Laura Vegas

today is layout day over on the jillibean soup blog. i actually have both of my layouts for the month, that went up today. but i decided to share one of them with you today. and i'll share the other one tomorrow. of course, you can see both of them HERE. but you know i have all the details here on my blog 😉

i knew the new atomic soup collection would be perfect for these photos from alyssa's last day of junior high school. i made sure she took her camera to school, and gave her strict instructions to make sure she took lots of photos. i honestly don't have photos of her and her friends. other than when she has a birthday party. and i wanted her to have something to look back on. and i have to say. she came back with more photos than i was expecting.

when i start a two page layout, i begin with the photos and 2 sheets of cardstock. i will decide on my photo placement first, and then build the rest of the layout around the photos. i do adhere all my photos down, once they're trimmed. then i measure and trim the pattern papers to fit around the rest of the space. it makes good use of my pattern papers too, since i only cut off the pieces i need. the papers here might look like they go all the way across the page. but they're only about 10 inches long, and end where the green cardstock starts.

i went with the blue corrugated alphas for my title. i wanted to make them stand out just a little bit more against the whiter patterned paper, so i lightly inked the edges with brown ink. and i have done this before, but i adhered the "o" sideways. mainly, because it wouldn't have fit the other way. lol! maybe i should start adhering my title, before adhering the embellishments around it. nah. that'd be too easy.

i choose the green embossed cardstock, because i wanted some extra texture. and because the numbers are sort of school related. and because our school color was green, for the mustangs.

alyssa got some great photos with her camera. and was really good about handing the camera over, and getting in some of the photos herself. i printed all her photos as 4×6's, through costco. usually, i like to go in before ordering and do any cropping to all my photos. zoom in and get rid of any excess background that doesn't need to be there. but i left most of her's uncropped, because i knew i was going to trim them up into smaller sizes. i pulled out all the ones that i could crop to 3×3, and then arranged them in two rows. then i took three of the photos that had a lot going on, and just trimmed them a tad bit to make them fit on the pages.

this is actually a photo that i took after school let out. the jr high side of the school, was an emotional mess. everyone was saying their goodbyes, knowing that they wouldn't all be at the same high school. and knowing that some of them wouldn't see each other much during the summer months, off school. there were lots and lots of tears. it was hard to watch, and i felt for each and every one of them. i was waiting with sarah and her friend on the other side of the school, giving alyssa and her friends their space. but i had to stop and capture a little bit of the moment.

alyssa also had a lot of photos with friends, where they simply held the camera out at arm's length and snapped away. there was no way to crop these photos smaller, but i wanted to include them. so i choose to simply slip them into a divided page protector, which is right after this layout in her school album.

supplies: atomic soup bunch of matter pattern paper by jillibean soup, atomic soup cup of equations pattern paper by jillibean soup, jillibean soup embossed cardstock by core'dinations core impressions, atomic soup journaling sprouts by jillibean soup, arrows corrugated shapes by jillibean soup, blue corrugated alphas by jillibean soup, baked bean alphabean letter stickers by jillibean soup, green cool beans buttons by jillibean soup, buttons by making memories