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Lily's Book

This is a book I made to commemorate my daughter's first year of life. This was my first large-scale paper project. The words are lines from a song by Tori Amos called Ribbons Undone, from her album The Beekeeper. It's a song she wrote about her daughter and I think it's a really beautiful song. Rather than arranging the pictures in chronological order, I matched them to what I felt were the appropriate words.

I wanted to choose pictures that represented Lily's growth throughout the year. I edited the pictures in Photoshop, made the backgrounds a solid color with polka dots, and printed the pictures onto ivory cardstock. For the words, I typed them in Microsoft Word and printed them onto a pretty scrapbook paper. I cut them out using decorative-edged scissors. Originally I had planned on purchasing a blank chipboard book, but the one I wanted was out of stock, so I ended up purchasing sheets of blank chipboard instead. I cut out pieces 6"x6" and used those for my pages. I used a variety of scrapbook papers for the backgounds. I "aged" the chipboard pages, the background papers, and the words. I glued all the papers down with scrapbook glue, and then added the embellishments (ribbons, buttons, stickers, rhinestones, and other things) with embellishment glue. The pages are connected with ribbon tabs, and the backs of the pages are covered with paper also. On the back of the last page is a booklet with words from another Tori Amos song, Gold Dust. I love these words, but they are a little bittersweet and sad, so I decided to put them out of immediate view.

See a larger image of each page, plus the booklet.