Romantic Book Clutch

About two days before my friend's wedding, I was faced with a dilemma: to buy or to make a clutch bag for the wedding. The first choice will be expensive - about Php 500 at least if I buy from Landmark and I was covetously eying this glittery thing from Kate Spade. If I do DIY, I will be pressed for time and there was no guarantee it will turn out well.

Eventually I decided to go the DIY route, telling myself if it fails I can always buy a ready made one with time to spare. Now the question was - what design should I do?

There are a lot of DIY clutches peppering Pinterest, but one of the most popular is the book clutch. I love the idea because I'm a bookworm myself. Kate Spade also has her version but sadly it's not available here in the Philippines.

Most tutorials suggest using an old hardcover for the project, and I did see one months before at a used bookstore which had this beautiful green and gold cover. I regret now that I didn't buy it then. A part of me cringes at the thought of defacing books, though, so I got an idea of using this bag/diary that I saw in National Bookstore. It's for kids and costs only about a Php 100. It's pretty cute - I actually gave something like this to my goddaughter for her birthday. The bag part is perfect, since it was already a bag shape, with a hidden magnet for closure.

I cut the excess board to get the book shape. It occurred to me later how easier it was if I would have separated the "box" from the cover instead of trying to retain the shape in the first place.

For the cover, I scoured Pinterest and finally came upon this site - the University of Rochester. They have a collection of absolutely beautiful vintage book bindings. I picked one and did some trial and error to get the right size for my book clutch cover. I printed it out and mod-podged it. I do recommend printing a bit larger so you can sort of wrap it with a bit at the back.

For the sides, I found a picture of book textures and did some experimenting with the size on that too. I mod-podged it to the sides so it would look like a real book.

Before I put it all back together again, I put in a black ribbon on both sides for the tie closure. I put some black felt paper (which I already had) to serve as the lining on both the inside of the cover and the box before gluing all the parts back together.

And voila! I had my book clutch for the wedding. I got lots of compliments over it. I personally love it because it was DIY, cheap, unique and most of all - sort of romantic with the cupid on the title and, well, books are kind of a romantic notion now, aren't they? It's all about e-books nowadays.

I flirted with the idea of putting some dimensional glaze over it, but I was afraid it wouldn't dry on time. Still thinking if I should do it, though. Maybe on another clutch.

The artful dabbler,

 Meg