Crafty Musings by Hagit

The Guest Book

My friend, Gali, celebrated her birthday several months ago, and I made a guest book where we all wished her our birthday greetings. I wrote about this in my Hebrew blog a long time ago, but this post reminded me that I had made something similar, and I wanted to share it here too.

I had returned from Japan a few weeks before the birthday party, where I bought a Fuji Instax camera, and I really wanted to use it in a way that would not only be for taking pictures, but taking instant pictures where you actually do need them on the spot. So I came up with the guest book.

I used an old book cover, inserted a binder mechanism, and put in some scrapbooking paper. I embellished the pages lightly with some stickers and ribbon, and created lines to write on with washi tape (another something I brought from Japan! :)):

 

See the library card on the right? I love it! It's a very old book, and that card even has columns for you to write whether or not you enjoyed the book!

This another one of the pages I prepared:

And these are the final pages, with our instant pictures and birthday greetings (view larger here):

 

And the book, closed:

I really liked the outcome, I think it was a great surprise for the birthday girl, and a great keepsake from her party, with pictures and birthday wishes.

If you have other original ideas for guest/birthday wish books or original ways of using my instax, I'd love to know! share them here, I'm going to need some more!:-)

(All pictures in this post were taken by Gali)

Mystery of the Heart - A Skinny Fat Book

I enjoy collaborative projects, and this is probably the fifth or sixth fat book I participated in, and the first skinny fat book. What makes a fat book fat are the big embellishments, and what makes this one a skinny fat book is the fact that the pages are narrow.

I've participated in various types of books, in some, where there were many participants, we photocopied the pages, and embellished photocopies. In this book we are only 9 participants, so I decided to do it all by hand, no shortcuts.

My intention was to sew a fabric page, but somehow, as I was gathering materials, this is what came out:

Closer up:

The group shot:

As I was taking this side shot, I thought it could be nice to make a wedding/white themed fabric book:

It's no surprise that everything I'm doing now has white or tulle in it. I'm getting married in two months, so that' s one big inspiration there! ;-)

I like how the pages turned out, although I think they're a bit empty. I was thinking of adding a quote or blessing, but I thought that would really be too cheesy.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, and in the meantime, here's a video of a travel themed fat book I participated in.