Checkered books for good friends

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I love this checkered pattern paper.....seriously I really do. The minute I saw it at the bookstore I knew I had to buy it and use it as a cover for my hand-bound books for men. I think the special thing about it is the silver dots along the lines....how it shines when it hits the light...so fancy :)

Both the books at the top of the post were made for 2 guys who are good friends of my sister. One I've never met but been hearing a lot from her for quite some time now.....the other one is a good of mine too whom I've known since way back in the 90s and is also my neighbour :).

To be honest I was in a little hurry to get the books done at the time coz I was so busy with other orders and living my life hehehhee....so much so that I didn't have much time to think about how to decorate it. The pattern paper itself already looks good to me because of the design.....I just didn't know how else to make it look nice! LOL! So to personalise it a bit, I decided to use the same method I used on my earlier hand-bound book design which was decorating it with the wooden ring I got from Wholeport and put their names inside it. For one of them I used a short form of his name and the other one, just his initials because he didn't have a short form for his name....hehe....I've always called him by his first name...so, having his initials there was the best thing I could think of at the time.

At first I wondered if I  should make single colour pages or multicoloured ones. It seems like doing single coloured ones would be too plain so I opted to make them a little fancy by choosing a few coloured papers that would match the cover of the book. And I really like the outcome of it. :) I'm glad that both of them liked the books that I made for them too. Alhamdulillah. :)