working on a gift

A dear friend of our family is pretty sick.
She's lovely, we've had her in our lives since I was in pre-school when I chased her son around the playground equipment and she met my Mom. I've been thinking about her an awful lot, especially right now, knowing that she's going through some pretty heavy treatments for her illness. I really wanted to make her something...something that would be right, y'know? For a good while I thought I'd make her a large shawl/throw as I understand that people undergoing radiation can get very cold. I researched all kinds of yarns, trying to find one that would not be irritating on hyper-sensitized skin - but with where we live it would take a long time for anything like that to get here, so I started casting about for other ideas.

I've been keeping up on Sue Bleiweiss's blog where she's been doing wonderful things with journals, making them themed, and in that way they can become tremendously personal. It struck me that I could make a journal for our friend.

I started out making a multimedia collage surface to be the cover. It's layered up with MistyFuse on muslin using several kinds of tissue, pressed Johnny-Jump-ups and Calendula petals that I dried last summer from our garden, skeleton leaves and stamps. I sealed the whole works together with diluted fabric medium to give it a bit of resilience, but help it maintain it's flexibility.

I'm using the same template I used for the hardbound journals last Spring when I made gifts for other friends, with some modifications.

I wanted to put a pocket inside the back cover, and make the endpapers from inspirational quotes and sayings.

Our friend has always been a very outdoor person, enjoying the outdoors and an active lifestyle. I hunted through my stash of tissue to find the dragonfly tissue, and included the plant material as a small tribute to her love of nature.

The next couple of posts include how I made the pocket and incorporated it into the endpapers. I've broken it up a bit as I expect this next bit to be quite photo heavy.

Lisa