Anniversary Card and Some New Bookmarks

I think I have mentioned this anniversary card at least a couple of times.  We have some very good friends, M and E.  Waaaayyyy back in the olden days, aka the 90s, we bought our first houses down the street from each other when we were all pretty much newlyweds.  They were expecting the first of their three sons (who just turned SIXTEEN, OMG!) at the time, and we became fast friends.  My son is right in between their older two boys age-wise- D, their oldest is 16, Josh is 15, and J, their middle son, is 14.  They also have an 11 year old.  Three boys...they are a busy family!  Anyway, they are wonderful friends.  D and J are Josh's best friends, and have been since basically birth.  It is so neat to have seen these guys grow up together and maintain the bonds that they established at such young ages!  We really cherish our friendships with this family.  They are amongst the people who we know 100% we can count on, and we are, I hope, the same to them.  We have seen each other through some rough times, as well as shared the good times over the years.  So it is with much joy and happiness that we share their 20th wedding anniversary with them!  They are having a party (adults only, woo hoo!) this coming Friday night.  Which immediately precedes our vacation to Montana- we leave on Saturday- so I am glad that we will be able to celebrate with them!

So, I wanted to make them a card.  I have really struggled with it for some reason.  Not sure why- I just couldn't find any inspiration.  Usually, I have some idea or concept that I start with, and it kind of puts itself together from there.  It can start with something I know about the recipient, or I might get my inspiration from a paper, color, flower, etc.  For this one, I had the idea of putting a picture of the two of them on the card, but that was where I ran out of ideas.  It was easy enough to swipe a picture of them off of one of their Facebook pages.  But the rest of the design?  I kept coming up blank.  Two weeks I have been turning this over and over in my mind, and counting the days as I was running out of time.  Today was the last day I had to work on this, since I really can't count on having time for crafting during the week.  The pressure was on!

I knew I wanted the photo in black and white, so that dictated a somewhat simple color scheme.  Their home is just lovely- I wish I had E's flair for decorating!  They have a lot of neutrals in their house, so I didn't want anything too bright and flashy.  Something simple, classic, with clean lines.  They have some furniture I just love, a sofa and loveseat, in a deep, rich eggplant purple.  I thought that would be too dark, so I stayed with the purple idea and chose a lighter shade of dusky lavendar.  It goes well with black and white and gives just enough of a hint of color to make it interesting.  That decided, I moved on to the other elements of the card.  I wanted to put a sentiment on the front, but I wasn't sure what.  For some weird reason, out of nowhere, I conjured up a quote from the Beatles, "in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make".  Except I was thinking it was John Lennon, and I wasn't sure of the exact wording, so I Googled it.  Found out it was the Beatles, and decided that that wasn't necessarily the message I wanted on the front of the card, but now I had a direction to go in.  I Googled John Lennon quotes, and found one I liked..  I also pulled from somewhere in my subconscious "live, laugh, love" which honestly, I think, really describes my friends, and wanted to incorporate that somehow.  So I had all these fragments of ideas that I needed to put together.  Here is what I came up with:

 

I embossed the dusky lavendar background with a Cuttlebug embossing folder.  The torn corners came from an idea in that card-making book I'm always talking about- I thought it was kind of cool, and softens the look a little bit, with all of the rest of the lines being so straight and clean.  I used small silver brads in the corners of the sentiment box, which just gives it, I don't know, something extra.  The sentiments are all framed in black, and the inside is relatively simple.  I like it- I hope they do too!  They have the funnest party EVER planned (is "funnest" a word?  My kids say not.)  They want the ladies to come wearing a bridesmaid dress, and the guys to show up in a suit jacket.  Not a suit, just a jacket- so anything goes for underneath!  Sometime this week after work, I need to make a stop at Goodwill and see what they have in the dress section....I'm envisioning something pastel, frilly and fluffy- the most God-awful obnoxious bridesmaid dress ever!  And I think my husband needs to wear his very formal pin-striped navy blue suit jacket with cargo shorts.  Won't that be an..interesting..look??!

In addition to the card, I did a few bookmarks today.  This is in preparation for expanding my idea of the gift envelopes and matching cards- I wanted a few new designs to work with.

This one uses a forest green hand-made paper, and a neat leaf-patterned paper, along with the daisy.  I like the fresh, clean colors.

This one incorporates a classic color combo, brown and pink.  I picked up this patterned paper at Michael's a few weeks ago, and it coordinated perfectly with the pink larkspur.

This is some Japanese washi paper that I got this week at the office supply store downtown.  I love the contrasting pink and green.

And this is one of the patterned papers I picked up at JoAnn's that first weekend that Meredith and I went to the new store and went nuts.  Also used a pink larkspur here, though I wish I had a darker pink flower to use instead.


We are heading to Montana in a few days for our summer vacation- up to see my cousin Trina and her hubby, with whom we always have a great time!  I am looking forward to some quiet, tranquil time to unplug and just hang out, read books, go fishing, and not think about work!  See you after vacation!