Thank you!

I had the privilege of working on a project for a dear friend. They just dedicated a new space at the university, and wanted to thank the donors. There are many people impacted by the donation, so I came up with the idea of a book (what else!). The book itself is a standard hand-stitched book for me with a pocket page in the back for some photos.

Inside the book, I cut pieces of light grey cardstock so that they could be signed by all of the people, and matted in interesting ways inside.

The cover uses a herringbone technique I learned from Club Scrap. These are the same colors that are used in the book as mat colors, so it was a nice way to bring the inside outside. This is a fantastic technique to use up small scraps. I coated the end product with some bookbinder glue (watered down a bit) to give the final piece a bit of stability and sheen.

The papers are from the Science, Music, and Mosaic Twist collections from Club Scrap. I'm running low on all of these papers, so I have to choose my projects carefully!

The resulting book was stuffed! But, it will stand easily on its own! I also made a coordinating box to go with the book. All in all, a very rewarding project.

Wine for newlyweds

I went to a cousin's wedding this weekend, and she was a beautiful bride. It made me think back to our wedding, and all of the thoughtful presents we received from our friends - some on our registry, and some not. We noticed that they had wine glasses on their registry, and so we took that as a starting point to assemble our package.

To start, I made them a handmade book with a wine theme. The book is hand-stitched, and includes beads on the spine. I had some special charms of wine bottles that I'd been saving for a book like this. The papers are from Club Scrap (solids), and Karen Foster Design (wine patterned). I hope they use this book to store memories of good evenings together - perhaps with a bottle of wine!

We also found some great wine and beer glasses for them. To make sure they had something to fill the glasses, we took a selection of wines from our collection. Some were made by my husband who is really into home brewing wines and beer.

To finish it off, the Club Scrap wedding collection provided the perfect backdrop for a card. The embossed "love" and "honor" parts are integrated into the paper. The silver panel was made by printing out the words, and since it was vellum, it was easy to stamp the silver heart in the middle and emboss it. It's very simple, and elegant, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.