You can usually find wedding guest books for fairly cheap, but they rarely match your decorum. There is a simple way to remedy this with just a few minutes of your time and a little cloth and embellishments.
Supplies needed
The materials you need depend on your preferences. Cloth covered guest books are easy to make in your wedding colors. You can either use a piece of satin remnants for the main color and a satin ribbon in the other color, or another piece of satin that is the contrasting color. You don’t have to stick with satin, either. You can use any fabric that matches your decorations the best. You will want to buy enough to cover the guest book, overlapping into the inside covers. Try to find a material that won’t fray easily or purchase a no-fray sewing accessory to dab onto the ends to prevent this while you work with the material.
You will also want to purchase embellishments that can decorate the front. You can even choose to frame a small picture of the happy couple on the front. However you would like to do it, be sure to plan for what you need before going to the craft store so you don’t buy random embellishments that won’t be used. A little scrapbooking supplies can do the trick or some fused pearls and a bit of ribbon. You will probably want it to look fairly simple, without large 3D decorations on the front as your guests will need to actually sign it; if it is off balance too much your guests will have a hard time signing it.
You can use craft glue for the adhesives, but a hot glue gun would be quicker. Lay out your material on a flat surface with the wrong side facing you. Place your book in the middle and determine the size you will need to cut the material; you should be able to sufficiently wrap the book and have enough to overlap into the front and back covers with an inch to fold under to hide the ends. Mark where you need to cut it, and carefully cut excess off evenly. Even if you don’t get it perfectly straight you won’t be able to tell on the finished product.
Next, fold the top and bottom edges of the material and glue into place at a few key points. This will keep the top and bottom edges clean looking and prevent fraying. The next part needs to be done with a little more care to ensure an even look. Take the side of the material that is to be inserted into the back cover and glue it evenly to inside back cover, overlapping the material as in the last step to hide the edges. For better reference you may want to place the inside cover material inside as well as the back cover and close the book to see how much the binding takes up; this way you can make the material inside both covers evenly placed at similar points.
Be sure to wait for the glue to dry before doing the next inside cover or you will find your pages stuck together. After you have glued the material into place you can embellish it as desired. When attaching stripes of ribbon, you will want to overlap the ribbon into the inside cover as you did with the material to make the cover look cleaner. Don’t overuse glue. In some case you can even stitch your embellishments directly into the fabric before or after you glue the cover on, for extra security.
