Best birthday present . . . ever!

For my birthday this year, I had originally asked for a mix-master.  Not exactly exciting but practical and, well, big.  Not the sort of thing you just go out and buy for no reason. (Not on our income, anyway).
But as the time drew nearer, I got less and less excited, and started thinking more and more about a Silhouette machine.  Now when I first heard of these babies they cost $600 - I don't think any amount of titles and shapes could justify that price!  But I started to wonder if perhaps the price had come down.  So I did a little Google search and found the local supplier had them on special for $450, somewhat of an improvement, but still didn't feel like I could ask for one at that price.  But then on Ebay . . we could get one for $250 including postage shipped direct from the US!  We just needed to spend another $9 on a power adapter. Happy birthday to me!
So anyway, no prizes for guessing what I used to scrap this week's "So you think you can scrap" . . .
After week 1 was so easy, I was lulled into a bit of a false sense of security, but week 2 of SYTYCS proved a bit more complicated.  The rules are:

• double layout, created by mirroring one of a given choice of sketches
• background must be black

As someone who sends all her photos away to be printed once or twice a year, I have to work with the photos I have. I do plenty of double layouts, but many will never make it online as they are of school events, birthday parties etc, none of which I post unless I have permission from all the parents.
I had one page ready to scrap that I wanted to use a black background for, but the number and orientation of the photos didn't fit any of the sketches.
Another group of photos I have ready to go would have fit a sketch, but I didn't want a black background.  Same goes for pretty much any family holiday-type page.
I ended up going  way back to 2006 when I made Star Wars costumes for Angus's 5th birthday party.

I'm pretty proud of my first attempt at using the software.  I managed to use text, resize, rotate, group, separate, weld, offset, duplicate, mirror . . . the only thing I forgot to do was check that the cardstock was cut all the way through before I unloaded, and as a result ended up cutting the green stars by hand!
I've scrapped two Star Wars birthdays and a Star Wars exhibition, so I'm no stranger to using the imitation star wars font, but let me tell you, it's never looked as good as this!