Vault Door Wedding Invitation

My husband and I were married in a post-apocalyptic carnival themed wedding in a nuclear bomb shelter. We needed an invitation every bit as awesome as the wedding we were planning.

Inspired by Fallout and Torchwood (and many other sources), we designed a card with a rolling vault door that opens to reveal the invitation details.

With all the cutting and assembling, each card took over half an hour to complete - it was a real labour of love! We were lucky to have several fantastic friends help us with the assembly line over a few 'craft and craft beer' nights.

You can read a summary of our wedding on Offbeat Bride or check out the wedding posts on my blog.

Step 1: Design

As with most projects, there was a bit of trial and error before we had a finished design that we were happy with.

All the pieces of the invitation card were originally designed in AutoCAD and then imported into Make-the-Cut so they could be cut out with our digital cutting machine.

We used three different types of paper for this invitation:

• lightweight light grey cardstock
• heavier dark grey cardstock
• printable silver foil

The printed designs were made in PhotoShop and were printed onto the light cardstock and foil with our inkjet printer.

Step 2: Cutting Pieces

All the pieces were cut with our cutting machine.

We used the print and cut settings to line up the cuts with the printed designs, but we included bleed on the edges in case things were a little off.

Step 3: Assembling the Pieces

Once all the pieces were cut, we gathered them all together and found some glue.

Each card has 10 separate pieces:

• front cover
• inside front
• back
• door
• door track
• door pull front
• door pull back
• spacer
• silver ticket
• ticket back (with map and schedule)

Step 4: Gluing It Together

The printable foil has an adhesive back, so the ticket and the back of the ticket are easy to stick together.

The inside front piece and the back piece are glued together.

The track for the door is then glued to the front.

To make the rotating door, we folded back the tabs on one door pull and glued it to the other door pull, with a spacer at the end.

With the door in place, the front cover is glued on.

Step 5: Ready for the Mail!

The finished invitations were put in black envelopes and sent in the mail.