Monday, December 15, 2008

A Special Book

I was asked by a client of our IT business (after receiving one of my Christmas cards!), to make a very special birthday card.

The gentleman is turning 90 and just recently had to put his beloved wife into a nursing home. Not a really good week for him, his friends decide to throw him a birthday bash to be held this evening! This gentleman is apparently a favorite within his club, so I knew this had to be special. The person that commissioned me to make it asked that it have space for about 50 people to sign. They suggested maybe A4 (8 1/2 x 11...kinda). As I thought about it, I really couldn't bring myself to make something that size because I knew from experience it would just look a bit tacky.

So off to my local favorite scrapbook shop to see what inspiration I could glean. On one of their shelves someone had created this fabulous mini scrapbook for display, and the inspiration began to take shape. I didn't have any pictures, that probably would have been so good, but didn't have any... Then it hit me, they need places for 50 people to sign. TAGS! What a great idea, and hey, I could make each page a different colour combination, and, and, and... It all got a bit exciting! So below is what I came up with...

If you have looked through my entire blog, you may have recognized the design for the 90. I did a "50" like this on a card in the past. It's just foam core with Japanese paper put on with Jac paper. I cut it all out, stuck it together, then filed the edges with a fingernail file, to age them a bit.

















When I saw the mini scrapbook, the person that created it had used this wonderful stamp that said all kinds of nice things, and they had clear embossed it onto the cover, I loved it and decided to borrow the idea. The "celebrate" is a clear plastic thing I thought would work. I used my ever present favourite Dimentional Magic to glue it on, but because I didn't know exactly how to do it, it looks a bit daggy, but A LOT better than the first one I tried, which will continue to rest comfortably in the bottom of the garbage can...













They suggested this for the inside greeting thing. The leaves and branches are done in Versa Mark, as a watermark.












This is the blue page, the first page. Because this is supposed to be a greeting type card/booklet, I decided that the less I embellish the better. I wanted the words that are written to the birthday boy to be the embellishment. I tried to make the tags little handle things different, although I did digress later in the book, it was getting late.












This is the green page. I think I liked this one best, just because its green and it has leaves on it, two of my favorite design things. The tags on the left just have a leaf punch on the top of them, and of course I had to use my Fiskars leaf border punch.












The yellow page












This page was supposed to be brown, well, one side looks brown. They actually look a lot brown-er in person.












The proverbial purple page.













I know, I know... "orange?" I really love the background paper I used on the left side and when I tested it together with this tangerine-ish colour, I really liked it, and I had to make the facing page match a bit. The words say "You are Brilliant, Marvelous, Awesome, Amazing and a Wonderful Friend" and apparently this is the exact sentiment they wanted to communicate. I stamped it in black, then used a positioner to stamp over it with Versa Mark to clear emboss it, so the letters are raised.

When I delivered this little book, the clients were so pleased, and almost speechless. They hadn't expected something quite so elaborate. I also went and found a box to put it in, but it was a very plain box, so I stamped some leaves on that as well. I also included some archival pens for the party attendees to use.

I'm pretty sure I'll be getting a phone call tomorrow!