Winter Fun Scrapbooking

It's been a very long time since I posted--so sorry to all my faithful readers.  (I'm talking to you, Denise!) It's not that I haven't been scrapbooking, or at least thinking of scrapbooking; I've been doing both.  But I haven't been posting...

Let's start with updates from the company formerly known as CM.  It's now Ahni and Zoe by CM.  I've read a lot about how much people do not like the name, how it is not a correct translation of the Hawaiian word for beautiful, etc.  I don't care either way about the name, but I do know one thing: I will not be buying their products.  The new product line is not for people like me, people who like the act of scrapbooking.  Their new line is for non-scrapbookers...people who just want to slap their photos on a pre-made page in a substandard album.  I guess it's pretty obvious how I feel about this new direction.

At least my former CM consultant is still holding crops.  Even though I am not interested in her products now that she's with A&Z by CM, I still enjoy going to crops and seeing the friends I've made through this fad hobby.

 I've been scrapbooking events from the fall and winter, and I have another crop to attend this weekend and then the great Preserve Your Journey crop coming up in April.  Over Christmas, we went on a Caribbean cruise, which was the most wonderful escape from the winter weather here in Virginia.  (By the way, it snowed last night into today and we are on snow day #16 so far this school year!)  Back in the fall, my sister and I went to a local dinner theatre production of Les Miserables, which was pretty good.  We are obsessed--OBSESSED--with Les Mis.  Here's a picture of the layout for that night:

We took pictures with the French flag as we arrived, as well as the "meet me at the barricade" drink my sister had.  After the show, the actors line up at the exit to the theatre, so we got to take some pictures with them, too.  The background on the right was inspired by the picture below (from Etsy):

This picture is designed to be artwork on the wall, not a scrapbooking layout (and it is priced accordingly!), but I liked the flag and music in the background.  I found music online that had a red wash on it, which is perfect for allusion for "the blood of angry men" in the musical.  I also tore my blue and red papers to give it a more gritty look.  I can't link to the original item anymore, because its listing expired on Etsy, but it's from a shop named Twinnovations, in case you need to look for it.

Then I started working on our cruise to the Caribbean.  The highlight of the trip for me was swimming with the dolphins on Christmas Day in Tortola.  Here's the start of that layout:

I think I added a little something on the right page under the picture of me being pulled by the dolphin.  I just love these papers.  They came from an online store named Scrap Your Trip.  It's one of my favorite places to buy specialty papers.  They have really specific stuff, and you can even get some pages personalized, and the prices are totally reasonable, I think.  At the last crop I attended, I had to cut the "scrap your trip" logo off the bottom of all my papers to give to my fellow croppers.  They all wanted to check out the offerings.

This weekend, I'll continue working on our trip at the KWBES crop.  Our basement has been in a state of disarray since the broken pipe back in January, and I cannot work down there in its current upside-down furniture/carpet pulled back/drywall punched out state.  So I'll gather my materials and hit the road this weekend! So fun!