craftgrrl | a book about two people with the same phones (Reply)

(similar post x-posted to

Thanks to everyone for replying to my "glue & paper question" post last night. I was too excited about the project and finished it up and already wrapped it (lol). I just used plain white Elmer's glue and a cheap craft brush to brush the glue on evenly to the backs of the photo paper and stuck them on the black paper. No wrinkles, no curving upwards, and no air bubbles; yay! And in that rush of excitement, I forgot to take pictures of the final product. I did take before photos though, so if you're curious, you can see them behind the lj-cut. It should load quickly; it's only about 80kb or so. Also behind the lj-cut is information about the book. :) Pictures of the final project will be posted after Christmas since this is my bf's Christmas Eve gift. <3

The book is modeled after this book (Barriers: The Distance Between) by

volatilespace. The stitching is done so as in this tutorial (is this coptic stitch? the instructions seem familiar) and I also used vellum as endsheets and didn't bother with a cover. The book consists of one folded sheet of vellum on both front and back and 5 6-page signatures in-between. All pages measure 5" x 5". I used white sewing thread to stitch it together. I used dark navy blue (I thought it was black lol) art paper (basically like cardstock) and drew out a template for a box. I cut out little triangles to pull the book out instead of circles. I should've made the box just maybe a couple millimeters taller because it's difficult to put the book in, but once in, it fits perfectly.

This book doesn't have an official title. On the cover page, there is a photo in the shape of a heart (webdings font, character "Y") and it is of my boyfriend's and my old phones (the old nokia 3300 series) on the text message screen; my phone says "i love nick." and his phone says "i love shar." All pages have a black border. On the top border of the title page, I wrote, "so basically, this is a story about two people who used to have the same phones. (that's us.)" and at the bottom, the date of 24 DECEMBER 2003, simply because that's a special day since that's the first time we said "i love you" to each other. :)

The pages afterwards then have photos of us together or solo, and little story bits about us before we really knew each other, when we first became friends, and stuff about us and our relationship. I ended up having two typos in it without noticing and I ran out of photo paper once I printed everything out so I just crossed out the extra/wrong words with a thin Sharpie marker, lol.

I did pretty much everything -- page layout and text and photo arranging in Adobe Photoshop. Fun stuff. Font used was "Gulim Che" (it comes in the Japanese language Internet Explorer pack, along with MS gothic I think). I also used Jenkins v2.0 on the bottom of two photos. The photos on the pages vary in the way they are laid out. Some have thin or thick black outlines, and others I played around with a little bit to look like Polaroid shots (mainly Joycam style -- rectangular).

Hmmmm.. I guess that's pretty much it about the book. I'll be giving it to him on Christmas Eve and I promise to take photos so I can show those to all of you. Yep. :)

Things I've learned from this project:
+ tug on the thread you are stitching with to ensure that the book is tightly stitched together and all signatures stay close.
+ do not tug too tightly or else the string will slice through your folds and/or vellum
+ have patience because string sometimes gets tangled and it is frustrating
+ measure carefully
+ careful when glueing and not to let any get on the photos or they'll look dull instead of glossy in that area, lol.

before shots