An art journal as a present

So like twenty hundred other people, I made a journal for my Significant Other. It was our anniversary on Saturday - we've been married for five years now (holy shit) and been together for ten years. An entire decade. We've been together for about two-fifths of my life. Wow. Anyway. I made a journal for him. It is a bunch of reasons why I love him in it...



This is what I started off with. It was a style supplement that fell out of a magazine. Lovely sturdy outside pages. I sanded and gessoed them. I forgot to take photos of the outside once I'd done them, but on the cover I put a picture of us.



First pages. I've covered up his name. Vintage map used on the right.



The Red Dwarf picture is from last year's calendar and the picture on the right is from one of his computing magazines that I did have permission to cut up, lol.



The glitter writing was SO hard to do and even now I think it looks awful. The page on the right says "I love you because you call me stupid names" and I wrote some of the stupid names down, but I've covered them up because they are a bit vomit-inducing.



The left hand page was definitely trial and error. It says "I love you because you let me get a cat even though you don't like cats... and because you are a good cat daddy!"



More computing magazine images on the left. Pictures I had saved on the right. Which he is lucky to receive.



The right hand page says "I love you because you love me and all that I am. I share myself with you... thank you". The word circled is 'them'.



The left hand page says "I love you because you married me!" and the right hand page has another photo of us on it. I added a sticker to this that says "Here's to the next decade!"



This is how I wrapped it. I wrote his name on one of the heart post-its and stuck it on with stickers.

He was a little overcome when I gave it to him, I think. I'm not really sure he knew what to say, but he liked it!