Paper Anniversary

Even though B and I decided we would not be exchanging gifts for our first anniversary, I still wanted to do something to commemorate our first year together.  And, since the traditional gift for the anniversary is paper, I thought I could make something relatively easily and cheaply.

After some finding some fabulous inspiration on Pinterest, I settled on a project inspired by this collage:

Via Etsy seller Bombus

I asked you lovely readers for some advice on how to make it more appropriate for a man gift, and I set off to make my own.  Here's the finished product so you can see 

First of all, I know it's not perfect.  Trying to space those silly circles evenly from each other and the frame was more than my poor brain could handle, so I just ended up eyeballing most of it.  It gives it charm...or something.  Also, I kind of hate the frame.  It was the perfect size though, so I got over it.

I'll explain a little how I made it.  First, I collected the most important supplies, the maps, all acquired from local Goodwill shops.

Next, I defiled those old books by cutting out just the pages I needed.

Using a cutting mat, I set to cut out my circles.  I originally planned to use my Cricut to give me nice clean lines, but usually just ruins my day and the project I happen to be working on, so I turned to another tool I purchased for a defunct wedding project.

This is Fiskars Ultra ShapeXpress Shape Cutter Tool.  And, no I did not remember that name, I just googled 'shape cutter paper' and found it.  If you use this correctly, you can cut out perfect shapes with the help of these orange guides.  If don't use it correctly, you end up cursing and questioning your decisions in life.

Many cuts later, I had quite the stack of circles.

I cut out more than I needed, in part because I wanted to have extras if I screwed it up and because it gave me plenty of different options to mix and match the colors one I laid them out.

I failed to take pictures of the next part, which was a lot of me trying to figure out how to properly lay everything out.  Once I was happy with the layout, I busted out my glue and affixed those things to my card stock.  You can check out the lovely card stock in the photo below.



In case you were wondering, the places I chose to highlight include: where I grew up/where we got married (they were too close to separate, where B grew up, where we met, where we got engaged, our first trip together, where we live now, where we mini-mooned, a trip to we took to the Olympic peninsula with B's brother, and where B's mom grew up and we visited his aunt and uncle.

I also decided to include two trips we have coming up in the next month.  The first is our honeymoon/first anniversary trip and the second is our trip to visit B's brother next month.

Below is a close up of where we met!

And, if you look closely, you can see in the bottom left hand corner where we are headed to for our first anniversary trip!

Are you doing/did you do traditional anniversary gifts?