golden book baby shower invitations

I recently offered to throw a baby shower for a good friend of mine, and because this will be her second child and she already has a house full of hand-me-downs, she requested that the gift giving be kept to a minimum. Partially because of that request (and partially because she's a book lover like me) I settled on a "vintage / classic kids' books" shower theme.

The invitations went through an extensive brainstorming and planning phase, after which I finally decided to use vintage Golden Books as the base.

This may not be a new idea entirely; since landing on the concept I've seen a few different versions of Golden Book baby shower invitations. A few use just the covers, discarding the pages.

Yikes. As a book lover throwing a party for a book lover, that idea makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Admittedly, I have that response to pretty much any project I see people blogging about when it involves chopping up vintage books, even having worked in bookstores and witnessed what happens to mass market paperbacks. Or maybe because of it.

Anyway, I trolled St. Vincent dePaul's section of kids' books to find some classic titles in older editions with a bit of age to them. Because the guest list was small, I didn't mind that each of the books was different, but this project might be a little extreme for a guest list of more than a dozen.

Of course, Baby Animals was pretty perfect for this project, but really, nearly any Golden Book can be altered to make the perfect invitation (as shown above).

Using my YA Library Book Slips fabric design as a base in Adobe Illustrator, I designed and printed out some library check-out slips on manila card stock using the family's last name (Geisel, in this case, is a pseudonym) in place of the author and "The New Baby" as the title.  These were the "registry" info cards, except in this case they included language inviting people to forego traditional registry gifts in favor of vintage kids' books or small handmade items.

The little envelopes to hold the cards inside the books are made of the same card stock trimmed, folded, and held in place with GlueDots. (If you can't find manila card stock, do what I did and cut some manilla file folders down to 8.5 x 11" sheets using a paper cutter.)

I scanned the front cover (inside and outside) to alter slightly in Photoshop.

For the fronts, I added on each book the words "& Baby Geisel" to the title, matching the the title font and wear pattern as closely as possible.

For printing on the reverse, I moved up the bookplate and made the endpaper pattern fully repeat, before layering on the text in a font similar to the Little Golden Books font. (Click to zoom for detail.)

Printed and trimmed . . .

. . . then scored along the spine and ready to attach . . .

. . . with three glue dots.

I used washi tape tabs to indicate where to open the books . . .

. . . and used more washi tape (white and yellow, so the golden spines still showed through a bit) to cover the spines. Then I tied them up with baker's twine and put them in some shipping envelopes to ready them for mailing (complete with logo for the Geisel Family Library Foundation).

Repeat for all titles.

This project is, admittedly, a bit labor intensive and requires some knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Like the look but want to skip the work? I can put some together for you, too! Contact me for pricing and scheduling by leaving a comment below, or by e-mailing (whoamillie (at) thenightgarden.com).

Thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these photos larger simply by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that.

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cupcake box baby shower gift

A few months back, I posted here about some little baby clothes I'd printed for my step-sister's baby shower. Because I sometimes like to make the presentation of special gifts look outstanding, I started shopping for ideas on how to package the gifts.

Cruising Pinterest, I found several pins about baby shower gift boxes available on Etsy (and other places) made to look like bakery boxes full of cupcakes. (Try here, here, and here for examples.) Since I already several little onesies printed and ready to go, I just needed to buy a few more things to pull together my own cupcake box, which makes a really lovely alternative to the ubiquitous diaper cake.




Here's how you can put one together, too!

Start with a window-topped treat box, 3 for $4.99 at Joann (buy them with a coupon, and you'll get 40% off).

Also pick up some king-size white baking cups. They come in a package of 24 and you'll pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 for them.

You can buy fancy baker's twine here too, but it's expensive. I had some left from a project a couple of years ago, so I just used that. Make your own using this tutorial, or buy a big cone here for about $10, to avoid feeling like you're overspending for string.

At Target, I picked up a three-pack of elastic headbands for babies for about $3. If you're building a cupcake box for a boy, you can use rubber bands or the same twine listed above. You'll also need four pairs of baby socks (or, if you're really trying to budget, four socks {two pairs} total, but baby socks can be found at Target or Old Navy for $1 a pair) and four onesies or baby t-shirts. My cupcakes were made using onesies.

To make: if you're printing your own onesies as I did, wait for them to dry and heat set them, of course, so you don't mess up your hard work. Fold in the sleeves, then fold each onesie into thirds, lengthwise.

Take a pair of socks (or a single sock, if you'd prefer) and place it at one end of the folded onesie or t-shirt. The toes of the socks will look a little like cherries in the center of your cupcakes, so keep this goal in mind as you roll the socks up inside the onesies. When rolled, make sure the onesie will fit inside one of your king-sized baking cups, then bind with one of your headbands or some baker's twine.

Repeat for all four onesies, then place each inside a baking cup. Place all four cupcakes into your assembled bakery box, then tie the box with baker's twine. Add a tag, and you're ready to go!




This one is packed and ready to ship inside a priority mail box, surrounded by crumpled construction paper.

Happily, you'll have enough bakery boxes, baking cups, and baker's twine leftover for a couple of more gifts, so if you find you suddenly have a baby boom among your friends (or at your office, like we had at mine!), you'll be set to put together a couple of more on short notice.

Of course, I have a couple of other tricks up my sleeve for ways to use these cute bakery boxes. Stay tuned!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

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almost ready . . .

Thought I'd go ahead and post a couple of early photos of some of the hand-bound books I'll be listing for sale soon, along with a bunch of other goodies!

The publishing company I work for specializes in reprints of out-of-print theological books. To get from original book to new book, a lot of old book bindings are discarded, so I asked for a few to be set aside for me. I'm using them to make these neat, coptic-bound blank books. I'm really happy with how they're turning out!

These red book boards are complemented with the copper-colored book cloth, which nicely matches the twine used for the coptic binding:

This set of old, leather-covered book boards came from a book published in the 1800s. I cleaned them up and added copper-colored book cloth, antique-looking end papers, and more than 100 pages (fronts and backs) of really heavy sketch paper.

I'll make sure to have everything up by the 21st, and I'll keep you posted with a couple more teaser shots in the meantime. I'm also working on completely revamping my website!

p.s. Speaking of books, my friend Skylaar has a beautiful little number here. It pushes the definition of "book" a bit; your life will be richer for seeing it!