Paper...the romantic gift. HUH?

My boss and I were talking at work the other day, and he asked my opinion about what he could give his wife to celebrate their anniversary. I asked which number they were on, and he shared this was their first! He and she are wanting to follow the list of gifts that someone with more blue blood than I came up with who knows how long ago that corresponds with each year you've been married. The first year's gift is PAPER. What's up with that? I never understood that list. Anyway, he was wanting my opinion on a book that Starbucks is selling, and I said that would be perfect, since it's made from PAPER! Then a light bulb went off in my brain and I said, "Would you like me to make you an anniversary card?" He was very excited by this idea, and so I asked him what his wife's favorite color is. He hemmed and hawed between sage and red, so I incorporated both.

I had several images and sentiments that would be appropriate for an anniversary card, so I put three together for him to choose from.

Here are closeups of each card:





I have had this first stamp for such a long time that I'm not even sure where I bought it. I know it's not SU!, that's for sure. I love the sentiment, and it can be used for birthday, anniversary, friendship, etc. The biggest thing I did to this to make it special was to use heat and stick powder to adhere Dazzling Diamonds glitter to the package. Simple to do: just used the Versamark marker to put sticky ink where I wanted it, sprinkled the H&S powder, heated it with a heat tool, then added the glitter while the powder was still shimmery. Cool!

The second card uses the new A Beautiful Thing set, and it's sweet sentiment "You make my life a beautiful thing." What wife wouldn't want to hear that from her husband? I didn't do anything special here either. Just took the color scheme and created a piece of background paper. I used my Stampin' Write Markers in Real Red, Sage Shadow, and Basic Black to color the sentiment. I also used some white rub-ons, and I like how they add to the overall scheme. I really like this color combo--it's so elegant somehow.

The third card uses the z fold layout and another non-SU! stamp for the background. The sentiment here was the one we originally agreed on because it was one of two that I could remember off the top of my head when we talked through the card idea! It's from the Love Matters SU! set that was featured last year in the Spring Mini Catalog.

I'm taking these in to work tomorrow so that Clay can choose from them for his sweetheart. I hope he likes one of them, and I'll let you know which one he chooses. Which one would you pick?