Napkin Fold Tutorial

Good morning crafters (said in true Robin Williams, Good Morning Vietnam style :-)

As usual on the weekend I couldn't sleep so I decided to pull together this tutorial for you as promised in my last post for the napkin fold card.  It's not an easy one to put into diagrams, but here goes and hopefully you will be able to make something of them, if not I apologise now ;-)  One word of advise though (learnt from experience of course), the better you score your folds the easier it is to form the shape!

Materials needed:

A4 sheet of card
Scoring board (one with cm's on)
A bit of patience :-)

Instructions:

1)  Take your A4 sheet of card and cut to a 20cm square

2)  Score around each of the four sides at 5cm (see diagram 1 below).  Turn the card over and repeat on the other side.

Diagram 1 

3)  Fold/score along the 5cm score line on the left hand side towards the centre of the card (see diagram 2 below)

 Diagram 2

4)  Keeping this folded section on your left, take the top right corner and fold/score it over into the centre of the page using the folded straight edge to butt up against (see diagram 3 below)

 Diagram 3

5)  Repeat with the bottom right hand corner (see diagram 3 above)

6)  Unfold the left hand edge (see diagram 4 below)

 Diagram 4

7)  Fold/score both the top left corner and the bottom left corner in towards the centre mirroring the right hand side (see diagram 5 below)

 Diagram 5

8)  Take the corners at the centre and fold/score them back towards the outer edge of the card (see diagram 6 below)

 Diagram 6

9)  Unfold and lay the card flat (see diagram 7 below).  This also shows all of the folded/scored lines you have (hopefully) made.

 Diagram 7

10)  Now comes the more difficult part of trying to explain how to form the fold!  Hold onto your seat, we may be in for a bumpy ride

11)  Working on the left hand side first, take the point at the middle of that side and push it towards the centre of the card (see diagram 8 below).  Repeat for the right hand side.

Diagram 8

12) This will automatically lift up your next fold/score lines (see diagram 9 below)

Diagram 9

13)  Repeat step 11 for the other two sides

14)  Finally take the corners in the centre and fold/score back towards the outside (see diagram 10 below)

 Diagram 10

15)  Your finished fold should look like this (see picture below).  Obviously mine has been mounted onto a card, but you can see the folds clearly from this picture

16)  To complete, cut a piece of card (approx 9.5cm square) to fit inside the fold and decorate.  Please note that once it is inside the fold only the centre of the insert is visible (see pictures below)

 Once you have mastered this technique you can play around with the sizings and make it larger or smaller.  I have made this to fit onto a 6" x 6" card, but you could make it larger and tie a ribbon around the centre (this was how it was demo'd to me).  You can add different coloured card to sections to highlight them or use double sided card - the ideas are endless.

I hope that these instructions, diagrams and pictures have been easy enough to follow and that you enjoy making your own napkin fold cards.  I would love to hear your comments.

I am not claiming to have invented this fold, just adapted it for my own use and hopefully assisting others.  Please feel free to reference this tutorial, along with your project, on your blog and any craft sites but PLEASE spare a thought for the time and effort that has gone into producing this and a link to this tutorial would be very much appreciated :-) 


xx Happy crafting and glittery hugs xx