Back to School

The first day of school here in the Toronto area was a bit of a wild one.  We had rain for most of the day, with several torrential downpours which caused a lot of flooding and totalled approx. 35 mm - about 1.5 inches - in my area combined with thunderstorms here and there.  When you compare that to the 2mm we got the entire month of July, you can see how easy it was to break the 31 year old record, with another 20 - 30 mm possible overnight.  Even more amazing, one area nearby reported getting close to 90mm!  My cousin, who is a teacher, reported a power outage at her school, which probably made the first day jitters just a little more pronounced for both staff and kids.  Wildest of all, my boss's teenage daughter had a lockdown at her high school this morning after one of the kids got stabbed by another kid (who has not yet been found and charged).  On the very first day, can you imagine??! Crazy!

I had prepared for the start of the 2012 school year by taking part in a journal swap organized by my friend Michelle Geller.  Back in May, she posted about this Moulin Rouge journal that she and a group of talented others had made.  When she asked at the end of that post if anyone was interested in taking part in the next swap, I quickly replied "absolutely"!

Our theme was "vintage school days".  Fourteen of us participated, which meant we each had to make 14 pages, send them to Michelle by a certain date and she would put all the books together.  Just like back in school, I didn't start mine right away and ended up rushing towards the end to get them all done in time but I made it.  I ended up doing 2 different designs and each of the 7 copies of each style is similar to the others and at the same time, unique.  Each page also needed to be decorated on both sides.

I was really thrilled with how my pages turned out.  I started with some black and white photos from my collection of photo albums. Happily, I found several with a school theme, such as graduation and pageant photos and a few that looked like kids dressed up for the first day of school.

The first design was based on the primary colours (red, blue and yellow).

Front side, featuring protractor pocket

Front side showing with
pocket contents removed

Back side with pocket, vintage photo
and handpainted tag

The second design had more of an antique look, with a burgundy and beige colour theme.


Front side

Back side with protractor pocket folded in

 

Back side, opened out

The various supplies I used included scrapbook paper, flash cards, protractors (I was so excited to find several boxes at the thrift store one day, knew they'd be perfect for making a pocket to tuck things into), stamps, school book pages, decorative tape, tags, pennies, ribbon, rick rack and acrylic paints.

Michelle mailed the finished books back to us last week.  It usually takes at least a week for mail to travel from the U.S. to Toronto and sure enough, I got a card from the postal delivery person in my mailbox today that said there was a parcel for me that would be at the post office by 5 p.m. tonight Alas, when I went there at 6 p.m., I was told it hadn't arrived yet. :(  You can imagine my disappointment!  Some of my fellow swap members who live in the U.S. have already received and blogged about their books but I have been resisting the urge to read their blogs until I have my own copy in hand.  In the meantime, the suspense is killing me!!

Stay tuned, I'll post photos of the finished fabulousness as soon as I can!