Laura Vegas

i wanted to share a layout that i did for july/august issue of creating keepsakes, about 10 months ago (i seriously had to do the math on this. that seems like forever ago). i was asked to create a layout for the "peekaboo, i see you" article, written by mou saha. a few of the layouts, along with mine, ended up in the online section of this article, which can be seen HERE.

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

i was asked to create an accordian style element on my layout, that would allow you to include lots of photos, but not overwhelm the layout. when i got this assignment, zachary was about 10 months old. he had this one week period, where he started to do a lot of things at once. crawling and standing up, being the biggest things. i had taken a ton of photos of him one day, and i thought they'd be perfect for this idea.

so this layout is about what he was doing. right then and there. at 10 months old. i used some of my favorite foam letter stickers from american crafts for my title, and then added some smaller letter stickers from making memories to finish off the title. if you see this in the online article, you'll see the green letter stickers outlined with a thin brown marker. they wanted them to stand out more. i used a fun mix of star embellishments (lots of old product) to embellish that upper corner.

the papers and stickers are all from pebbles. this was an older boy collection, that i had always loved, and was glad i had the perfect chance to use it. i'm a huge fan of blue, green, orange, and brown for boy layouts.

i decided to print out my focal photo as a 4×6, and then print all my other photos in the 2×3 size. i wanted to make my accordian style book to go the entire 12 inch height of the layout. the actual width of the book is 2.5 inches, so it doesn't take up a lot of room.

i started with a sheet of 12×12 green pattern paper. and then i scored it (top to bottom) every 2.5 inches. that allowed me to have a nice, clean fold. i would fold it over one way, and then the opposite way on the next fold. like when we used to make paper fans as kids 😉

i did end up wanting an extra fold in there. with the extra half inch on all my folds, the paper wasn't quite wide enough to get as many folds as i wanted. so i just took an extra sheet of paper, and adhered it to the last fold, to extend it out. not sure that makes sense. but i'm not sure how to explain it. lol! i basically just added paper, to make it the size i needed.

then i adhered the backside of my last fold, to where i wanted it on my layout. i have a total of 12 photos on this accordian booklet. 3 on the front. and then 3 photos, in each of the 3 folds. i adhered the 3 photos, top to bottom of the paper, adding in a block of 2×3 pattern paper.

and then i added some letter stickers, to describe what zachary was doing. playing. standing. crawling. i also added a few stickers. i kept all flat papers and stickers, since the accordian book already adds some bulk to the layout.

i forgot to add, that before i adhered my accordian booklet to the layout, i figured out where i wanted my ribbon to go on the book. i used a few glue dots to adhere it to the back of the book, and then adhered the book to the layout. when i had the book all completed, with photos and stickers, i tied the ribbon on the front to keep it closed. i also added a small metal clip up at the top of the book, and dangled a cute little felt star from it with a beaded metal chain.

hard to believe i created this a full 10 months ago. now, this same little boy, is running in circles all over this house. it's hard to picture a time when he just stood next to the table, holding on for dear life 😉