Ring-Book: How To

There are countless details when planning a wedding. One of them that I recently decided to fixate on was how our wedding bands would make it down the aisle for the ceremony.  You see, we have a ring bearer, Salty's nephew will be two. In my opinion that is the perfect age for such tasks. He'll be old enough to walk in a straight line (more or less) and young enough to be a bit of a wild card and promise some entertainment for the guests watching.

The with the "who" settled the next question was "how?". I have never really liked the traditional ring pillows(Some are lovely, just not my style). The ceramic bowls are nice, but I wanted something different. I am pretty sure I came up with this idea myself... Or maybe I got it from Shawshank Redemption.

(Photo from Movie quotes and more from Shawshank Redemption)

Ok, so mine will not be shaped like a pick hammer but I decided a cut out book would be perfect. It would be fun, unique and provide a great chance to to really get my craft on. Without further ado, how to make your very own Ring Book:

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Here are my basic supplies:

~A hard cover book

~Paint and brushes

~Xacto knife

~Rubber cement 

~Ribbon

~Hot Glue

~Stapler

I got the book at Good Will. I felt a little bad at the idea of cutting up a perfectly good book so I spent awhile reading the jackets until I found the most boring one I could in the appropriate size. I took the paper cover off the book and used rubber cement to glue a small chunk of pages together. 

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I used clothes pins to hold the pages together while the glue dried. I also glued this chunk to the front cover of the book. 

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Then, with the "big half" of the book I traced out a heart. You can see I did not like the first go and had to re-do it. After I had a shape I liked, I set to cutting. It took longer than I thought. 

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I cut about 3/4 of the remaining pages to create a heart shaped hole. About halfway through that I stapled a piece of ribbon (folded in half) so that it extended into the heart shape.

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I had to make sure it was deep enough. Chances are the rings will be on their sides. But I did not want to risk it.

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I then used the rubber cement to glue the larger chunk of pages together. Then it was time to paint. Our wedding colors are navy blue and light green. I used a light pearl color on the inside to keep the "book" feel and green accents and navy for the cover.

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A little green. A little more blue. I also painted the ends of the ribbon so they would not fray.

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Not too shabby if I say so myself. It still needs something. Hmmmmm... Lets see, maybe a swirl or two?

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And maybe our soon to be new initial? I should have mentioned it during the save the date post, but I absolutely adore our wedding font, Harrington. It is so whimsical and beautiful. Anyway, I drew it in as close as I could in pencil and then filled it in with paint. 

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When I was done, I wanted to see what it would look like with rings in it. We have not purchased our wedding bands yet so I just used my engagement ring and another one I had floating around.

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SQUEE! It turned out better than I could have hoped(if I do say so myself)! All that's left to do now is glue a bit of ribbon on the outside. I used hot glue for this.

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And to finish it off, a cute little heart on the back. 

Now, The whole thing:

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In cutting out all of those pages I have a large pile of little paper hearts. I can't bring myself to through them out. Perhaps they too will find their way onto my DIY list.

Did you have any projects that turned out better than hoped? Any that created other projects?