Homemade Gift: Guest Book

Supplies: stamps (Inkadinkadoo Coffee House Alphabet); paper (ATD, image from recycled Karla Dornacher book); ink (black StazOn).

I have been trying to keep up with pastor's wives from my conference this year, with a goal of contacting each of them at least once. Since we live so far from the rest of our conference churches, sometimes I feel a little disconnected from what's going on with the rest of our churches. However, I know that parsonage life can be stressful at times, whether I know the details or not. So I've been doing my own little "encouragement ministry". (Our conference isn't large, so 1-2 packages each week will cover everyone in one year's time.)

I enjoy making things, but I don't always have people to give them to. This is the perfect outlet for these type of projects. I've already sent out aprons and tea towels, but I hit on this idea the other day and I'm thoroughly excited about it. In fact, I'm so excited about it that I've turned out four of them each day for the last two days.

I have lots of composition notebooks from the back-to-school sales, and I love altering them into something pretty. This happens to be a guest book, something that every pastor's wife (at least the ones I know) has. If she doesn't need it for a guest book, she can use it to keep track of guests' food preferences, allergies, or diet restrictions ... or menus she has used in the past ... or any of the other details we keep track of in the parsonage. :)



And here's the inside cover. I decorated both the front and back inside covers the same.

I was able to make this using the recycled book image, two sheets of decorative 12x12" papers, and the composition notebook. The back cover is done in the stripe you see to the left.

I'm pretty excited about how these are turning out, so expect to see quite a few in the next few days/weeks! :)

I'm linking to