Cheery address book

Step 3: Decorate the cover
• Cut out your 5- by 7-inch page and the other shapes for your cover.
• Sew a button into the centre of the clip art flower to add dimension, if desired.
• Glue your papers in place and allow to dry.

Step 4: Design your inside pages
• Resave your front cover as your first inside page. We saved ours as AB.
• Use text boxes and shapes to create the area where you'll be writing your addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
• Add decorative elements to the page. We copied part of our stripe motif to enhance the bottom of the page.
• In your program, where you insert different shapes, find a semi-circle or rectangle that will serve as your letter tabs.
• Measure out how many tabs will fit to the size of your book using the software's rulers to guide you.
• Insert the letters for your first page on the tab.
• Test-print your first page on regular paper before printing on your cardstock and designing the rest.
• For the next page, save a new copy and move the tab down to the space that you measured.
• Replace the text with the next letters of the alphabet.
• When you have completed all of your tabbed pages, print each page separately.
• Make sure you print using the "exact size" setting.

Click here to download our page templates in PDF form.

Step 5: Assemble your book
Once each page has been printed and trimmed, use a hole punch to create holes where you wish to bind your pages together. You could also choose to take your book to an office supply store to be spiral bound. We threaded white ribbon through our holes and knotted it in a way that is easy to undo if we want to add more pages in the future. You could also tie the ribbon in a bow.

Your book is now ready for you to write in all of your new addresses, phone numbers and whatever other information you wish to keep. You may want to add a space for birthdays. You may also wish to record all of the information right onto the page before printing so you don't have to write each one out by hand.