Guest Book Take 2: A Vintage Library-Chic Guest Book

If you look at my previous post you see the first guest book I made. After making that I had this feeling that it wasn't "the" guest book for our wedding. We are going with some shabby chic images for our wedding, but I felt like I wanted to make the book a bit more chic on the outside, while the inside remains plenty shabby.

So eventually I came up with the new and improved guest book. Is it perfect? No. But I do like it more.

I used a strong corrugated cardboard, which I wrapped in a grey cotton fabric. For the band around the left side I used a fabric ribbon that has script words, that happen to be written in French and surrounded that by a black ribbon.

I put it together with the same rings I used in my previous guest book and then tied a shiny silver ribbon around the rings. On the ivory silk flower I have added a few gems as I have on the band, and  then added a jute center. The "Guest Book" tag is tea dyed to give it a vintage feel. Refer to my post Literary Love Confetti about tea dyed confetti hearts for more about tea dying.

 

Open up the guest book and you can see the library theme of the wedding in full bloom. These are library cards and pockets from a local school supply store. You can also get these on etsy, amazon, or other places online. I tea dyed these cards, but on places like etsy you buy library cards that already have a vintage look.
 

After guests open this guest book
they will take a card out & sign
their name, address, and anything
else they would like. This also
minimizes the line to sign the guest
book because people can spread
out and sign a different card at the
same time.

Before I made my cards I considered buying from few shops on Etsy which I have listed at the bottom of this page.

 Besides buying library cards on etsy I also considered buying a guest book on Etsy. While you can get a wedding guest book almost any place these days Etsy has many unique and personal ones. See below for examples.

 

 

 

Shops on Etsy for library cards:

ClipAndPin

ExLibrisJournals

Modern Tape

 

Library Themed Wedding Guest Book:

bingingbee (this shop has lots of fun books to look at)

 

Custom made Vintage Guest Books:

ShabbyWeddingBooks

LazyLightningArt

trusted 

Guest Book

I looked at many guest books and came up with my own idea because I couldn't find the one I wanted. At crafts stores and other stores wedding guest books can be from $10-$50. I am proud that this one only costs a few bucks to make. I made it with two clip boards from the dollar store.

I never used a drill before, but got to use our drill on this project which was kind of fun. For this project I just drilled three holes that would fit together on right side of each clip board.

Then I turned one of the clip boards so that the holes fit together. The metal clips on the clip boards should be on opposite sides.

 

 

I added rings, and then paper that I punched holes in.

Look at the first picture to see how I decorated the book. Since we are having a literary theme I went with Scrabble pieces to spell out the word "guests". If you are observant you have probably noticed that they are not real scrabble pieces because there are no number points to score the letters in the right hand corner. I bought these wooden letters at Michaels, but I once found them on a website that had various wooden miniatures.
I also used a crocheted flower with various small gems glued on, damask fabric, jute, and paper.

Other possibilities would be silk flowers, ribbon, various stickers, lace, or decorative scrapbook paper.

To make the clip board have a vintage feel I rubbed a little brown ink from a stamp pad around the edges.

Because we are having literary theme and love libraries I bought library return cards with pockets. Each guest, couple, or family will be able to write their name address and phone number on a library card. There will probably be room to write other information if they feel inspired. We do rather like to inspire people.