isavirtue: baby | make your own brag book

a friend gave me the most wonderful gift - a personalized baby book with images from my beloved city of victoria. the book was of such high quality that i immediately hopped over to pinhole press, where she had created it. here i stumbled across these adorable brag books.

but when it came down to it, i just couldn't afford them (especially because i wanted to give one to my aunts as well as my mother). and then i thought - well, i have all the materials to make this so why don't i?

i ordered 4x4 instagram style prints from black's photography (i uploaded, cropped and paid approximately thirty cents each...they were done in less than an hour and jon picked them up on the way home from work!). and then i set about creating the books.

you can also order 4x4 prints from postal pix, print studio and inkifi. or you can just slice two inches off a regular 4x6 photo :)

for the photo mounts, i used various colours of seventy lbs cardstock and sliced four pieces of 4.25 by 8.5 inches. (you'll need two 8.5 x 11 sheets of cardstock to do this)

i then scored all four sheets down the middle at 4.25 inches for the fold

i folded on the score line and glued each strip to the next until it looked like the photo below. there should be six flats all together (two will be glued to the front and back covers leaving room for four or eight photos).

all the flats that will hold a photo will now be doubly thick, whereas the ends are just single sheets

for the covers i tried two different techniques. for the pink and grey one, i cut strips of book cloth that i had on hand. i realize most people don't have book cloth, so i also did a white one made from simple sheets of computer paper. for the covers i cut 4.5x4.5 pieces of chipboard. you could also use cardboard or wood.

whether you use cloth, paper or wrap - essentially you are wrapping it like a gift but without all the excess material - try cutting 5x5 squares of paper. be sure to put glue underneath the part that goes on the cover, not just the pieces that wrap around.