Laura Vegas

it's whip-it-up wednesday, over on the pebbles blog. this is when you whip up a project, in 30 minutes or less. i decided to do a layout for my turn. not every layout has to take hours to create. i actually find it quite easy to do a layout in a short period of time. it's all about keeping it clean and simple.

i decided to create a christmas layout for my assignment. i havn't made a layout with joe's family in years. that sounds pretty bad, i know. lol! it wasn't intentional. we just never seem to have photo opps, when we finally do get together with them. last christmas, i made a point to get some photos before everyone left after our christmas dinner. not a lot. but a few photos, that show most of the family.

i was only working with five photos. so i just printed four of them at 3" x 4.5", and then our family photo at about 3.5" x 4.5". rough estimates, since i honestly don't remember what i printed them at. i suppose i could go measure the photos. but i'm so efficient, that the layout is already put in an album. lol! anyways. i lined up the four photos down one side of the white cardstock background, and the family shot off to the right side. adhered them right down. then i cut my pattern papers to fit around the photos. just built my layout around the photos.

now, pebbles doesn't have an actual christmas collection. but that didn't stop me. i used the pattern papers from the cats & dogs collection. that's what i really love about pebbles papers. the patterns are neutral enough (especially the B side of the papers), that you can really use them for anything. 

i wanted to use the striped pattern paper, to tie in the colors from all the other elements on the layout. but this striped paper also had orange rows of color on it. so i did a little pleating with my paper strip, to hide the orange. all the spots you see a little folded area? there is orange in those folds. i used tiny glue dots, to hold the folded areas down.

then i added some letter stickers for my title, a strip of dotted ribbon, a green glittered chipboard flourish, and a few glittered candy dots. easy peasy. and seriously, this took less than 30 minutes. i should add that the journaling did take me an extra 10 minutes. lol! i would have hand journaled on a 30 minute page, but i didn't think it would stand out enough on the red pattern paper. i was well within my time limit, but when i went to print, the printer wasn't working and then it closed the program out and lost my journaling. ugh. had to retype it, and remember what i said and how i made it fit in that area. lol!