envelope guest book

My aunt needed some help coming up with a unique idea for a co-worker who was retiring. They were going to have a reception so she was thinking along the lines of some kind of guest book or something to sign and wish him well. Being the craft-tastic person that I am, no boring book or poster board would do.

I came across the idea of an envelope guest book. I liked this idea for several reasons: it's unique, it gives co-workers & friends the opportunity to write something a little more personal than just signing their name, and it gave me something fun to work on! :) My aunt also had photos she wanted to incorporate into the book, so I got to practice my scrapbooking skills! FYI, my scrapbooking skills are a bit rusty.

Here are the supplies I used:
- 8.5 x 11" fabric scrapbook album
- scrapbook paper (we found a couple paper packs of coordinating patterns, colors & stickers)
- envelopes & cards (you could easily cut cardstock & find small envelopes, but we ended up finding cards that matched the paper packs! We got a black & off-white set of envelopes, too.)
- glue sticks (glue dots or similar could also be useful)
- scissors, paper cutting tools, etc.

Since the paper packs were 12x12 and the book was 8.5x11, I needed to trim the paper down. For the envelope pages, I tried to keep it simple and chose patterned paper and cut it to size. Easy peasy. If you are a talented scrapbooker, I'm sure you could make this book look even more ahhh-mazing.

Then all you have to do is put glue stick all over the "front" of the envelopes and line them up in the center of the paper. Try to get the same spacing on each envelope page, otherwise it probably won't look as clean. Make sure all the edges of the envelope are stuck down really well.

This book had plastic pages, so we worked with what we had. Instead of leaving pages out and having people sign cards & put them in the envelopes themselves, we came up with the idea to have them sign before and we could put the notes in and be able to give him the complete book!

If you are wanting to use this idea for a wedding reception, for example, I recommend getting the 12x12 book instead and buying the paper pages that you can find separately so your envelopes are easily available and easy for people to put their notes in on their own. They didn't have pages like that for an 8.5x11 book, so we just worked with what we had.

Here are some photos of envelope pages and my mad scrapbooking skills! I put three pages of envelopes (6 envelopes total) between the photo pages, just to keep things even and looking consistent. I used 30 envelopes total and had 6 photo pages.

In the front of the book there's a space for a photo. Since I used all the photos on the inside, I decided to put his name instead. I typed it up on the computer & then added some ripped paper scraps to the "picture" before adding it in, just to give it the scrapbook feel and add some color. He's also retiring from UVU, so I of course had to use green since that's one of their main school colors.

And that's it! Very simple, and very different from your average guest book!