The One with Courtney's Wedding Book


Friday, May 2, 2014

I love making special projects for special friends, like my junior high/high school gal pal Courtney! She's getting married next month (woooohoooo!) and asked if I'd make her wedding sign-in book. It would be my pleasure!

Her colors are mint and coral with touches of burlap and chalkboard accents. My dad made me 6 pairs of wood covers (my favorite!) and I debated painting the covers, one mint and one coral, but left them au-natural to go with the "burlap/nature" part of the theme. 
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I sewed the book together with DMC floss starting with mint and halfway through I switched to coral.
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This is called a copic binding - my favorite kind of sewing technique and the design possibilities are endless! 
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I've made dozens of books over the years and have yet to make two books exactly the same because there are always new patterns of holes to drill, colors of thread, papers to feature, etc.
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I rummaged through my scrap stash and found patterned papers and cardstock in mint and coral - popular colors right now so it was a cinch to gather enough papers to make 10 signatures - or groups of papers.
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From start to finish this book only took one kids' nap length - about 2 hours! I'm finally getting this type of book down pat!
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The finished book is 5 x 7" - the perfect size for photos!
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They're planning to put Polaroids of all the guests inside.
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All the inside pages fanned out.
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Details of the sewing and papers.
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The book lays flat now, but once the photos are inside it'll be nice and thick and fun to flip through!
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I didn't sew pearls or jewels or anything into the spine like I've been doing recently, I think this matches their "style" more with the clean cut look.
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I had to be careful when selecting the papers not choose too many pink or blue pastels and ended up pulling a few papers out of my chosen stack because it was looking a little "baby", but I went with more aquas and orangey pinks to get more of the look they want.
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The bottom right corner.
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I couldn't narrow any more down so here's a collage of some more detail shots :)
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Love the colors of their wedding and had so much fun making this guest book!
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Congrats on your upcoming wedding Courtney! Wish I could be there to help you celebrate!

PS - I'm doing a trial run of custom-made books in MY ETSY SHOP if you're interested in getting a book made just for you!

4 comments

  1. Looks amazing! LOVING how you switched up the thread colors!!!!

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  2. Very cool book! I love the different colors on each side, your friend will cherish this forever :-)

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  3. The perfection of your coptic stitch books makes me sick! You're so talented. Can you teach me how to switch the colors half way in between?!

    Also, you need to be selling them for way more on etsy ;)

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  4. Beautiful book that your friend will treasure! (Love how you measure time...lol!)

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