Z & i were just-moved-back-from-london poor when our one-year rolled around. so, taking into consideration that the first anniversary material is paper, we made a few explicit rules: neither of us was allowed to spend more than 5 dollars on our gifts & it had, in some way, to be homemade (i admit i broke the cost rule--Z forgave me because the expensive part was technically a preservation technique). over the course of our year in london, i saved every ticket we used to travel--into the city & out, to other countries & back, even the receipts for things like riding the thames clipper to greenwich. since every ticket is paper, and every city/travel method had a distinct color & quality, it seemed perfect for my present. with some rocktastic help from my sister & her husband, i took all the tickets & designed a sort of mosaic/quilting of our travels, pasted all of them individually onto black foam board & then put the board into a 25'' by 37'' frame (it really is a boatload of tickets!). this collecting, this papered timeline, was my way of celebrating & preserving our first year of marriage. (i particularly love the date/time stamps, saying where we were when). amidst a lot of difficult far-awayness that we felt last year, we survived! so here's to first years!
p.s. if you click on the second photo you can see details. & please excuse the terrible glare/bad photos--i swear the frame is level on the wall, i was just standing on something to take the shot!
That's Amazing! What a cool idea =)
ReplyDeleteI love your shelves, and this collage is such a great idea - perfect representation of your year.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words. It's funny that you suggest "write." Last night I sat down in front of my computer to start a big scary application for a big scary thing that's due quite soon and...just didn't know where to start. i kind of fiddled around for a little while, typing bullet points and this and that, and then something *clicked.* As in, I remembered how to write, really write something more than boring business emails and boring spreadsheets and boring contract requests. It felt so good.