Wedding Keepsake Box, Album & Guest Book

October 07, 2026 1 Min Read
custom made leather bound and personalised luxury wedding keepsake box with storage for wedding album, wedding guest book and a drawer for the memories and keepsakes

 

The making of a leather bound multi slipcase, to serve the role of a wedding keepsake box. 

The commission for this was for three items combined into one. A wedding album, a guest book and lastly a keepsake box all encapsulated in one. The starting point for any box we make is building around the largest item, which in this case was the 11" x 14" leather wedding album. This and the guest book were products that we also made, but not covered here.

With the beginning point being the wedding album, we also had to accommodate the wedding guest book which was smaller as it was using A4 pages. In order to make this fit we built out a box section in the top part of the box. Also a significant part of the overall personalisation of the box was placing the (cover of the) wedding invitation at the top of the box, which we created a recess for it so that it sat flush with the overall top.

Jackie Hartnack owner of Hartnack and Co cutting book board on a vintage gullotine ready to make a bespoke binder album and keepsake box
As with everything it all starts with cutting grey board into the component pieces for the box.
the boards are glued and laminated together
Each component consists of 2 pieces of book board. These glued and then laminated together. One board is slightly larger than the other to create a step joint.
book cloth lining for the keepsake box is glued and pressed onto the boards
The book cloth lining is then glued onto each section of the inner face of the keepsake box.
Jackie gluing the edge of the side of a handmade keepsake box
Construction begins with the step joint edges being carefully glued.
making by hand a custom and bespoke wedding keepsake box
And then placed together to build the sides of the interior of the box.
A custom made and bespoke multi level box being assembeld by hand
Each level is carefully built up one side wall at a time.
the leather wedding guest book is placed with the tray to measure it for size
The leather guest book is placed into the centre of the top section and then Jackie can cut divider supports to size.
a leather wedding guest book provides the template for the resy of the keepsake box
Once cut, they are then individually glued into place.
a custom hand made slipcase box with sections for a book to sit within
Until finally we have this.
Top section of the wedding keepsake box
The bottom of the section is then glued into place.
putting the top section of a handmade box onto the bottom section
Once dry, it is placed on top of the other two slipcase sections. The step joints of each have been glued at the edges
Jackie Hartnack making a custom made multi slipcase for a wedding keepsake box
Once dry, the side walls of all three sections are glued with PVA.
Jackie Hartnack making a hand crafted keepsake box
The 3rd and final piece of book board is then placed onto the glued sides. This not only helps the three slipcase sections to join, but adds extra strength. 
outer skin of carboard keepsake with space for invitation
At the same time the top section of the box has a rectangle cut out. This creates the recess space which the invitation will be placed into.
Glueing leather on to the custom made keepsake box
Finally the leather hide is glued onto the side. Notice the edge of the leather that has been skived down so that it fold over the edge.
getting the edge detail of the leather correct on the custom made keepsake box
The front facing edges are then carefully cut out and skived so that they fit around front edges and shelves.
Jackie Hartnack getting the deatil right on the blue leather keepsake memory box
They are then carefully glued and folded into place.
placing the wedding invitation into place holder on top of the leather wedding keepsake box
Lastly, the cover of the wedding invitation is glued and then carefully placed into the recessed area of the leather.

 

The finished keepsake box features below.

What we didn't cover here was the making of the wedding album, the guest book and also their contents. The products were our leather screw post binder portfolios. The wedding album was sized around 11" x 14" paper and the guest book was A4. The leather we used was from a special stock of vegetable tanned leather that we sourced via our London wholesaler that came from Italy. It was a little thinner than our usual 3.5mm stock, but still still great. We gold foiled the covers of both using the same fonts that were used on the wedding stationery.
For the wedding album we were given a USB stick of the images that the bride and groom wanted and importantly in the order they wanted them to appear. We laid them out on the pages and organised the printing through Acanthus in Wellington, Somerset.
The guest book was a little more straight forward in that the pages were from our stock of A4 landscape paper that was pre-drilled with holes and scored along the margin. Like the wedding album we also used the bride and grooms wedding stationery on the first page of the wedding guest book.

 

Premium custom made, hand crafted, luxury leather wedding keepsake box with storage for leather wedding album and wedding guest book personalised with gold foil lettering Luxury premium leather wedding memory box featuring a drawer, a wedding album and a wedding guest book all with branded personalised wedding stationery
Large personalised leather wedding album personalised in gold foil with wedding stationery type embosssed into the cover luxury leather wedding guest book lying open on the first cover page
luxury leather wedding guest book with wedding stationery branding and font gold foil embossed onto the cover Custom and bespoke personalised wedding guest book with custom printed pages and and mylor flysheet
The open drawer to keep wedding memories and stationery in the custom made wedding keepsake box The perfect wedding keepsake box has the cover of the wedding invitation set into the top of the memory box

Lastly the actual keepsake box was our Bespoke Multi Slipcase, which can be specified with a different number of enclosures and options for drawers. (Another project we did was this Multi Slipcase here with four sections).
As reference the price for this overall project was in the region of £2,600 ex works and excluding taxes. 

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