I, yi, yi, yi, yi, I like you very much...

Last week My Boy Jeff and I celebrated being together for eighteen months. The number kinda blows my mind if I think about it- it's like the idea that we've been together for a year and a half is too crazy to comprehend. Anyway, this occasion called for super special gifts for the boy. Last year I was able to buy him pretty much anything I set my mind on- I had money to burn, and I loved spending money on him. These days he's the one with all the money, whereas I'm pretty much skint all the time, so I have to make the gifts that I make him really super to make up for the lack of money spent.

Hollow book! It was so heartbreaking cutting up this book, but at least I've kept the pages for future crafty endeavours. Jeffu now has a place to hide his candy while at work!

My first attempt at bookbinding. I'm pretty please with how it turned out- the boy certainly seemed impressed when I informed him that I'd made it myself (but that could just be him playing the part of the Good Boyfriend!).
I used this tutorial, and found it very easy to follow, although being the thrifty person I am, I substituted some of the materials for things I found around the house.

The book was made up of different poems and lyrics that I'd found all over the place, with wool or tissue paper inserted at suitable intervals. I really love some of the pieces in the book, and I hope he appreciates them as much as I do.

I lovelovelove the cover paper. I found this lovely wrapping paper in Myer and thought it would be perfect. It has this wonderful wallpaper-like texture that you can run your fingers over, and the colour fits perfectly with the overall feel of the book (or so I think!).

Meet The Captain. I found this gorgeous fellow in an Opshop and couldn't bear leaving him behind. He reminds me of the jovial sea captains you find in books, the type who live in cosy cottages next to the sea and are loved by all who meet them, but are content to live a lonesome bachelor's life due to having lost their one and only love many years ago.

I offered to give him a new eye, but he started worrying about having to change in order for Jeff to accept him. I tried to calm his fears by offering an eyepatch, which he agreed to. He thinks it makes him look dashing and dangerous, and I haven't the heart to tell him otherwise.

And of course, a present from Emily just wouldn't be complete without my famous double-choc cookies! Yum!!

Tu, was du willst.

I'm so terrible at getting crafted presents done on time. I like to think that the effort and end product make up for the lateness, but I still feel awful making people wait for their presents- it seems like such an anti-climax!
The Auryn needlecase was no exception- I had the cross-stitch finished in time, only to realise that I'd used paper instead of waste canvas. Serves me right for being too lazy to back up my mother's convictions with a simple google search!

I knocked up the design on my dad's old brick of a laptop- the only computer in the house we could get to run my mother's cross-stitching program, which required windows 95 and a 3 1/2 floppy disc drive. We couldn't manage to connect the program up to a printer, or export the pattern to a format that could be read by other programs, so I was stuck working from that laptop- complete with broken hinge and unreliable battery.
I was continually worried that the colours were too bright- they certainly seemed very yellow and grey against the canvas, as opposed to the gold and silver I wanted them to be.

In the end though, I was pretty pleased with how the colours looked. They seemed right at home on the brown of the fabric, and the contrast in textures was wonderful under one's fingers.
After all the work of stitching the design (and then re-stitching on the right medium!), I was a little worried when it came to stitching the design together. I checked and rechecked the order of the layers to make sure that I wouldn't end up with anything inside out. What a relief when I turned it out the right way to find everything in its right place!