.
How to remove bulk at fold points by cutting small triangles, including:
- Identifying the exact point where the fold layers meet
- Cutting symmetrically on both sides of the fold point
- Repeating at every fold line, including along the side edges, so pockets close cleanly without lumps or resistance
How to close pockets with glue on narrow sides — applying only a very thin line of glue on the side edges of each pocket, especially when the pocket is narrow, so you get a clean seal without glue squeezing out or the paper buckling.
How to create a button closure with bakers twine, including:
- Threading twine through the button holes and looping it around the folio to hold the front flap shut
- Gluing the button down even when it's a sticker, so the closure holds long-term
- Tying a small, tidy bow and trimming the ends to the right length
How to ink edges before and after scoring — I ink all the way around the cut and folded edges, including after the pocket triangles are removed, so the finished piece reads as intentional and complete rather than cut.
How to embellish a folio cover in real time, including:
- Choosing and placing decorative corners cut from scrapbook paper offcuts, with inked edges
- Adding rhinestone bling around a button focal point — committing to the placement by pressing firmly
- Deciding how much embellishment is enough (more on this in Tips)
How to fill and style folio pockets, including:
- Using handmade tags, ticket stubs, and small notepads as pocket inserts
- Sizing inserts to the pocket depth so they peek out attractively without flopping over
- Adding a small punch detail (circle or heart) to a plain tag to finish it
How to create a simple fabric-and-button notepad insert — a few folded pages with a piece of fabric glued over the spine and a button sewn or glued on top. Compact, quick, and a lovely thing to find tucked into a folio pocket.
Tips & gotchas
The triangle-cutting step is the one most people want to rush past — don't. When you're working with thick scrapbook paper and folding multiple layers into pockets, the bulk at the fold points is what stops pockets from lying flat. Cut the triangles before you glue anything shut. Once you see how cleanly the paper folds without them, you'll do this on every pocket project.
When gluing pocket sides closed, less is more. A thin line along the very edge is enough. If you over-glue a narrow pocket, you'll either have glue squeezing out the top or you'll accidentally reduce the pocket opening. Run the glue close to the edge only, press firmly, and leave it.
Even if your button closure is a sticker — even if the adhesive on the back feels strong — glue it down anyway. Sticker adhesive isn't built for something that will be opened and closed repeatedly. A dot of glue under the button takes two seconds and means it'll still be there in two years.
Knowing when to stop embellishing is genuinely one of the harder skills in this kind of project. My approach: keep going until I'm happy, then stop immediately. The temptation to add one more corner, one more strip, one more punch is real — but the piece usually looks better when you leave a little breathing room. Clean space isn't empty space.
If you use 6×6 paper pads as a source for tags, bookplates, and decorative shapes, dismantle them as soon as you bring them home. Pull the tags out, sort them into a tags folder; pull the bookplates, sort them into a bookplates folder. When you're mid-project and you need a tag that coordinates, you want to reach into a folder and find it immediately — not excavate a paper pad from the back of a shelf.
After this one, it's worth going back through the earlier projects if you haven't, because a few of them (particularly Day 6, the trifold journal base, which might honestly be my personal favorite from the whole run) show how the same fold becomes something structurally very different with just a few decisions changed. The folio format we made here pairs beautifully with the interactive pocket page from Day 3 — make one to display, one to give away.
