Girls' Night Out

Tonight I went with a bunch of girlfriends to a local scrapbook store for a private crop. We opted for private because (a.) you only have to have 8 for a private crop and we had that, and (b.) the last time 8 of us descended on the crop together, the poor 3 croppers we didn't know thought they had landed in a loony bin! We laughed and talked and cut up, passing around chocolate and Mike & Ike's, and they felt like the odd ones out. Or maybe they were the only normal ones. So we opted for a private crop this time.





We ordered from a very popular local restaurant across the street (that, on a Friday night, can have a 1.5 hour wait for a table). Our take-out was much faster.





Here's a layout I completed after carrying it around, unfinished, for approximately 4 years. Or was it 6? Not a fancy layout, but at least it's done. I made my own "pearl" brads to attach the vellum journaling with - I dipped regular silver brads in a Very Vanilla Craft Ink Pad, then used pearly Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel and embossed them. I did three layers of UTEE and they truly look like little pearl halves.











Here's another project I've been working on for almost a year. I went to a class at a local scrapbook store (that is no longer in business) for this little Christmas Memory book. The book is made from large envelopes for the pages and chipboard for the covers of the book. It has a little ribbon and magnet closure and it's all tied up with a bunch of different ribbons.

I decided to do picture of ME for this memory book. I have very few Christmas pictures from when I was a child. Here are the first two pages. The top picture on the right-hand page opens to reveal more pictures....

See?

And there are pages that slip into the envelopes and can be pulled out by their ribbon tags. On the backs of most of the pages, I have journaling and on the fronts, pictures.

I didn't take pictures of every page. That would have been boring. I just wanted to give you an idea. Anyhow, I started the book at the class last year and did the journaling a couple of weeks later. The journaling really doesn't have anything to do with my pictures, since I really have no recollection of most of these Christmases. So I did one journaling page about holiday food, another about Christmas parties, still another about presents, one about trees, one about decorations, and on the final page I included a few of Mama's special holiday recipes that she would ALWAYS make. I just needed to put everything together with the pictures and finally finished that tonight.

Here's another Christmas layout I finished. I finally put the last pictures on the fourth copy of this layout that was for Morgan's book. I had to print out more pictures. This was from Christmas 2005. (Sorry about the flash glare.)

About this time, we were sagging a little bit and so at quarter 'til eleven, three of us made a CC's Coffeehouse run! Mmmmm....That kept us going until almost 2 a.m.! For the rest of the night, I stamped and embossed and cut out letters for another layout. Actually, for two other layouts that I'm duplicating for my girls' albums. :^D And I'm still not finished cutting out the letters.