A Valentine's Day Gift

This blog has been hijacked!!

Well, not really... This is Ben, Lauryn's husband, and as a part of her Valentine's Day gift this year I'm posting the craft I made for her.

Let me preface by letting you know that I am NOT a crafty person. Creative, yes. Thoughtful? I'd like to think so. But in the realm of cute crafts my skills have already been surpassed by our 4 year old daughter.

That's exactly the reason I think Laur will appreciate this gift so much; because it's a stretch for me. It pulls me out of my comfort zone and wasn't easy for me to do. Writing a song, a letter, or a note: no problem. Creating something real, and visually appealing is a different story. But seeing the smile I anticipate will be on her face when she receives this hand-made craft is worth 10 times the discomfort of doing something new and outside of my normal skill set.

I had the idea for "a craft" before I had any clue about what craft to pick. So after much searching around the interwebs, I came upon a project that seemed both feasible and a great way to express how I feel about my wife.

It's an accordion book that consists of words and phrases that describe what my wife means to me.
From the Marta Writes blog: http://bit.ly/fmbNz7

Marta doesn't give any instructions on how to complete this project, which is just my style. The idea was enough for me.

So here's how I did it:

1. I stole some crafty looking paper from Lauryn's stash and cut it into even strips that were about 6 inches in width.

2. Then, I taped them all together using clear packing tape (resisted the urge to use duct tape) so that I had one long paper, 6 inches wide and a lot of inches long that changes color and pattern regularly.

3. Next, I folded the long sheet into equal parts that made 14 "pages" for me to fill in content. So that gave me a pseudo book with which to work.

4. Now comes the thoughtful part: finding the words.
I grabbed a few magazines and began my search. I had a handful of words in mind that I simply had to have, but also left room for the available content to guide me. And since I only read and own music and pro audio magazines, I certainly had a different set of words and phrases than most magazine cutout scrapbooks I've seen. :-)

5. Once the words were cut out, I arranged them in a timeline for how they might appear in the book to tell the story I was after. Now that I knew what I wanted to say and in what order, I used this rolling adhesive thingy I found on Laur's craft table to paste the words in place.

6. Lastly, I cut out some nice paper to fill in the gaps and wrote using fancy pens and my best handwriting to expound on the words where needed and add some personality throughout.

7. One more thing, folded it back up and added a nice little ribbon for a touch of class.

And there you have it! I can only hope Lauryn likes it (and this blog post).

Wish me luck!

Happy Valentine's Day!

-Ben