Nearly six months after the event, I have finally finished my 40th birthday photo album.

The cover is a strip of flyscreen mesh, with the first cassette I ever bought, 1982 With a Bullet attached. The ‘buttons’ to the right are the little wheels from inside the tape. Underneath them are velcro dots.

The photos and invitation are bound together and to the cover with the stab stitch method, using a black ribbon.

I sized the photos to 6×4″, then set them into 7×5″ files so I had a border in which to type a caption, and some room to the left for the binding.

On Saturday I set up the photos from our trip to New Zealand a few years back in a similar way and yesterday they arrived from the processing company. They’re much bigger – 12×8″ – and therefore were a LOT more expensive. But I’m aiming for a ‘coffee table book’ look for that album. Same binding method, but with a more conventional cover. That’ll be this weekend’s project.