July 4th celebrations in Central Texas are true firecracker days! This year Hubby and I decided it was too hot to fire up the grill so our hot dogs came from Sonic…New York style…almost like being in Yankee Stadium…and we watched our fireworks in air-conditioned comfort with Regis live from NYC…It’s nothing like the old days of watching our downtown parade then setting up tables and picnicking down on the river followed by blankets in the park to watch fireworks. While I might miss those past celebrations, I did not miss the heat, and I did not mind doing without the mosquitoes. Instead I focused on packing up the latest creation in our ten-stop Circle of Friends journals. It was my turn to work in Kathy’s “Of Seeds and Stars” journal during June. It’s funny because she was creating an amazing pair of pages for my “Gift From the Sea”. She used one of her own poems and it couldn’t be more special. You can check it out here. http://thewritersreverie.blogspot.com/2012/06/random-journal-entry-seaside-muse.html
My pages for her included poetry…not my own… and lots of garden images to answer her call for inspiration as it comes like God-given seeds. True to my vow to use stuff from my exiting stashes, I found a lovely hymn about finding joy in a garden…I added a lovely lass ready to tend her own garden…
The back side is a seed package…
alongside is a bookmark with a perfect quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson…I added a couple of additional quotations.
One is from Victor Hugo and the other is the sweet poem about the nearness of God in a garden.
They are held together with a ring and a group of garden charms that I have been holding onto for years waiting for the perfect use…well, if this is not the perfect use, I don’t what is!
To hold the tags and cards, I made a pair of pockets from recycled and reclaimed fabric scraps and papers layered and sewn together to create a new bonded fabric with seed pearls and vintage velvet leaves and topped with lilac braid. I picked the colors based on Nancy’s pages from the month before…I like the way her pages blend into mine with the same color feel.
One of the bits of fabric is a silky blue that has a design of leaves…it was scraps from a blouse that my mother had made…I always loved the fabric. She was a wonderful gardener and I just had to add a bit of her creative spirit into Kathy’s book.
There are a couple of other cards to fill the pockets…this book has scalloped edges that really make the book unique!
These journals have been such fun…the invitation and inspiration came last fall from our own Pink Saturday hostess, Beverly. Check out the list of Pink Saturday posts at How Sweet the Sound and sit back with a tall glass of iced tea to visit our fellow lovers of all things pink and have yourself a Pink Week.
