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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I'm Crafty!

card catalog display coffee table

Click here for a full tutorial and materials list

Let's start at the very beginning. I'm not a hoarder, but I do have a few . . . collections. An art school dilettante, I took classes from every possible area of interest. Printmaking had a hold of me for awhile, and spinning. A couple of courses in letterpress printing inspired my collection of vintage wooden type. The Mister and I even built a little printing press awhile back, but it's been untouched since the birth of my kiddo. But that's not where this project started. The wood block top was an afterthought.

This particular upcycling project (a card catalog coffee table that displays my collection of wooden type in the top) started with a row of card catalog drawers I picked up at Goodwill awhile back. I like Goodwill. Among thrift stores they're organized, clean, and priced right (locally, anyway). And once in awhile, they have things that jump out of nowhere and surprise you, like a row of card catalog drawers hidden among busted wicker furniture.

I spied the antique wooden bobbins (legs) at the Pendleton Woolen Mill Store in Portland. They're retired from the mill and are 80+ years old, their solid wood soaked through with lanolin from the wool. I didn't bring home enough, so I phoned them up a few weeks back and asked them to ship me some for this project, which they were sweet enough to do. The shipping cost almost as much as the bobbins, but it was totally worth it.

The hardware for attaching the legs to the card catalog came from the rebuilding store. Two were still in their ruined packages, missing only the screws; two were dug out of a bin of other hardware bits, used but useable, like everything there. I had to drill into the metal to attach them to the bobbins, which I'd expected (the center of the bobbins being hollow and all). Once those were sturdily attached, I propped the table base upright and started trying to think of what to put on the top.

After considering several possibilities, I decided to use the table to display my collection of vintage wooden type. The exposed drawer supports allowed me to use some leftover tag board to create an inset space I filled with part of my collection. To protect it, I covered the top with a piece of plexiglass that was leftover from a store I ran for awhile. One of the folks at my local builders' supply store cut it down to size for me when I brought it to them measured and marked. Thank you, guy at the cut table!

I used some old game pieces to support the edge and then rounded up some trim pieces at the (other) rebuilding store (it was 25 cents for a 3-foot length of mill seconds) to trim the edge and hold the plexiglass in place. I attached the trim with silver wire nails and then stained it with a Tee Juice pen to match. 

The final step: I typed up some labels for the drawers on my vintage typewriter.

I've seen some furniture made from card catalogs on Pinterest, and I've seen a couple of coffee tables with wooden type collages set in the top. Because I plan to actually use my wooden type for printing, I notched the trim along the back of the table so that the plexiglass top can be removed easily to access the wood blocks. The rest of the time, this lovely stuff isn't locked up in a bin anymore, and we get to enjoy it! Woohoo!

(Bonus: my collection of old house numbers fits around the edge . . . with room to keep adding.) 

This is one of those projects that makes me happy just looking at it. I hope you like it, too!

Click here for the full tutorial and materials list!

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Young Heart, Old Soul

too much . . . zapfino?

"Zapfino is a calligraphic typeface designed for Linotype by typeface designer Hermann Zapf in 1998. It is based on an alphabet Zapf originally penned in 1944. As a font, it makes extensive use of ligatures and character variations (for example, the lower case letter d has nine variations). --From the Wikipedia article about Zapfino

When I was getting started as a cover designer, I used to turn to Zapfino reasonably often because of its elegant letter forms, and the EXTENSIVE glyph palette. Five years later, I tend to stay away from it because I started seeing it everywhere. Because it's a display font, it's instantly recognizable. Is it time for Apple to add a brand new calligraphic typeface/font to its programs as a substitute? Has Zapfino possibly been overused?

Deborah Norville yarn at JoAnn Fabric




Sidewalk advertising sign for local lingerie store




Display of Christmas party ware at Fred Meyer




JoAnn Fabrics mailer




Hummingbird Organics logo (from their website)




Bread wrapper from Fred Meyer bakery




Premarin Vaginal Dryness Cream ad in Country Living magazine




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

design work

I threw together this interactive PDF portfolio of some of my graphic design work about a month ago. It includes cover and flier designs from my work at Wipf and Stock Publishers, where I still work part time from home. Enjoy!

Portfolio