My Circle Journal came home :)

It was so exciting getting the courier bag containing my circle journal. I knew what it was and I only managed to hold off opening it up straight away because it arrived at work and I was right in the middle of teaching my class LOL There's lots of 'eye candy' in this post so hope you all enjoy it :)

After a lot of thinking and changing my mind a million times I decided to call my circle journal 'You and Me'. The idea was for each participant to scrapbook a layout about their relationship with someone special to them. I even went so far as to cut out all my pages by going around and around... and around... a glass bowl with my craft knife so that I could have circular pages. Once my circle journal came home I put some bigger rings through the holes and then added the ribbons :)

Next came the introduction and sign in pages. My only requirement for the participants was to use black and white photos to give the album some continuity. The sign in pages required me cutting lots of circles again (I was pretty much over my circle phase by the time I posted off my album!) I asked everyone to write their layout titles into their circles and I'm really pleased I did because it looks really cool :)

I did the first layout titled 'Nana and Me'. My layout is all about my Great-Grandmother who I was super close to. She gave me a gorgeous walkie-talkie doll when I was two and I've still got her although she's a little worse for wear from where she 'needed' open heart surgery with Dad's screwdriver when I was little LOL

The first person to work in my journal was Rebecca who lives way down in Winton! She did her layout about her cat Pip. Gorgeous layout and I love all the flowers and the photo corners!!

Next to contribute was Niella who did this gorgeous layout about her relationship with her best friend Ana. Love your page Nie and am definitely going to try using transparencies in the future!

Then it was off to Rangi. This page is extra special because she did it about her brand new son Lewis who was born just after we started our swap!! So lovely to see a photo in real life and love the wee tags too :)

Next it was back up to Auckland for Kirstin to work on. She did this beautiful layout about her and her husband David. The black flowers are slightly glittery and the 'david & me' feels like felt... have to love that gold scroll too!!

Then it was off Zeetra who did a layout about her relationship with her husband Chris. I love the pencil drawing Zeetra!!! Plus you've reminded me that I've got some of those chipboard photo turns that I must start using LOLFinally it was Tracy's turn. She did a beautiful layout about her and her husband Adrian. The black scroll has the most velvety feel to it and love the way you scrunched the flower. Plus it's my first time seeing Dymo labelling on a layout in real life and the effect is really cool!I saved the back page as a place to document the travels of my circle journal. Everyone signed out with their location and it will remind me in the future about how far my wee journal went before coming back home.To all the girls in the group I would like to say a big THANK YOU for all your lovely work! I feel really proud of my circle journal and I know that I will always remember what an awesome experience this was :)

Watch out for the next update when I'll share with you the pages I did in each of the others journals! Would love to hear what you all think and would especially love to hear any comments from the circle journal group... hint hint!!

p.s. I love the mouse!!! Those of you on SbO will know what I mean LOL