Table Numbers - Gold Book Tutorial

When I was a kid my mum used to make these amazing golden books called memory books. They were apparantly quite popular in the 80's. I had one on my dresser for ages and ages, until at some point in my teenage years when I thought I was too cool for things like that.

For our table numbers, I suggested to H2B that we could make some of these vintage-inspired gold books for something unique and interesting. We would place the table number on one side and a picture of us on another.

The books are quite involved and will take a long time to do, so you might want to ask for help if you have any crafty friends. Thankfully I had one of my beautiful friends to help out and my mum & sister helped out with the initial steps. If you do have the large amount of man-hours available to make these, it will probably cost less than buying wooden table numbers or something similar.

What you will need:

• Clag glue, PVA glue or similar. One large bottle will do approximately 5 books.
• Old, hardback books
• Spray paint in your desired colours
• Various Paint brushes - including some cheap thick ones for gluing
• Decorative materials
• Pictures, if wanted
• Tacky craft glue, double-sided tape or whatever other adhesive you want to use for the decorations

Step 1:
Gather some old books together. My mum sourced mine for free from someone who was getting rid of them for free. Any old hardback book will be fine - op shops should sell them for a few cents each. Try to find ones that are still intact and not falling apart. They should be roughly the same size unless you want varying sizes.

Step 2:
Rip some pages out so that the book is not over-full. We alternated between keeping 10 pages followed by ripping 5 out. Try to rip the pages out neatly and without leaving much paper attached to the spine.

Step 3:

Divide the book into rough quarters. Glue down the front and back quarters completely. To do this, simply apply glue to the entire page and stick it to the page next to it. Start by gluing the 1st pages to the covers, and so on and so forth until you reach the middle quarters. You can use a ruler to make sure the glued pages are smooth. Once you have reached the middle quarters, glue only the ends to the pages beneath, lining it up slightly inward every-time as you go so that you get a nice curve to the pages. LEAVE the very middle 4 pages of the book free - DO NOT glue these pages. Leave the books at least overnight to dry.




Step 4:
Spray paint the entire book (including front/back cover) in your desired colour. The lighter you apply the spray paint, the more of the original wording you will see underneath. I spray painted the books so that some parts had more words showing than others.  Leave to dry.

Spray paint anything else you want at the same time. We spray painted some small cardboard hearts that I had lying around, as well as an old hair clip decoration, paper corner inserts, and other things.

Step 5: 
Start applying decorations. I went and bought a damask-style stencil (you can get stencils from most craft stores, such as Spotlight, Lincraft, etc.) and painted the stencil over my books to give them more texture.

For my golden books, I painted the stencil on in silver paint, and later re-spray painted them in gold again to get a more subtle pattern. For my rose coloured books, I actually lightly mixed a gold and a silver paint to get a two-toned effect.









At this point, I had one of my amazing friends to help. We used a cheap roll of a thick lace (can be brought from craft stores or $2 stores) to make bookmarks (I cut off the original ones that came with the books). My friend then used pliers to get some dangly bits off an old set of earings & sewed them onto the lace to make nice book-mark ends.


We also applied other various decoration at this stage, including a large strip of lace to one book.


Step 6:
Curl the pages of the books by rolling the paper around a pencil or whatever other round object you want in the desired thickness. Glue the rolls into place with tacky craft glue or similar. Leave the pencils in as the rolls dry. Once dry remove the pencils.



Step 7:
Glue down the final free pages. Leave to dry. Re-spray paint the books in any areas that were missed (Such as under the rolls).

Step 8: 
Apply pictures and table numbers. For my pictures, I coffee-stained them and then applied a thin plastic over the top that looked vintage (which was purchased from a craft store). I could not find large enough number stencils anywhere that I looked, so I ended up printing the numbers out, cutting them out, and then going over in black ink any spots where the white paper showed through. I then glued these cut-out numbers down.

Apply any extra desired decorations to the pictures (e.g. borders, etc.). Leave it all to dry, do any little touch-ups you may want - and you're done!!!

The One

THE ONE. No, I'm not talking about my H2B. He is definitely the one, but not the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about my dress.

The theme for my wedding was decided almost entirely by the type of dress I wanted to wear. My lovely H2B didn't even get the chance to let a fleeting thought fly through his head about what kind of theme he might like. He was automatically over-ruled on any suggestion he might have made...unless that suggestion would have been vintage.

Our theme is vintage. As dictated by my absolute need to have a vintage style dress.

My dress was somewhat determined by our budget. Shoestring. It's not easy, but it can be done.

To start off I googled vintage wedding dresses and saved a whole bunch of inspiration pictures. Anything that I liked I saved, regardless of shape and how I thought it might fit me. Then I went on a lightinthebox Frenzy to get an idea of what prices were too low. (NB I have used Lightinthebox.com previously for small items and some clothes. Whilst clothes were acceptable, they were not of good enough quality that I would purchase my wedding dress from them). I used this time to think about what sort of dress would suit the weather (May, so I could wear a thicker, longer, hotter dress and not die of heat exhaustion).

After all my online research my best friend & I headed out to the bridal shops that were closer by to my house. Although we didn't have appointments I did manage to get to try on a few dresses and we got a rough idea of what style suited me, so we booked appointments at the big bridal stores in Brisbane City for a few weeks later.

I didn't end up buying my dress this day but I did try on enough to know exactly what style of dress suited my shape. One of the places we went to were brilliant, and if they weren't so expensive I might have walked out with my dress that day. I did walk out with the name of a dress designer and model number. The second place I went to taught me a lot about the importance of customer service in selecting your dress. They made us wear gloves so we didn't ruin the dresses as we tried them on. Fair enough. But they were so worried about the dresses that they refused to help me actually dress. When you have an assistant help you try on dresses you really need someone who will try their best to fit you in that dress, no matter what. Considering that most places only stock 1 - 2 sizes of each dress for try ons this is super important in case you do want to order it. I couldn't fit into a single dress that I liked because the assistant was so unwilling to help me.

Just a point to any B2B trying on dresses - wear seamfree underwear to your fittings! They will help the dresses glide right over your derriere - especially helpful if you are blessed in the behind like I am. Also take note of if you can move properly in the dress and how easily you can breathe in it.

I initially tried to find the dress that I thought was 'the one' 2nd hand online, from places like 'I Do Gowns', 'Still White', gumtree, Facebook and the like. I wanted to pay about half, if not less, than what I had been quoted in-store. Unfortunately no-one seemed to have my size for sale.


Whilst I was pondering the fact that my dream dress may never be mine, my mum was noticing some rather large sales going on at a dress shop near where she lived on the Gold Coast. We booked in an appointment for that weekend.

I bought the one. It was a different one to what I thought was initially the one, but it became my new 'One', for several reasons.

I had learnt previously that my style is very much trumpet, which amazed me because looking at all the stick-thin models online wearing trumpet gowns had me convinced that I would look horrible and fat in a figure-hugging gown. I could not have been more wrong.

My assistant helped me pick out about 5 gowns to try on and we set about getting me into and out of each one. She was honest and helpful the entire time. We had a few dresses that I liked, and one dress that looked like I would love but that they only had in an itty bitty size 8. The assistant squeezed me into it somehow (I really, really don't know how, I think she was doing some sort of Harry Potter magic) to get a rough look at it. Then she found a much more modern dress that had the same bodice and trumpet style in my size and asked me to try that on to get a better idea of how I liked the fit.

Customer service skills. Plus 1! She didn't even bat an eyelid when we had to work around my insulin pump site, which I had accidentally put in a really hard to avoid location.

I knew it was the one when all the ladies in the room (who were accompanying a different bride to be) basically demanded I buy it.

At 50% of the ticketed price that was Plus point 2 and I put down my deposit right then.


6 weeks later, I had my perfectly-fit dress in my hands.

We Got Engaged

I guess each wedding story starts the same. With 3 simple words. "We Got Engaged". Actually, I guess it starts before that, with a guy (or girl) on bended knee, asking a girl (or guy) to be his wife (or husband).

This story started in a familiar way. It began with a man and a woman, approaching their 7 year anniversary. The man in this story, happening to be my fiance, H, and the woman happening to be...you guessed it...me. I really didn't expect it. With the interest my now-fiance was showing in marriage before the proposal I was beginning to believe that the proposal would happen when I was 80 years old, and that my man would ask me mid-shower if I wanted to get hitched.

Contrary to my beliefs about my partner's perceived lack of romance, the big moment happened quietly next to a serene lake, after enjoying a stroll together through a reserve land. Perfect for me, as I had dropped serious hints about the fact I did not want anyone else to enjoy the moment but me and him. Gawking strangers play no part in my love story.

Eventually I learnt that he had had the ring for nearly 5 months - he originally intended to propose during our trip to Japan but that the custom-made ring wasn't made in time. He tried to propose a few more times, but lack of intimacy (i.e. previously mentioned gawking strangers), a tick-bite causing me severe hypoglycaemia, and my irritability at being woken to watch the sunrise all played major hands in pushing the proposal further and further back.

So it happened, eventually. We Got Engaged. Here we are.

I'm starting this blog late, less than 2 months out from our big day. But I wanted to write it all down while I can at least remember SOME of it.