Beautiful anniversary gift for her (That isn’t jewelry!)

As you may have noticed, I have been a bit quiet for the last couple of days. However, this was for a pretty important reason.

The end of this month marks another year of my girlfriend and I being together, after first meeting over 5 years ago. As I explained in a previous post, we try to always create a handmade present for each other when it comes to special occasions such as this (see my post here where I drew an A3 piece for her birthday).

For our anniversary, I decided to try something new and create her present by cutting pages out of a book that I bought from an op-shop, to form a semi-3D scene. I was partially inspired by the works of Isobelle Ouzman and really wanted to put my own personal touches on this interesting concept.

As I am studying electrical engineering at university, I decided to add just a simple touch of technology to the gift, to personalise the idea a little more. Embedded within the pages of the book, behind the scene, is simple LED circuit. When switched on, a warm orange glow emanates from the setting sun in the background.

And if you were wondering what Sarah gave to me as her present, she had the beautiful idea of making a “Date Ideas” jar. Each colour ice cream stick has a particular type of date idea written on it, so hopefully we won’t be so indecisive when it comes to thinking up things to do!