My theme for the book on this project was "Letters to the World".  The book I chose started out life as a rather ugly blank journal, covered in white with hundreds of bright yellow smiley faces.  My mom had gotten it once as a giveaway at a teachers convention and had passed it on to me.  I knew I'd find a great use for it one day, and this was it. I had some leftover courderoy fabric in a lovely print from another project, and used it to cover the outside of the book.  It turned out quite lovely:

Because of the nature of the theme of the book, You really have to have it in your hands to be able to appreciate it and read the actual letters.  For the sake of keeping a record, though, the following are images of the pages I did before sending out the book:

The theme for Brianya's book was travel.  I haven't travelled in a very, very long time!  Well, I've moved a lot, this is true, and have lived all over the place, but actual vacations?  Heck, we didn't even go anywhere on our honeymoon!  So instead of travel, I chose two of the more interesting places I've lived for layouts, Chicago and Costa Rica.  I really wanted to add in Edmonton AB and West Virginia, but the page limit left me with just two layouts.

In the Chicago layout, the envelopes on the left page contain small folded notes with thoughts about Chicago, places or things that I love about the city.