A page from Xi'an, China, with 3 4x6 photos. I couldn't come up with a more clever photo design, what with 2 horizontal and 1 vertical photo. I think the grid worked out. I splashed some Pickle Mister Huey on the background, used the stamp that came with my Daydream Believer kit for my journaling. Which I also think would make a great frame for a photo strip, btw.
It's a bit hard to tell, but the shirt I'm wearing in this photo is purple. So I played with a purple/gold/silver/tan color scheme.
I did some splattering with Purple Maya Mist and layered small strips of paper, ribbon & stickers on the ends of the page.
This page has a then & now theme, although the now is a few months old at this point. 
Mountbattened is a term Kori and I came up with at some point. If it was listed in the dictionary, at the end of the definition it would say, “See also bamboozled” i.e. we thought one thing and yet something completely different has occurred.
Back in the day it was a derogatory way of describing a situation. These days, I’ve begun to think otherwise.
I can concretely and with 100% certainty say, that I have been Mountbattened. For me that means, walking away from an experience in which long lasting friendships have been created.
Friendship has always been something that I’ve struggled with. A loner at heart, I prefer home and a book, to some loud awkward social gathering. But in that year and a half of living across the world, and being thrown together with the most random smattering of the human experience you could come up with, I found it. Again and again and again.
The people I met, and even had the privilege to live with, become some of the best friends I could have ever asked for. My heart was the happiest it had been this weekend in 2011 when I got to see some of their familiar faces.
Friendship is also having history together. Here we are, at the beginning of an experience of something, we weren’t even sure yet what it was, so young and excited. And then again, out on the other side, not quite so young, but still together.
This is so quintessentially James. He's clever & quiet, well spoken, the smartest person I know. And above all else, fun!
As to the page, I stamped a Studio Calico background stamp and embossed with white powder. Then just dug into my brad collection for brown, blue and orange brads. I thought the colors would go well with these photos, pulling the blues from his clothes and the orange from the background in the one (btw, check out the clearly confused Chinese guy in the background ^).
I also used a stamp set from Kelly Panacci (go buy it, seriously!) to embellish and a few bits of AC Amy Tangerine tape!
