Guest Book

I finally spent some time crafting this weekend - it's been so long since I've actually worked on a project!

I recently had a custom order for a guest book to be used at two bridal showers.  I always struggle a bit with guest books because there's the usefulness factor vs the cuteness factor.  If I could just make it cute than I would do it one way, but since it needs to be both cute and useful I struggle with the basic design.

For this book I decided to use a Bare Naked Binder from BoBunny.  It turned out to be a great choice and I think I'll pick up a few more so I have them on hand for future orders.  If you aren't familiar with this binder it's made of heavy chipboard; the binder itself is chipboard with a fabric strip on one side.  Inside are binder rings that open and it comes with 6 chipboard pages.  I also had an extra page pack and I used a few of those too.

Here's the cover of the album - I covered the chipboard portion with patterned paper and then added a ribbon just for fun.  You can see the fabric strip I referred to on the left side.

The couple had such a cute engagement photo that I had to use it on the front cover.  I did tack the ribbon down with adhesive just to make sure it stayed in place.

Next I had to decide how the guests would sign the book.  As a host I enjoy having the guests write a little note along with their name, and I'm ok with them writing here and there rather than in a row.  However, as a guest I like lines to write on and I just want to write my name because there's too much pressure to come up with something clever to say!  For this book I did a poll to see what other people like and the response was overwhelming that they prefer to write on a line.  I'll be honest here . . . I only polled one person (thanks Mom!).  So now I needed to figure out how to provide lines for the guests.  Here's what I came up with.

note:  I took the page out of the book for the picture and it's just leaning on the inside of the book.

I used Ali Edward's font to write Guests and somehow managed to get it to print right where I wanted it!  That took a few trys.  The paper I used is called Booknote and it's from BasicGrey.  Love this paper!  It does have lines, yet they are kind of soft lines so you could use it however you wish.

Because this guest book will be used at more than one shower I made six pages like this.  They are all on the front side of a page, and then I decorated the back side of each page using photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up.  I'll show you those pages in my next post!