09 January 2011

DIY - Photo Guest Book

Avon, here in Australia released a heap of scrapbooking kits over the past few years & mum, being an avon lady at the time ended up with a stack of them. However, they aren’t ideal, as they are spiral books, slightly bigger than A4 size. They have a stack of pages though, so in a random burst of inspiration last year, I found the perfect purpose for them.
For our engagement party, I liked the idea of a photo guest book, using a polaroid camera. We couldn’t find a polaroid so I came up with a new idea.

I covered all the pages with paper, in the party theme colours. Like a scrapbook, but minus the photos. I used a lot of plain black & white cardstock & paper, mixed with patterned pages.
At our engagement party, we set the book up inside with different coloured pens & our guests signed all through the plain sections of the book. Afterwards, I decorated the patterned sections with photos from the night, trying to put photos of guests near their messages.

We now have a wonderful photo guest book to remember the night from.

This can be done with any spiral style book. The scrapbooks with plastic sleeves won’t work as well.
I am currently working on a new guest book for my parents 40th wedding anniversary dinner this week. It’s their ruby anniversary, so decorated with lots of red papers. I will be scattering the pages with photos from their wedding day & life together, then again adding more photos of the night afterwards.

Here are some page examples:


This idea works well for pretty much any special occassion. It can be done for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and the list goes on. All you need is a suitable book, with thick pages, and lots of acid and lingin free scrapbooking papers, a glue stick or double sided tape and photos, depending if you want the book completely blank or already pre-filled with a few related photos. Its always good to have a front page photo as a title page but pretty much the sky is the limit when creating your own guestbook.

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2 comments:

Beryl said...

Still looking round your blog and noticed this post about your guestbook. A brilliant idea and I really should be getting the photos of my kids that I've had for years into some sort of order. It's a daunting task when you've never made a scrapbook before. Over here Avon sells make-up etc. Is this the same firm?
Beryl xx

HarmonySweetpea said...

Hi again Beryl. Thanks for looking around. AVON here is the same, and mostly focuses on make up and beauty products but also gift ware and a bit of clothing etc.

To be honest, I have never finished a scrapbook, with the exception of the 2 previous photo guest books I've done. But I am very close to finishing my Europe 2008-09 ones. It takes me forever to plan a layout and I'm still learning myself. My goal is to finish quite a few this year. Its heaps of fun. You should give it a go :-)