I've got a new toy

For the past few weeks, I've been searching for this little guy:

I had finally realized that I was never going to get those frayed edges on my paper with just a sheet of sandpaper, no matter how hard I tried. I actually had to search several stores before I finally found them sitting at the register in Archivers. Last night, I tested my new distresser out:

This may not seem like a big deal to most of you, but I'm really happy to have the ability to fray the edges of my paper, with very little effort. And here's a full view of the layout I distressed:

You can't tell it from this photo, but it was ridiculously crowded in the piazza around the fountain. I guess I can understand why, I mean it's a gorgeous fountain. But it would have been nice to share the sight of it with just my boyfriend instead of having to wedge ourselves between other bodies as we threw our coins in the fountain. Supposedly, if you throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, you will one day return to Rome. It worked for me the first time around. We'll see if it works again!
Here's a closeup of the little flower cluster underneath the photo. I pulled apart a Websters Pages bouqet, and used about half of it on my page.

You'd think I'd be sick of making layouts about Rome by now. Well, I'm not. But I am anxious to really get started on my Egypt album. My goal is to finish completely with Rome by next Thursday. This is not an impossible goal, but it's also not a sure thing. I will need to finish a Rome layout every day from now until then in order to meet my goal. I "sort of" accomplished that today... except I made what was originally supposed to be a two page layout into a single page layout. That leaves me with an empty page in my album, so now I have to either delete another page, or create another one. I didn't originally plan on making a title page, so maybe that's how I'll solve my dilemma...