Laura Vegas

guess what time it is around here? soccer time! we got our first call about fall soccer a few days ago, and should get our second call any day now. it's always exciting for the girls to hear what team they're going to be on, what color jersey they get, who their coach is, and if any of their friends are on their team. and it reminded me that i've been wanting to share this layout. 

 
as seen in the July/August 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. copyright creative crafts group. posted with prior permission from the publisher.

creating keepsakes had a call out, earlier this year, looking for layouts based around the theme of "through the years". i knew right away, what layout i wanted to make for this call. and luckily,  they liked what i created enough to want to publish it in the magazine.

 

there's a little story behind this layout. i had the idea a few years ago, to do a layout showing the girls progressing from year to year, in soccer. in fact, i actually started it. see these two rows of photos on the first page of the layout? the five photos of alyssa and the five photos of sarah? i had put those together years ago. it had to be over 3 years ago, since the photos went until 2007. i had the photos cut out to size, and adhered them to white cardstock to make my photo strips.

and then i never did anything with them. so, when this call came up, i already had a start on this layout. i just pulled out these two strips of photos, and used those as my starting point.

 

of course, the girls had added three more years of soccer to their resume. so i printed out three more photos of alyssa and three more of sarah, and turned it into a two page layout.

we have had a wide range of colors through the years. actually, now that i look at it, i guess it's not that wide a range. a lot of red, blue, grey, and black. with a little green, bright pink, and light pink (the least favorite by far) mixed in. btw, rumor has it that we'll have one girl in red this season, and one in black. again. since there was so much color in the photos, i kept the papers pretty neutral. i used a tan sort of colored, swiss dotted cardstock for my background pages, along with a strip of black & white polka dot patterened paper.

 

these soccer stickers are super old. i really liked how they were arranged on the sheet, all collaged together. but it wasn't quite big enough to stretch 12 inches tall on my page. so i adhered each of the stickers to white cardstock, and then cut them out. that way, they weren't sticky, since i wanted to use pop dots on some of them. i just collaged them together, on a strip of white cardstock, leaving little spaces between each of the stickers. i used pop dots on some of the stickers, to add some extra dimension. then i adhered the entire piece to my layout.

 

these soccer ball buttons are super old too. it's interesting what i hold onto sometimes.

journaling reads: alyssa and sarah started playing soccer 8 years ago. alyssa was 7 years old, and sarah was just 4 years old. it is just crazy, how much a part of our life, soccer has become. between the 2 of them, they have now played on 21 teams total, 4 of those indoor soccer teams. joe and i have drive them to at least 550 practices. we have watched close to 240 games. they both play forward, and have scored dozens and dozens of goals over the years. they have collected 18 trophies, and 4 medals. they have both gained so much experience and knowledge of the game. their skills and abilities have improved more than we could have expected, making them valuable soccer players. we absolutely love watching them play, year after year. it's amazing to think back to when they first started playing the game, and compare it to where they are now. we are so proud of the soccer stars they have grown into!

right after making this layout, i had taken photos of each of the photos on the layout. half of these were before the digital days, so i couldn't just pull up the images. plus, i wanted to be able to see the year that each photo was from. i think i had meant to blog the photos at one point, knowing that it would be months before the layout came out in the magazine. since i have these, i figured i'd toss up their cute faces, through the years 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

since making this layout, we can add 2 more teams to their list. sarah's all-star team from this past season, and alyssa's first year playing for high school. maybe i need to do a layout about joe's years of coaching, and my years of being team mom too 😉