A Joyful Heart

Remember this? It's one of my submissions to Cynthia for the Leading Lady Design Team. I promised I would show the rest of this, so today is the day! (Click on any of the photos to view them larger.)


I adore hand-binding books! There's something so satisfying about taking a pile of paper and some thread and turning it into an actual book! I almost always use contrasting colors because I love seeing the stitches.


The theme for this book is "A Joyful Heart: things that make me HAPPY."


When you open the book all the way up it becomes a star! (Pretty cool that it matches up with the compass on my mosaic table, huh? Ha ha.)


To make the star look more dramatic, there are mini pages in each signature. (A signature is each set of pages sewn into the book. In this book there are seven signatures, which you can count on the above photo of the spine.) I used several different colors because I couldn't decide on only three to add to the bright, happy feel of the book.


The first set of pages is, of course, about Jason! My number-one happy-maker. Him. Us. Our marriage. Our life. Okay, I'll stop now. :)


The next page(s)... family! I put little photos of lots of family members and two larger photos of my adorable nieces (and their cheeks!).


Next up? Friends, of course! I'm blessed to have too many friends to include on here, but I love all these photos and all these people!


Another thing I love--TRAVEL! Each of these nine photos was taken in a different country--wow! I love that some of my favorite photos were taken by random strangers we handed our camera to. :)


Creating and art of COURSE made it into the book. :) I love that the butterfly says "Beauty Dreams Goodness," all words describing and integral to art!


Some of my favorite things that I do to relax. :) I made the circle text-boxes in Word with coordinating colored backgrounds and white text.


And finally, some of the food that makes me happy. Again I made white-text text boxes in Word and accented them with bling. [The photo is of me in my Italian neighbor Nunzia's kitchen as she taught me to make lasagna. Oh, Lordy, talk about HEAVEN. (Nunzia is on the friends page--we're both wearing aprons.)]


Whew, we made it to the back cover. Love this quotation. :)


There are a ton of other things that make me happy, obviously, but I'll have to save that for another book. Or ten. :)

[Big thanks to Tena Sprenger! You're the best!]