As some of you probably remember, back in the summer when Jessie left, I wanted to make a Cupcake and Mango themed photobook for her which included pictures of some of you guys holding signs expressing your regrets on having to see her leave.

WELL I'm happy to announce that I have finally finished it. Since it's the last evening of the winter break, I figured I might as well finish the project and mail it to her before I get too busy again with the semester.

First I wanted to give it to Jessie before she officially left, but she left before I could finish it. Then I wanted to give it to her for her convocation, but when I missed that deadline I decided to give it to her for her birthday. Not surprisingly, I missed her birthday too, so I decided to give it to her for Christmas. Since it's obviously past Christmas and I'm only blogging this now, I obviously missed that as well. Now it's just going to be a New Years gift. (Would this count as re-gifting?)

Here's what the project ended up looking like:

Last summer, we had a movie marathon at Jennifer's place. Since everyone was already gathered together, I pulled people aside and took pictures of them holding signs of how much they'll miss Jessie. You can't see the signs in these pictures, but I later on went over the signs in photoshop to make them more visible.

Selina's message: Bye Jessie! I'll miss you! God speed!

Rebecca's message: You'll Always Be In My Heart.

Hannah's message: I heart you Jessie! You're always in my Prayers!

Ariel's message: Dear Jessie: God Heart You ... And I do too!

Eddie's message: I know you'll do awesome Jessie! =)

Clement's message: Good Luck! God Speed!

Johnny's message: *I'm sexy*

Jeddi's message: Keep Loving Jesus! See ya soon Jessie!!

John's message: I don't know how we'll recover ...

(I noticed that only the girls drew hearts. The guys are too manly for hearts.)

Anyway, I'd like to take a moment and talk about rubber cement glue!

When I was in jr. high, I had a really intimidating science teacher who always preached about rubber cement. He scared me so much that I have not been able to use any other glue ever since.

Rubber cement stinks though, and you need proper ventilation when using it. I like it because you can rub off excess dried glue after it dries and it comes with a brush, which is handy when dealing with photos.

Ok on with the photobook. Basically putting it together is simple, you just need to think of how many pages you want in your book, grab the appropriate number of pages, cut them to size, and fold them inside-out like this:

Glue the back of the paper together and it should look like this:

Next, you have to make a front cover which has to be sturdy. I took a plain folder, cut it to size, and glued it together.

Since Amy Tang knows her stuff, I listened to her. She told me to never cut with scissors since you can never cut straight with scissors. Instead, use an exacto-knife with a ruler. It's actually faster.

I added a front cover to jazz it up. The reason I used a button was because I lost the 'o', but it worked out well didn't it? (For the button and the string use permanent and school glue, cement glue won't work.)

Here are the pages:

And voila! A sturdy photobook. I'll be mailing this tomorrow.