Alexis Senge JohnsonI was struggling for months to find the right type of guest book for our wedding. I found several different ideas that I liked pieces of, but none of them were exactly what I was looking for. That is where my wonderful groom-to-be steped into the picture and decided to create exactly what I had in mind. After a trip to Lobby Hobby, Home Depot and a day of thrifting, we had all the parts to make a one of a kind guest book creation from scratch.
We found the “J” and the black picture frame at Lobby Hobby to make this our own. However, the big find was the G clef that we found at a thrift shop for only a few bucks. It really helped to bring the rustic edge that I was looking for, as well as tie together something we both love. You can see there’s even a little extra surprise he put on the back just for fun while he was assembling it. I think he had a good time roughing up the wood. It gave him a great opportunity to use a chisel set we had received at one point, as well as throw hammers and other objects at it in the yard just for the heck of it. He sanded it down afterwards just to be sure it would be smooth enough that no one got a splinter while writing on it.
My husband worked real hard on concocting the proper potion to get the stain just right and finding a sealer that would ensure what our guests wrote wouldn’t smear. I found oil based paint Sharpie’s at Michael’s and that is what we placed out for our guests to sign with on the big day. We waited a few days after the wedding before he put the final sealer on it just to be sure everything that people wrote on it was fully dry.
Now it hangs on the wall in our living room for us to enjoy each day. When we get a photo from the wedding we’ll be able to put it into the frame and it will give it an extra pop of color. I’m glad it is something that we got to design together and I think the originality of it makes it perfectly us. In retrospect, I can’t imagine having decided to use anything else as a guest book. This allows us to enjoy the memories each day instead of every once in a while when we dust off the bookshelf and remember the guest book is burried deep in our collection of reading materials.
