Happy Bat Mitzvah Anniversary!

Loving that Simple Stories chevron paper so so so much.

Today's post is brought to you in honor of my Bat Mitzvah, which happened exactly one year ago in Israel.  I made this layout about a month ago, but I've been holding off on sharing it until today.

  What you cannot tell from this picture, and which will one day be a layout of its own, is that I was so sick from food poisoning (turns out my wimpy American constitution cannot handle home style Bedouin cooking) that I could hardly stand up and that I was pretty much on the verge of falling over the entire ceremony.  But not this page; this page is not about the misery -- this one is about the joy.  I think the misery is just as important, and probably a lot funnier now that its over and is on my to-do list.  I'm not sure what visual I would use, because I did not think to take a photo as I spent the night on the floor of the group bathroom on the Bedouin campground.

 I was not a scrapbooker then, obviously.

Also, can I say how glad I am I finally broke down and bought distress ink in Vintage Photo and that silly little tool that has foam on the bottom for aging up my paper.  When I got it part of me was all like, "Laurie, you do not like faux-vintage stuff*, are you really going to use this?" and then I went on my internal tyrade about letting things be what they are, which is not-yet-vintage, and I probably stood in the store aisle for 20 minutes staring blankely at the wall as this whole internal monologue was going on.  But I did it, and I find it to be a great tool for roughing things up just enough to look a little dirty but not "old".  The inked edges really work on this desert layout.  So thanks, Tim Holtz, I guess.

* I mean, I like it if you do faux-vintage, but when I try something like that it just feels like a huge lie.  My pages are not vintage.  My pages were made in 2012.  My pages are like a fine wine, they have to age to a perfect vintage; they don't come that way pre-made.  Vintage on other people's pages is great and I love it, but it just isn't true to the style of that weirdo known as laurie danielle.