First anniversary gift- Paper

This past Sunday was our first wedding anniversary! You can read more about what Pete and I did and see a peek at our wedding here.
Leading up to our anniversary, we debated whether or not to get each other gifts. I know a lot of people who go all out on anniversaries and lots of people who don't. As a kid, I remember my parents always giving each other a heart-felt card with a long love note written inside and then maybe a gift on bigger anniversaries. I wanted our anniversaries to be special without the focus being on a gift. In the end, we decided to do traditional gifts because it would give us the chance to be a little creative without spending a lot of money.
The traditional wedding gift for a first anniversary is paper (you can see the whole list at Hallmark!). Perfect! What crafty gal can't create a gift out of paper?? But Pete, be afraid of what you might get next year. I'm not too good at sewing and year two is cotton! ;)
I've been wanting to make a sign of our wedding song for a long time but hadn't gotten around to it. I didn't necessarily plan on making it paper, but our anniversary was the perfect opportunity!!
Our first dance was to the Michael Buble version of "The best is yet to come." We had originally chosen another song and actually took a brief dance lesson to attempt to learn a waltz for it, but when we heard this song while listening to Pandora one night, we both changed our minds immediately. It was already close to the wedding when we made the change, so we didn't really get a chance to practice and just had to wing it. I'm pretty sure I laughed the entire time and Pete bit his lip while he concentrated on his moves. We threw in some very incorrect fancy footwork here and there as well as a few spins and dips. It was probably the worst first dance ever, but we had so much fun!! I wish we had it on video! 

Anyway... back to the gift!!! I spent hours trying to find the perfect romantic font and ended up falling in love with Quickier. I played around with the font size and printed out the words "the best is yet to come." I could have arranged my words on the computer, printed them, and framed it just like that, but that didn't seem quite as fun or as meaningful.
So I cut a piece of textured scrapbook paper to fit in an 8x10 frame.

I arranged my text and used my font transfer method to create the word art.

I shaded the back of my printed words with a lead pencil.

When the paper is flipped over and traced, the lead should rub off onto the paper, leaving an outline. I then traced the outline with a scrapbooking pen because they have archival ink which means this art will last for years to come!

Then I framed it to give to Pete. It's a really simple project, but it's a reminder of the best day ever and a reminder that we have so many good things to enjoy together in the future.