Laura Vegas

i finally got around to scrapping my trip to utah, from two years ago. this was a trip that my friend deneen and i won, from the golden ticket contest that creating keepsakes put on, back in 2008. we won a 2 night, 3 day trip to utah (which we turned into a 4 day, 3 night trip). we got to visit the CK offices, meet the staff, have a personal tour of the offices and have lunch with lisa bearnson (the founder of the magazine). we also worked in a visit to the making memories offices, lunch with a bunch of great internet friends, and some awesome warehouse sales. i blogged every detail of this trip, which can be seen HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

since i was so great about blogging the trip as it happened, and including all the photos in my posts, we thought for sure that we would have this trip scrapped right when we got back home. we even had a plan of sorts. we had some papers and embellishments picked out to use. we had plans of doing mini albums. i actually do think that deneen started her's. i remember her showing me something not too long ago. but i never did get around to it. but as of this past weekend, i can say that it's done. different from what i had originally planned. but i'm happy with how it turned out. this is how my stack of stuff looks in my album. love the varying sizes of page protectors going on.  

i decided to use the pack your bags collection, from little yellow bicycle. i loved the bright colors, and their collections always have so many embellishments to chose from, that make putting layouts together so effortless. since the majority of our photos had a lot of dark colors, i chose to chance them all to black and white. i know black and white can still be dark. but it opens up all sorts of color choices, when choosing products.

since i had a lot of photos, i printed the majority of them in the 2×3 inch size. i love that size photo. and then i chose two of my main photos to print as regular 4×6 prints. i lined up two rows of the 2×3 photos, going across both pages of the layout. so i was able to fit 16 photos on here, in addition to the two 4×6 photos. so 18 photos total.

once i adhered down the photos, i started building the page around them. adding some strips of pattern paper below the 2×3 photos, and also above them. adding a larger piece of pattern paper to the top half of the layout. i carried all the papers from one page to the other, so that it all tied together.

i added a fun journaling page to the top corner of the first page, where i knew i was going to add my title. i picked out two fun chipboard titles, and combined them along with some letter stickers, for my title. on the "escape" piece, it had two notches at the top. so i added some blue twill through them, along with a few mini brass brads. makes it look like it's hanging from the top of the layout. then added a fun arrow sticker, a chipboard car sticker, and a clear airplane piece.

if i ever too the time to plan ahead, i could easily have put four 2×3's on a 4×6 canvas, and print as one 4×6 photo. then i would have just adhered four 4×6 photos, going across the page. which would still give you those same 16 photos. but i wasn't that prepared. so i printed these all as 4×6's (with 4 smaller pics on each), and then cut them all apart, arranged them on the layout how i wanted them, and then adhered them down.

i adhered a fun journaling page, and hand journaled my top 10 memories from the trip. i know i have "lunch" on there twice. but we had a great lunch with lisa bearnson, and then a great lunch with our friends. also added some cute chipboard suitcases. i didn't feel the need to journal too much on my layout. i already had a plan for getting the story in the album.

supplies:
LYB pack your bags blue woodgrain paper, LYB pack your bags compass paper, LYB pack your bags orange hexagon paper, LYB pack your bags 6×6 decorative edged paper, LYB pack your bags chipboard embellishment stickers, LYB pack your bags favorite pieces cardstock stickers, LYB pack your bags clear cut shapes, LYB pack your bags epoxy stickers, LYB pack your bags journal tablet, LYB pack your bags word chipboard stickers

i'm so glad that i took the time to blog about every single part of this trip, as it happened. not sure about you all, but i forget most of the things that happen in my life. lol! i love that almost two years later, all the details were there on my blog to look back on. i simply copy and pasted all my journaling from those four blog posts, into a word document.

i wanted to use ali edwards, the story of today 8.5×11 overlays, to go with my journaling. i found it easiest to print the overlay onto white cardstock first. i then set up my journaling to fit the empty space on the overlay, by holding up the paper to the screen and doing some eyeballing and measuring. yes, i eyeball and measure all at once. i'm talented like that. lol! once it was set up, i printed my journaling right onto the cardstock page with the overlay on it. and i did use the correct days overlay, to go with what day of the trip it was.

for example, the journaling here is from friday, december 5th, 2008. it prints the day in bold print, and then i simply circled in with a pen. i hand wrote the date on the bottom. then i added a strip of coordinating pattern paper (from the layout) to the empty space above the date. i ended up with 5 pages of journaling, all taken from my blog, word for word. i added those to the album, in 8.5×11 page protectors.

even though i got most of our photos onto the two page layout, i still wanted to include the original photos in the album. that may seem redundant, to have them in there twice. but this was a very special trip, and i wanted them in there. plus, i might scrap a few of these photos again. i have always had the intention of scrapping about winning the contest, or getting those two golden tickets, or meeting lisa. or doing a layout about some of the great friends that i've made online, and about meeting them in real life. so the photos are here, and when i'm ready to scrap addition pages, i know exactly where to find things. and if i don't get around to extra layouts, everything will still be here, in one spot.

had to include my golden ticket, signed my lisa herself.

we totally missed out on having lisa bearnson sign anything for us, after meeting her and hanging out at lunch with her. so we later emailed and asked if she could possible sign something for us. she wrote us little notes on 4×6 pieces of white cardstock, and mailed them to each of us. and see that "loved seeing your published work"? i'm curious if she looked me up at some point, after meeting. i remember mentioning it at our lunch, about how i had submitted for years and entered every hall of fame contest, without any luck at all. guess my luck turned around months and months down the road, when i finally caught someone's eye at CK 🙂

 

i used the 12×12 divided page protectors, by we r memory keepers, to hold all the photos.

such great friends, that i was so happy to meet in real life for the first time. loved spending time with industry friends that "get" what it's all about, and the craziness of what we do.

and last, but not least, were the odds and ends that i still had from the trip. my plane ticket, a utah road map, my luggage tag, the hotel room key, the envelope that the golden ticket came in, and a few 5×7 photos that i had already printed. i wanted to keep this all together, so i stuck everything inside of a 6×12 page protector, by american crafts.

i think that about does it. that was a whopper of a post. lol! and stay tuned, because i have another post planned for tomorrow. it's a big one. school album related. and it might even include a video 😉