How to DIY a wedding card keepsake book

DIY maven, craft fundraiser for Swap-O-Rama-Rama and OBTer Hawkswine came up with a perfecto way to save some of those wedding cards and correspondence that you can't bear to throw away. This project is original and SUPER simple. We love it! Hawkswine take it awayyyy!! – Offbeat Shrie

We got a ton of wedding and shower cards and I’m sooooo not the sort of person to keep cards around, but pitching them just seemed wrong! I didn’t want them to just sit in some box so I decided to turn them into a book that I can flip through and enjoy memories whenever I’m feeling sentimental (so about once ever 4 or 5 years).

This project was actually pretty easy to execute. Luckily, my two largest cards were about the same size so I used them for the front and back “covers” of the book. Also fortunately, one of the large cards was in my wedding color, powder blue, so it worked out as a great front page!

Materials:

• Craft Glue
• Wedding Cards
• Clamps
• Extra Bits of Cardboard (to protect the cards from the clamps)
• Rice Paper

Step 1:
I sorted the cards by size and then purposefully mixed them up so that there weren’t too many small ones together or large ones together. I didn't want any “holes” in the book.

Step 2:
I carefully arranged the “spine” and bottom of the book so it was as flat as possible then vice-gripped them together. Then I just took the magic Sobo (craft glue) and applied a thin layer of glue to the spine, about 1/8“ thick. That's about as thick as you can get it and not have it dripping down the sides. Then I just set it as level as possible and let it dry for a couple days until the glue was completely clear.

Tip: The vice grips left dents in my top card that don’t seem to be going away, so I would advise you to put some sort of cardboard under the grips to protect your top and bottom cards.

Tip deux: It’s important that the spine is as flat as possible before you apply the glue. A couple of my cards didn’t get glue on them and are falling out of the book. So be sure to keep them all straight and flat before you glue!

Step 3:
Then I took some rice paper in the dark purple that was our other wedding color and cut it just a smidge wider than the spine width so that it would wrap over about an 1/8” onto the front and back cover. Then I put a little more glue on the spine and smoothed the paper down.

Tip: Because not everything is the same height, the book is a bit narrower at the top than the bottom. You can custom cut the rice paper to kind of hide it. It's also one reason I put the pattern to the inside. I'd stay away from rice paper with any kind of stripe or obvious pattern because this will point up any inconsistencies with the width.

Since not all the cards are the same height you can see a bit of the paper from the inside of the book, but the thing about rice paper is it looks pretty on both sides. I actually put the printed side of my paper to the inside so you can see it from the inside of the book, which I thought was a nice touch.

I also plan to put some kind of title on the spine like “Katie & Jake, March 28, 2009” but I think I want to do it in gold rub-on lettering. You could also use vinyl lettering, collage the title, hand paint it or print on the rice paper before you adhere it to the spine. The options are endless!

About Hawkswine:

Katie is a maker, marketer (not the evil kind) and craft-enabler who always has some project or another cluttering up her dinning room table. After growing up among the cornfields of the Midwest she now lives in Chicago, a city she loves almost as much as her husband Jake.

A little more info about Hawkswine's crafty fundraiser gig Swap-O-Rama-Rama: It's a craft-tastic event where everyone brings old cloths to swap and then they have unlimited access to sewing machines, silkscreen machines, crafty workshops, and enthusiastic fashion consultants. If you're in Chicago, check it out!

To get to know Hawkswine better, click here.