(Belated) Valentine's gift idea: The Story of Your Relationship

Hi there,

I know I've not been updating the blog (especially the Cooking Challenge stuff) very regularly lately and that's because I've been working a lot on Tom's belated Valentine's present in the evenings when he was out climbing, and on weekends when he was at work, but it's finally finished (in the sense that I'd done as much as I could do) and although it took many, many hours (and involved a bit of cursing) I'm really pleased I stuck with it.

Cutting that window and lining up the photo required a lot of patience

Basically it's a scrap book of our relationship (soppy I know) but I read about getting a book made in a print shop of your relationship, and saw a video about making art out of old books so I thought I'd just combine the two ideas. I didn't know who the poet was whose book I was butchering, but I wanted a nice looking, sturdy hardback, that someone else had written notes in, and at £2 from the market in Welshpool, this was perfect. I may well add a 'title' of some sorts over Cowper's name on the front at some point in the future, but for the time being I'm happy with it. I've filled it with our background story (condensed version: we met at high school and liked each other, but never got together, stayed really close friends, and eventually got our act together 8 years after we first met), photos, poems, and memorable moments from our past as friends and since we got together, like concerts we went to, when we moved into our house, and so on. The idea is that as time goes on, I'll add more things to it, hence why it was never going to be finished in the proper sense of the word, as that would imply our relationship was over!

I'm not going to include pictures of everything I included because, well, it's personal, but I just wanted to share the idea as I really enjoyed coming up with all the different things to include and different ideas of how to present them. It's a little bit messy in places as I kept changing my mind about how much writing to include, and how to include the writing over the original typed text, but it gradually became more like a diary summary over the past two years so I needed to write more. To do this I cut out pages of my current journal and just glued them over the book pages, and wrote in them like a normal diary (I used my journals to remind of dates etc). I also made use of some nice paper that I got free with a load of craft magazines I bought when I was researching the industry for a job interview back in November, but I didn't want to make it too girly, because it was supposed to be a gift for Tom, although I couldn't resist a bit of vintage floweriness in places(see below).

I tried to include as many pictures in the book as I could but when I took my original batch of photos to Boots to develop, I realised that it would have been absurdly expensive to print them all, so I had to cut back and just print the ones I thought were most appropriate. I also experimented with creating windows in the pages with glued in photos showing through the gaps, but the pages turned out to be quite difficult to cut without tearing and making a mess. Even with brand new Stanley knife blades it posed quite a few difficulties.

When I first started the project I also purchased a glue gun with the idea of sticking in photos, or glueing pages together with it etc, but it proved to be far more hassle than it was worth. Maybe the equipment I bought was too cheap, or maybe I didn't allow the glue to warm up sufficiently, but it just came out really thick and then seemed to dry and harden ridiculously quickly, so it was pretty much impossible to use. I initially stuck the front cover image on with the glue gun glue but it very quickly lost it's stick, so in the end I just used god old reliable Pritt stick!!

 I love this poem by Carol Ann Duffy (Poet Laureate) from her collection Rapture; in fact it was this collection of poems that got me thinking about a special Valentine's present in the first place. The bit didn't quite turn out as tidy as I wanted, but I basically wanted the verses of the poem to stand out as being on top of the original type (which was itself the first poem of the original book), and going round the edges of the journal paper with a black felt pen actually gave it quite a nice, almost reverse-emboss effect, it just could have been a bit tidier. I might go over it one day if I get round to it.

One of my favourite parts of this project was cutting the photos into different shapes and sizes to fit with the words I wanted to include. Once I got the hang of the Stanley Knife it was really quite easy and weirdly satisfying slicing through the photographic paper. What wasn't quite so easy was the mini-project I decided to do at the last minute and which took absolutely forever to finish.




I'd read another poem by Carol Ann Duffy in Rapture called 'Finding the Words' a few months previously and just felt that it completely reflected what I felt when Tom and I eventually got together. I'd been really hurt by my ex and had been in a place where I could see myself becoming really cold and emotionless about guys I was dating before Tom and I started going out, and this poem just seemed to convey what it was like to find that I could love and be loved again.

Because of the name and nature of the poem I wanted to try to compose this copy of the poem with words 'found' and cut out of the original typed text, but this proved to be a mammoth task. I had to cut out pages and pages from the back of the book (I didn't want to use the Stanley Knife directly on the book itself as I was afraid of tearing the old paper) and ended up learning an awful lot about this Cowper chap through repeatedly scouring his letters for the words of the poem. In the end I had to construct some words out of other words. I became disproportionately excited when I found a word I could use (a certain Mr Palmer very kindly donated the 'palm' and Wordsworth lent his 'Words'. The letters for the title I managed to glean from the headers of his letters, and 'Oxford University Press' lent it's letters towards 'Our Story' at the very front of the book. This might seem sad, but having set myself this stupid task I was damned if I wasn't going to finish it, so every new discovery was a small victory of sorts.

I particularly liked this idea of drawing a calendar page for a memorable occasion, although again, I'm sure someone with more natural artistic talent than myself could achieve much better results. On this day for example we drove up to Manchester to see The Hold Steady and it was one of the most fun concerts ever. Afterwards, we chilled out in the Thirsty Scholar (the pub under the railway lines at Oxford Road station), and then I drove us home with cool music on the stereo and we saw in Valentine's day on the journey home. It might not seem like much, but it was just the coolest experience.

 I subsequently decided to add the little calendar pages over photos I'd already stuck in as another scrapbook-style element.

Like I said I didn't want to include too many personal elements of the book (some of it is copied from old diary entries), but I just wanted to show some of the different ideas I had. As a first attempt I'm really pleased with how it came out (even with my silly stick drawings illustrating the first night we kissed!), but I'm looking forward to adding to it, and developing techniques and other interesting ideas for other projects as they come along. I really enjoyed going back through my journal and sharing thoughts and feelings that I might not otherwise have shared with Tom.

I'm not going to lie, it was a little scary including some of my most private thoughts in the book, and though I'm definitely a believer in maintaining hobbies and doing some things as individuals (basically not becoming one half of a relationship) that it's still important to share your feelings, hopes, fears, and dreams with the ones we love the most.


Anyway, this has already become a pretty long post, so I don't want to harp on. Hope this has been interesting in some way!

Bye for now,
xx