Not a goodbye, a see you later...

There is a group of us stampers in SoCal that gets together to hang out, stamp, eat together, go to stamping/crafting conventions together, etc. We met because of Splitcoast and a lot of us chat there often to keep in touch. This group has been of great inspiration to me and I love trying out new techniques with them or just hanging out to chat. Whenever we get together there is much laughter! One of my friends from that group, Sam (Samwich), is leaving California to move across the country to the east coast. As much as I know this is what she needs to do I will miss her a ton!
We got together yesterday to say goodbye and have one last fun time before Sam moves. Joy organized a gift for Sam. She gave us each a little book from the Danelle book set from Bare Essentials (check out the picture at Eclectic Paperie here). We got to decorate our book how we wanted and add pictures, memories, notes to Sam, etc.





Here is a picture of a finished set that Jami took at CHA so you can see what it looks like.





Jami also so kindly took pictures of my book so that I could show you. (Isn't that sweet of her?!?!) Check out her book on her blog and just check out her blog. She is a very talented stamper!

Here is the front cover of my book. I used the Friends & Flowers simply scrappin' kit (Stampin' Up!) for this book. You can only get this kit by hosting a workshop. It is one of the free hostess gifts you can pick. (Talk to me about hosting a workshop and getting one of these kits or other stamp sets for free!) On the cover I used Amazing to Zany for the "friend."



The first page I made very simple. The paper and the letter stickers spelling "friend" are both from the kit. I cut the paper 3" x 6" folded it in half and glued it in the book with UHU twist and glue. I cut the corners after the paper was glued down to fit the rounded corners of the book. I also sanded the edges of the paper to blend them into the book.


It is hard to see it in the pictures, but I used So Saffron craft ink to ink up the top, side and bottom edges of the pages. The pages are pretty thick and cardboard colored so they needed something.






The pages of these books are 3"x3" so it takes a little planning to pick pictures and shrink them to the right size. I really liked the picture on the last page, but it was too big and trimming it to 3" would cut off too much of the side people. So I just cut the picture in between people and glued each side into the middle to meet. The circle picture I punched with a 1 1/4" circle punch. The mat is 1 3/8". I took a bigger picture and punched out the part that I wanted. All of the embelishments on this page, like the other pages are from the kit. The orange piece on the bottom left was actually a ribbon slide sticker that I cut the slider part off of. It says "memories" on it. I have such good memories of hanging out with Sam and the others!