Cheery address book

While many rely on e-mail these days to correspond with family and friends, you may still get a little thrill when opening your mailbox to find a hand-written note. If you still like to send "snail mail" and had a hard time finding all the street names and postal codes for your holiday envelopes this past season, then one of your resolutions may be to organize all of this information in one place.

We've used some simple scrapbooking techniques and our computer to create a charming little book in which you can enter all the information you'll need the next time you reach for an envelope or the telephone. Follow our simple steps or use your photo-editing program to create your own design.

You will need:
Thick photo paper or cardstock
Colour printer
Scissors or utility knife
Glue
Hole punch
Ribbon
Clear plastic button, needle and thread

Instructions:
Step 1: Create your cover and book page templates
• Open your photo-editing program and create a new 8-1/2- by 11-inch document.
• Save this document as your front and back cover. (Click here to download our front and back cover.)
• Using the rulers in your program, insert a 5- by 7-inch rectangle.
• Add colour, insert clip art images or place text within your rectangle. We chose to create our own papers and embellishments separately to layer and decorate the front cover.
• Print your page using the "exact size" setting. This will ensure that your page is printed at the dimensions that you specified.

Step 2: Design your paper and embellishments
Are you stuck with only white sheets of paper? No problem. You can design your own patterned pages and clip art in your photo-editing program. This also allows you to select your own colours to create a one-of-a kind project.
• To design our striped sheet, we opened an 8-1/2- by 11-inch page and added rectangles as lines in various sizes.
• Use the program's colour palette to fill in each stripe. We used pinks, browns and white.
• Save your image and print on your paper using the "exact size" setting.
• If your printer doesn't print borderless pages, trim off the edges before using for your project. For the other elements on the page, we placed various shapes, text and a clip art flower that came with the program (we added the colour) to decorate the front cover.
• Print onto cardstock using the "exact size" setting.

Click here to download our striped page.
Click here to download our embellishments.