Travel layouts abound

Howdy, folks. I'm back today with three more layouts: two from my trip to Italy, and one from my summer road trip through New England with my sister. First up, "Whimsy":

Alton and I passed through the piazza where the Pantheon is located twice. The second time through, Alton took this photo of the fountain. Someone had stuck a long-stemmed rose into the mouth of one of the creatures. All of the product on this page, except the bling, comes from Websters Pages.
While we were visiting Vatican City, I made a special point to mail several postcards. The Vatican post is supposed to be extremely reliable, and I had quite a few people ask for postmarked cards from my travels. Alton snapped a photo of me putting my postcards in the mailbox:

I made this layout using the "Courage" kit from Scrapbooking From the Inside Out. I covered the chipboard stars with Tim Holtz's tissue tape. The tape says "postcard" in many different fonts, which is why I chose it for this layout. I colored the stars with Quick Quotes powderpuff inks and some Glimmer Mist. The letter stickers were also colored with powderpuff ink. I bought a souvenir envelope from the Vatican Post Office and used it on this layout. I cut the top flap off, and turned it into a pocket on my layout. I stuck a journaling card, as well as two other decorative elements inside the pocket.

This last layout features a photo taken in Boston. My sister is nuts about those smooshed souvenir pennies that you can make a lot of places. So I caught a picture of her as she was making this one. I wanted to capture the warmth of the day and bring to mind the red bricks that are everywhere in Boston, which influenced my color palette. I chose the green patterned paper because the shape of the motifs on the paper is the same shape as the pennies as they come out of the machine. And finally, I spritzed a bit of Glimmer Mist across the page to bring to mind the copper of the pennies themselves. All products used on this layout were also Websters Pages (except the mist, of course).
I am frantically stitching away on mom's sampler. I'm almost done, which is a good thing, because she'll be here in a few hours to collect the thing! Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone.