The "Up" Anniversary

Here's another guest entry from Tessa. She asked me for ideas for something she could make for her anniversary. I shared with her some of the ideas that I had found and she ran with them. Don't forget to check out Tessa's blog, Cake Art.

In this post, I'm going to cover 3 different presents I made for my boyfriend, Josh, for our two year anniversary. The first movie we ever saw together, actually, the first time we ever saw each other outside of work, was the movie Up. If you haven't seen the movie before. Go see it. Cry over this scene:

That part of the movie makes me cry every time and it's the inspiration behind all of my anniversary presents in the end. I didn't make each one with the connection in mind, but in the end, I made them all connect to this movie. I, of course, bought him the movie as a part of all of this!

The first present is a set of "Love Coupons" that I found here.

I printed out both, the set that they have and two blank pages of coupons.

I started out by creating a larger version of each of the coupons so I could cut them out:

 

I ended up doing this with five different colors:

Let's just ignore the table, okay? It was painted by my nephew when he was about 4 or 5 and... yeah, anyways...

I then pasted the cut out coupons on them and hole punched them before putting the ring through them.

I took them to work to show Sara and she gave me the idea to add a "used on" thing on the back, so I went home and added one:

I wrote "Expires: Never" on all of them. :)

When I added a tag to it, connecting it to "Up" it says something about, "Love coupons for whenever we want to be 'up' together and have an 'up' moment in our relationship."

~*~

The second thing I made is a book that Sara showed me here.

I started off by typing up the 52 things and printing them out in a chart so I could cut them evenly.

I took the two jokers and covered them in blue paper, using one to create a cover:

Then I pasted the 52 things on the cards:

Finally, I hole punched two holes on one side and put the binder rings in:

I added "Volume I" so I can make others for him later on. To connect this to 'up' I wrote: "Whenever you're feeling down and need a little pick-me-'up' just read this and feel a bit more 'up'."

~*~

Finally, I made an 'Up' Jar from this inspiration from Sara. I started off by printing off these five photos of Ellie and Carl from Up:

As you can see, there's one from different stages in their lives: kids, dating, wedding, marriage, and old age. I actually printed out the one of them when they were dating (and looking up!) as a circle because that's the stage Josh and I are in, so I wanted to put it on top. I ended up using Mod Podge (thanks to Sara!) and put the photos on:

 I put another layer on top which gave it a bit more of a texture to it:

Then, I added 'Up' to the top of the jar and then a bow:

I explain in the tag on this one that I decided this would be an 'Up' Jar for the two of us. Whenever we have an 'up' moment in our lives together, we'll scribble it down and add it to the jar. Whenever we have a down moment, we can reach in the jar and remember an 'up' time. Although this day hasn't happened yet, I know it'll be our first 'up' moment to add, so I already added it: