Pinspiration Sunday: 52 Reasons Valentine's Day Gift

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I thought I would share what I made for my husband this year. I had originally got this idea years ago after Googling Homemade Valentine's gifts. Then I thought about making it this year and decided to search Pinterest for ideas. I came across this photo.

My hubby likes robots...A LOT..and so I decided that I wanted to do a cover similar to this one. I went searching the web to find just the right image I could use. There are TONS of images out there. I was shocked and amazed by the variety. I finally decided on a Photobucket image called Robots in Love. It was simple and cute and the image was long instead of wide which worked well for me because I wanted my book to open from side to side instead of bottom to top. Then it was time to gather supplies. Here is a list of things I used to make my book:

Full Deck of cards (I bought a Breast Cancer awareness deck which had pink instead of red...which I just LOVED!)
sand paper
Tim Holtz paper distressor
crop-a-dile
binding rings
ribbon
ink in red and black
burlap
ATG adhesive gun
and 52 reasons why you love someone

I bought my deck of cards but I wanted it to look old and used, so I took each card and distressed the edges with the Tim Holtz Paper Distressor. Next I used the sand paper and sanded both sides of each card. Then I took a couple cards at a time and punched holes on one side for the binding. I would use one of the cards already punched to line up another stack of cards. I repeated this until all cards had holes. Next I put the binding rings on and cut some small pieces of black ribbon and tied them to the binding rings for decoration. Then it was time to decorate the rest of the book. I used the Joker cards as my cover pages. I used the ATG gun to adhere the burlap to the front and back. I used the image and added text in Microsoft Word to make my cover. I just printed it out and tore around the edges. (It took several tries until I got the font size right so it would fit on the cards) I also typed out my reasons on Word. I inserted a table with 4 columns and 3 rows. I centered the text using the font Minya Nouvelle in size 18. I then tore out each reason. I inked the edges of the ones I used one the black cards with red and black ink on the pink cards. I used the ATG gun to attach the reasons to the cards. Here's some pictures of the finished project: