I had the honor of working on a secret project for one of my best friends and her fiancé and to quote my husband, "This may be the best one you've made yet!"

Shelby is an artist here in Nashville (herein referred to as "Shelbs") and is one of my oldest friends; we made it through the awkward teens still friends and lived together briefly while in college, and she's been stuck with me ever since. She also is responsible for most all of the styled product photos on my website and generally makes what I do look like it just came from an Anthro magazine. 

Shelby had her golden birthday last year and it resulted in an instagram hashtag #happigoldenyear which morphed into #happigoldenlife when she got engaged. So when our friend Jessie found a copy of Louisa May Alcott's "Happy Golden Years", she insisted we take advantage of the happy irony and create a hand bound book for Shelby and Jared to chronicle their first year of marriage together.

God bless Amazon. I was able to find this beautiful vintage copy that matched the picture provided by Jessie and Amazon happened to have it in stock.

Some things Jessie and I both agreed on: this cover needed to be gilded in gold. ✨

Fortunately, I was able to accomplish this with my Heat Embosser and I didn't even burn myself! I had thought about using gold foil, but it has a tendency to be sticky forever and isn't always great for delicate details. I wanted the gold to enhance the beauty of the artwork that was already present and not distract, so I limited myself to adding some accenting to the trees and the  Moon--even though I naturally want everything to be gold. 😳😬

Jessie and I also discussed including lots of hidden pockets to tuck away significant ticket stubs, love notes, and other little items that can easily get lost or discarded. If you follow my past work or know me at all, then you know that I am very pro-pocket. Most of the journals I had growing up are STUFFED at the back with knick-knacks, drawings, wrappers I liked, etc, and every time I open them up to read them, all the back contents come spilling out. We didn't want that to be an issue here, so I accomplished this by sewing in some well placed envelopes.

Another really special detail was being able to incorporate Shelby's art into the journal. Shelby is an incredible artist that focuses on watercolor, and I really wanted to include her creative aesthetic in this book. Fortunately, I was already commissioned to work on the Future Foldy's guestbook for their wedding, which gave me access to some watercolor scraps I had trimmed away. I was able to recycle these and put them to good use for the siding. As an aside, Shelby is one of the fantastic artists I have lined up for an interview and hush hush potential collaboration for the Spring. If you are interested in a sneak peak of what you have to look forward to, I highly recommend checking out her website and following her on Instagram. 

This project was so much fun to work on and was especially meaningful due to it being for my sweet friend and her future stud hubs. It brings me so much joy to know these pages will be filled with some of the best moments of their lives; truly golden years. A big toast to you, Future Foldys!

Smooches,

Abigail

P.S. What do you think? What are those non-negotiables you look for in a journal? Holler at your girl and let me know.