Then a couple weeks later Danni announced our partners and she did such a fabulous job! My partner, Tawny, is absolutely adorable, also a photographer, also a non-meat eater, and she lives in So Cal too! We started chatting over email and decided that we should definitely meet up some time for lunch…I’m so excited about that! And what I loved most about her was she wanted to extend the deadline…I HAD MORE TIME! YES! And then after she extended the deadline, I asked if I could extend it. But here we are now, our packages have been sent and received and I’m so delighted.

After I packaged up my lovelies, it was dark so I couldn’t take a picture of the outside, so I told myself DO NOT forget to take a picture before going to the Post Office. So obviously I forgot and had to take the outside picture with my iPhone on the hood of my car in the parking lot of the USPS.

Here are my packages.

Back in the day I used to make these journals for all my friends. (Please excuse the horrible photography, these pictures are from a couple of years ago!)

And I thought I would do that. But then I started noticing on Etsy all these journals that are more of a hodge-podge of papers and little snippets and odds and ends and I thought they were so cute and creative. So I decided to try making one of them instead. I think it turned out super cute. I started with the Levenger binding system. If you don’t know about Levenger just go buy one, you’ll love it! The Levenger system is awesome because you can take items out, add items, and move items around with the ease of a three-ring binder, but this looks cooler/nicer. So theoretically if the recipient were to have the Levenger hole-puncher she could add to this journal to her hearts content.

I used a lot of different papers and dividers in this journal but I didn’t really add a lot of words or writing because I wanted her to be able to completely customize it. She can doodle or add stickers or whatever.

Here’s a few pictures.

So since the whole point of this exchange was packaging, I was able to use this journal as a package for some of the other things I got her! Which I thought was clever. Tawny told me that she loves letterpress, which is convenient because I love letterpress and many of my favorite Etsy shops are letterpressers. I was introduced to SimpleSong’s shop by Jill Thomas from the Jasmine Star Workshop earlier this year. I’ve been lusting over some of her designs and thought this was the perfect occasion to make a purchase. How cute are these cards! It combines her love for photography, letterpress, and postcards all into one! The adorable print is from RosieMusic.

She also told me she loves Polaroids so I found this super cute Polaroid photo album from Lindseydee. I was going to decorate the front of the album with the camera sticker (above) from Red Velvet Art but I figured I would let her decide if she wanted the sticker to go on that album or on something else. And she loves succulents and sent me a link to one of her favorite succulent sellers, Pigeon Toe Ceramics. I got the thimble cup hair thingy and I think I now love succulents too, it’s so cute! And apparently pretty hard to kill. I also picked up these thought bubble post it notes, super cute!

There are a few more treasures hidden in some of the pages of the journal.

And now to the package I received from Tawny! Ok, I know it wasn’t a contest, but if it had been she would have TOTALLY won!

I LOVE everything she got me. The little bowl is so cute and the hairpins-I’ll be wearing them tomorrow!

So you may have noticed up in the journal that I included a couple bags of my favorite tea, and she gave me a box of my favorite tea which is so incredibly perfect because I ran out today and haven’t had a chance to go to Trader Joe’s!!

Tawny – It was so much fun and such a pleasure to be your partner for this lovely, fun package exchange. I cannot wait to meet you in real life!!!

Thank you for visiting,
amanda

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