For the Fall Tea Swap for my Tea Group we had a "destinations" theme. Each person in the swap was to select up to three destinations to where they'd like to travel. These destinations could be real or fantasy.
My partner chose "Art Gallery in Paris," "Fall Festival" and "Outdoors/Camping" -- the Outdoors/Camping one was also specific to the sounds of nature.
For a combination of the Fall Festival and Outdoors/Camping theme, I made her this field journal, where she could sketch or write (or both) ... I imagine with her emphasis on the sounds of nature, she could also use it to write her feelings as she listens to those sounds...
As you can see, I used the box of my favorite cookies from Trader Joe's (these cookies are awesome!) as the cover of the journal, and inside I used blank watercolor paper that I stained and stamped with inks (just to take away the new whiteness of the paper ... I find that intimidating sometimes, don't you? It's much more fun to journal when you have something already on your page!) Finally, I bound the pages with my Rubicoil machine... which I love!For the "Art Gallery in Paris" destination, I decided to create a "having tea in a Paris Museum" type of route, and included tea and chocolate truffles, and wrapped the box in a cool Paris themed paper. I also made a "scrapbook" type of fatbook for her that includes images of famous paintings that can be found in Paris's Museums. The fatbook ended up being 14 pages thick (I think -- I can't remember!) and is anything but conventional, as I took a cue from one of my favorite artists, Aileen from Outside the Margins and went a bit outside the margins of this book. Several of the images of the paintings were larger than the 4 x 4 size, so I simply ignored that and so some of the pages don't look like they fit!
Neither my hubby nor my oldest daughter liked the fact that this book went beyond it's boundaries, but I really did like it. Sure, when the pages fit nice and neatly inside a book, it's all well and good, but I like my fat books to be chunky and a bit unusual, I think it gives the book more character like that.
~Anne
