Wedding Card book

This is my latest and greatest book. I saw the coolest idea on a blog a while back (this isn't the one, but I couldn't find it again, and you get the idea), and I'm just now putting it to use. See, I've had these wonderful wedding cards sitting in a bag (in a box) in the storage room for a while, and I was looking through them thinking, "gee, it sure is hard to throw something like this away! It's a wedding memento! I'll only have wedding cards once in my life!" and some of these cards are lovely. So that made me think of something we'd talked about in my Business for the Professional Artist class. The idea is, when you send out a promotional piece, make it really special. Make it so groovy that people will have a hard time throwing it away. So, I took my already awesome wedding cards and I made them doubly awesome by binding them into a book! Tada!

I know, I'm awesome. Keep in mind though, this wasn't originally my idea, I just expounded on it (is that even the right word?). I started off by separating my cards into stacks of similar sizes. There are ginormous ones, medium size ones, and eetsy beetsy ones. I started with the medium sized ones. I decided to bind them in a case bound form. 

It was more difficult to bind cards than I had anticipated. first off, each card was it's own  signature, so for this book I think I have like 15 or 18 signatures, which takes a lot of thread and a long time to sew. It's not difficult, per say, except for the fact that when the factory (or whoever makes and folds all these cards) folds the cards, some of them are sliced or scored so they will bend easier. It's nice, they stay shut, which is the purpose, but it is therefore  very easy to pull the thread too hard and rip right through the spine of the card. Grrr! I must have done that like twenty times! Other than that, it was fine.

For the cover (I think this was a jolt of brilliant inspiration) I made my own paper by gluing bits and pieces of the envelopes that the cards came in to a piece of tissue paper, and then gluing it down to my book board. I used tissue paper 1. Because it was what I had at the moment, 2. Because the envelopes were thick enough as it was, I didn't need them layered on top of some thick paper, and 3. Because I could rearrange and then trim the paper before I glued it down. Some of the pieces of the envelopes that I used were stamps, the post office stamps (like the ones that say, Spokane, WA) because I thought it was cool all the places we got letters from, and some of the pieces that said our names on them. Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman, Laurel Hoffman, etc.

The color book cloth I used was not one of my wedding colors, which would have been cool, I just thought it went really well with the envelopes and stamps. On the spine I carved a heart in the book board and then pressed it down in with my bone folder. It was my first try at doing that sort of thing, and I think it went well.

So, I think I've talked enough. Here are some pics of the book, and if anyone wants me to do this for them, let me know, we'll work something out (monetary compensation, cheesecake for a couple of weeks, something along those lines :) ).