Another Girlfriends Christmas

Hi friends! How are you doing this week? Are you ready for Valentine's day? We celebrated tonight since the girls are off to their dad's this weekend. We had our traditional heart shaped pizza and soda in wine glasses. The table was decked out in our fancy valentine table cloth and we had little candles lit too. It's just a special little thing we do every year.

Here is a lay out that I did of my annual Christmas dinner with a few of my girlfriends. This time I thought I would go into detail with you about the tools that I used. So here it goes. I lifted the layout idea from Becky Higgins Sketches book. Becky has to be one of my all time favorite page designers and I use her books for ideas frequently. The cardstock is Bazzill and the patterned paper is from Cosmo Cricket's Twist & Shout line, it's not really Christmas paper but here is a great example of thinking outside the box. Mary, one of my favorite managers from Scrapbook Garden (Sarah would be the only other favorite) helped me pick the paper out for this one. Mary is always so good at getting someone to see things in a different way (and not just with paper...love ya my friend *wink*)

These fun little brads are from Creative Cafe...I picked them up on clearance somewhere just can't remember where now.

See how small I got these picture at the bottom of the first page? I used my little Epson Picture Mate printer. Best $100 I ever spent. The quality of the photos is incredible! The neat part is that you can print as large as 4x6 and as small as well small enough to fit on a charm necklace! You can also tweak your photos with it too, like making the photo black and white or sepia tone.

Here is what the printer looks like. It is so simple. You don't even have to hook it up to a computer. Just pop in the memory card from your camera and BAM you are a printin' fool! I got mine at Best Buy and the refills are pretty inexpensive.

Now we all know what a punch queen I am right? Well I just can't help it! Stampin Up has some of the best punches! See this photo corner?

I made it with this punch. When you use this punch you get two different sizes so if you wanted to layer in a different color you could for a neat accent.

And how about this fun embelly? You like it don't you? I do too! It is so versatile! The words friends forever was a little stamp that I had. I used a marker to color the words so that I could stamp them on two lines. Remember that old trick?

So to achieve this totally groovy embelly you have to use this punch, which is also from Stampin' Up. Now if you are interested in purchasing either of these goodies then let me know because I do sell Stampin' Up.

And finally, this is what I have been using for adhesive recently and have grown quite fond of it. This big wallet wrecker is called the ATG Gun. Wallet wrecker? Yes, the sucker is $60 and when you purchase it, it does NOT come with adhesive. Yes people, that was extremely difficult for me to stomach...personal opinion here but I think for 60 smackers the thing should have came with adhesive. But needless to say the adhesive refills are only around 5ish and you get 1000 feet.

So if you are still reading, you get a prize. I am not sure what yet but never less it is prize for reading (all the way to the end) the longest blog entry in my history. Hope you have a great Friday!