For My Sweetie...

This year I made Greg an 'ABC's of YOU!' book.

Looooooots of time but not to expensive... God Bless the $ stores! lol

It's a bound and sewn book.

I started by using leftover cardboard from the back of a pattern paper pad, covered with pattern paper with a pattern paper liner on the inside. Also covered an addition piece of cardboard for the spine binding. The pages are colored (light) cardstock glued back to back. I Crop-O-Dile punched everything and 'sewed' it together with sheer ribbon. I prepared and decorated all the pages before stitching it together so I'd know how loose to make it, to allow for the bulkier embellishments. I did it a ~little~ snug so it'd be more of a 'display on a shelf' book than a 'sit in a pile' book...

IE. It's puffy!

Each page has a tab on it, I did these very random...

The ABC's were all printed out, cut, inked then glued in. The 1st letters are foam ($ store purchased, 1/2 left) traced over with a silver paint pen.

Some of the pages are backed in Memo-Pad Paper, most in pattern paper...

Quite a few of the images are from a set of vintage-y Valentines I picked up at the 2nd hand store for 25 cents (still have 1/2 leftover for future projects too), some of the images were free-clip art. The rest is a assortment of sticker's from the $ store. I killed off 4 sheets... lots of hearts and dragonflies (which are important to us both).

The paper, tabs and strips were all from a Fiskars kit I got for $5 at Staples because 2 of the photo corners were missing (tooooo good to pass up!) Gems and Bling all snagged out of my regular stash.

The charms are an assortment of old jewelry (vintage rose heart), kid offerings (2 crystal hearts Thomas brought my home from school) and actual Charms (lock, key and dragonfly).

As perfect as I wanted this to be... *le sigh* I still managed to goof something!

The 'S' and the 'R' are reversed. ahh... well... it's as quirky as me. ;O) I know Greg'll appreciate that.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!

XOXOXOXO

Front of the Book:

Back of the Book:

Full Cover folded out:

Close up if the Spine Binding:

Side Views:

Charms:

Inside the Book: