Journey

Hello, my scrappy friends! I'm sharing with you a layout I created for my lifelong friend, Eric and for the CSI design team. The story is about a the journey that a book made over a fifty year period.

You can see for yourself if I met the criteria. Below the challenge you can see our sponsors. 

Back to the layout now...

It may be a little obvious that I have become totally hooked on 3-D scrapbooking. No, I have no idea what could have given you your first clue! 

Other techniques include stamping, fussy cutting, inking, masking, painting and paper tearing

For this piece I decided to place the journaling on the back of the layout. I went to "Curious as a Cat" for a prompt and chose, "Tell about a memorable journey." It reads...

The Journey

There was not a time when I did not know Eric. Our parents were close friends when I was born and I always looked up to Eric who was four years old when I came into the world.  He was a kind boy to put up with a little girl my age. We both grew up, went away to college, and married our respective sweethearts. He came back home to be a landscape architect and I came home to be an elementary teacher.

As a teacher I had many books for the children to read. It was called my classroom library and consisted of books that I earned from book clubs, books from bookstores and donated books.While cleaning up my classroom one afternoon I picked up a book titled, "Tall Tales of America". I had not seen it before and didn't know where it came from. It was well worn, and was not a library book. I was surprised to open the cover and see Eric’s full name written in a child's writing. What a surprise! It had been twenty years since my friend had been an elementary school student. Little did I know that I had been inserted into a JOURNEY that would last more than fifty years.

Through the years, that book followed me from one grade to another, through numerous years of staying home to raise my own children, through different schools and then back to teaching. It had been read by children and read to children. Year after year passed and I eventually retired, taking all of the books from my collection of class library books. I planned to return Eric's book to him, but retirement was surprisingly busy. I soon forgot about my plans for the cherished book stored in a drawer.  During late December of 2014 Eric passed away. The book had to be returned to the family and I knew that Eric's grandchildren were the perfect ages to appreciate the tales of Babe the Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett and Pecos Bill. Eric’s entombment ceremony seemed to be the perfect time to get the book back to his family.

Now, the book is at Betty and Eric’s home and their grandchildren can read the book whenever they spend time with their grandmother. They can all enjoy the stories that their grandfather had read when he was their age. 

Products:

Blue Fern Studios paper, stamp and chipboard
Liquitex modeling paste
Petaloo flowers
Prima stencil
Stampendous embossing materials
Stayzon ink

Thanks for going along on this journey with me. See you next time!