Goodbye Mrs. Rinaldi

Who doesn’t remember their favorite teacher? My son’s was Rosemarie Rinaldi at Dunham Elementary, in Petaluma. She taught him in 4th and 6th. And this spring she retired to enjoy a well deserved trip to Italy in August and looks forward to traveling with her husband one day with an Airstream trailer in tow. All that taken to heart, I created two special farewell journals for her.

The wonderful image of the Airstream trailer for the Happy Trails journal came from Hilary Hitchcock Photography. Please visit her Etsy store for more AMAZING work! She was very generous to grant me limited usage rights for a minimal price. Mrs. Rinaldi was so happy with her gifts.

The journals were made using my technique of printing on fabric from an ink jet printer:
Iron laundered, thin white cotton and cut a few inches larger than your 8.5″ x 11″ paper. Using 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive, spray a medium coat on a sheet of printer paper. Adhere paper to fabric and cut down fabric to size. It’s best to cut just a bit over and into the paper so that the fabric doesn’t fray through the printer. Then pass through your ink jet printer. I set mine for a glossy finish so that it doesn’t oversaturate the fabric with ink. Some fading may occur, so you will want to play with different settings on smaller pieces. Allow to dry well. Then either remove the fabric from the paper or use the two intact as I did for the added weight of a journal cover. (More on fabric printing for journals in this post .)

Through the years, I also made the school end of year certificates for all the kids, caricaturing each teacher, their specialty (hers was California State History), added a gold seal & ribbon and bordered them with the classmates’ names and special memory words from the year.

Have a wonderful retirement, Rosemarie! No one deserves it more.