Overview:

Welcome to our third Circle Journal! We have applied lessons learned in the first and second circle journals and we've come up with a great set of guidelines for this one.

The basic premise of a circle journal is that your circle of friends will create a scrapbook for you, using a theme you select, and you won't get to see the book until it is done. It's a lot of fun to work on pages for a friend, and the end result is always really neat. This page will serve a the primary source of info and status tracking for this project, so check here often. If you have any questions at all, just ask Sandra.

Participants and Themes:

Name	Theme	Layouts	Instructions	Status
Sandra	"8"	One 2-page layout	Create a 2-page layout that depicts something (anything!) about the number eight. You can use any colors, photos, or ideas you want, as long as it helps illustrate the number 8. This is an imagination stretcher, for sure! If you want to make sure that nobody else is already using your idea, check with Tabitha.	DONE
Tabitha	"My Favorite Games"	Two 1-page layouts	Choose two games from this list of my favorite games. Create a one-page layout for each game, depicting that game.	DONE
Cassondra	"My 30 Years"	Two 1-page layouts	In celebration of my 30th birthday this year, I would like a book celebrating my 30 years. Please choose two years from this list and create a one-page layout for each year. For each layout, I would like you to depict some of the big events that happened (world-wide) that year and/or a photo of me from that year (I'll try to provide as many photos as I can).	DONE
Sara	"My Favorite Things"	One 2-page layout	In an effort to get to know everyone better, I would like to learn about your favorite things! Please create a 2-page layout based on YOUR top 10 favorite things. This can include color, food, actors, music, states, hobbies, etc.	DONE
Kris	"My Momma Always Said..."	One 2-page layout	Please finish the sentence "My Momma Always Said..." with a funny ending that reflects something your mother always said when you were growing up. Then depict that saying using photos and/or stories. For example, I plan on making a page for my own book and using the phrase, "My momma always said... were you raised in a barn?"	DONE
Rachel	"Something I Only Tried Once"	One 2-page layout	Create a layout depicting something you only tried once in your life. Any reason is fine for why you only did it once -- because you hated it, because it cost too much, or because maybe once is enough!	DONE
Mags	"A-Z About Me"	Two 1-page layouts	Create two one-page layouts. On each one, choose a letter of the alphabet and then pick any word (adjective, noun, whatever) that starts with that letter and that describes some aspect of yourself. Please feature the letter and word on the page, along with any photos or decorations you like. Some examples are: "M" for Musical, "B" for Bananas, or "D" for the Devil Incarnate :) Sandra will keep track of all the letters here.	DONE
Kim	"Memories Every Child Should Have"	One 2-page layout	I want Ben's childhood to be as full of great memories as possible, and I'm always eager for ideas about things he'll remember and appreciate when he's older. Please create a layout showing a memory that you think every child should have. You can base it on a favorite memory YOU have from your childhood, or base it on something you WISH you'd done as a kid.	DONE
Christy	"My Family"	One 2-page layout	Choose one of my family members from this list and then create a two-page layout featuring that person. Please be as creative as you would like and include anything you can about that person, but make sure our relationship and his or her full name are featured somewhere. If you would like me to answer any specific questions to give you more detail about someone, I would be happy to do so, so just ask. I will try to get photos online for everybody to use, but if I can't, feel free to leave one or two blank spots on the page for me to insert a 3x5 or 4x6 picture later.	DONE

What You Will Do For Your Own Book:

• Choose a theme for your book. Tell Sandra so she can put it on this page. For some inspiration, check out this list of ideas.
• Create a 1-page "title" page that will be the first page of your book. On this page, you would put the name of your theme and any other decorations you want
• Optionally create a 1-page "closing" page that will be the last page of your book. You can skip this step if you want, but if you do it, you can use this page for any of the following:
  • Create a 1-page layout following your own theme
  • Create a sort of "made by" page where you would list the names of all the people who contributed to your book, along with the year
  • Create a journaling area where you can go back and write a paragraph about your circle journal experience.
• Optionally create one or more 2-page layouts in your theme to add to the ones created for your book by your friends.

What You Will Do For Each Person In The Group:

• Create either 1 two-page layout or 2 one-page layouts, as indicated in the theme descriptions above. The layout(s) you create must match the theme selected by the person the layout is for.
• (If you find yourself really loving the theme and are inspired to do more, you can optionally create a second layout for a person's book, but that is completely optional -- you are only expected to do one)

Materials / Cost:

We will all be using identical albums for this circle journal. We found the albums at Walmart for $5. They are very nice post-bound albums with plastic page protectors, and the pages measure 8" x 8". The cover of the book is covered in brown kraft paper, which you can later paint or otherwise decorate to suit your theme. Walmart rarely has more than 2 of these albums in stock in any given month, so Kris has been stockpiling them in anticipation of this circle journal. Anyone who wants an album from Kris will need to give her $5 to reimburse her for her expense.

The benefit of using identical albums is that we can all make the pages the exact same size for all the books we do, without having to worry about changing size for each layout. To see a picture of the album, look here.

The albums come with 10 page protectors (which means 20 pages, or 10 two-page layouts). This is plenty of pages for what you'll need with this project, but if you want to expand your album or create more layouts on your own later, you will need more pages. Since refills for these albums are very difficult to find, I recommend that if you want more pages, you simply purchase a second album, remove the extra pages from it, and add them to the first album.

General Guidelines:

• Every page you create must be exactly 8" x 8" square.
• A "2-page layout" consists of two 8" square pages. One page goes on the left and one goes on the right, thus making a full picture when the book is laying open. Both pages should match in overall color/design.
• A "1-page layout" consists of one 8" square page. When a theme requests 1-page layouts, you will do two of them, but the two pages do not need to match each other in overall color/design.
• You may decorate the pages with photos, paper, stickers, ribbons, or anything else you can think of. Be creative! (Be careful about adding items that are very thick, because they make the book hard to close)
• Be sure to sign (and optionally date) each layout you make so that the person you give it to can tell that you made it.

Timeframe/Deadlines:

You'll have 1 month of scrapbooking time for each person in the group. Therefore, since there are 9 people in the group, you'll have 9 months to complete all your pages. Remember that this includes the 8 layouts for the other people in the group as well as the title page for your own book.

Sometime very soon after the End Date, we will have a "book party" where we will gather together to assemble our books. At this time, you will hand out the pages you made for the other people in the group. We will then put all the page into the empty albums and everyone will have their completed album to take home with them. If you can not attend the book party (for instance, if you live out of town), please give or mail your pages to Sandra BEFORE the book party. Sandra will then give or mail your completed book to you.

Start Date: February 1, 2007
End Date: November 1, 2007
Book Party Date: June 22, 2008

As soon as you are finished with all the pages you are going to make, please let Sandra know. She will then update your "Status" in the table above to "DONE", so that we can keep track of who is done. If everyone happens to finish early (haha!), we can have our book party early too.

* * FINAL RESULTS * *

With ample poking and prodding and busy lives all around, we finished the books a *bit* after schedule, but the result was still fantastic. We had our assembly day on June 22, when we put all the layouts into identical 8x8 albums that the owners can decorate. Photos of all the layouts are available here