Laura Vegas

I have two new layouts up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. When I sat down to do my project for Kerri last month, I decided to lift one of my own layouts, using a page design that I loved. This time around, I used the same basic page design to create two layouts at once. I'm a big believer in getting the most out of your products/designs/time, and an easy way to do that is to use the same page design for multiple layouts. Most likely, these pages won't end up next to each other in the albums anyways.

I've said on numerous occasions that a lot of my layouts start out with new products that I'm wanting to use. I will even go so far as to start a layout, getting a good majority of it put together, without even knowing what photos I'm going to use. That's kind of how both of these layouts started. I had recently gotten a few new 6×6" pads of patterned paper, and set aside two of them from My Mind's Eye (from the Cut & Paste collections) that I thought I would make a point to use right away.

I pulled out four coordinating 6×6" patterned papers from each pad and paired them up with two sheets of white cardstock, to create 2 layouts. Then I went about finding photos to match the two sets of papers. There's no rhyme or reason to how I find photos. I just dig around on my external hard drives until I find something that works, and hopefully that I haven't scrapped before. I ended up with a few photos I took of my brother and his wife a few years back, and a set of photos taken at my parents 40th wedding anniversary party six years ago. 

I created a photo collage for my first layout, using a template from Kerri's Storyboard #8 kit, as I had quite a few photos that I wanted to include.   

Each layout has the same basic page design. I arranged the four 6×6" patterned papers on a white sheet of cardstock. I had one paper on each layout that was more of a solid, sort of ombre', color. From each of those, I cut a 6×6 background piece to add a little interest to the page. For my first layout, I used my favorite circle background from the Background Basics kit.  

I'm still loving the look of combining a chunkier font and a cursive font for my titles. I came across this "together" cut, from the Love: Every Little Thing kit, which was actually a page tab. I tucked that under my photo collage, and then added the cursive "perfect" taken from the Oh Baby kit. And that little green chipboard heart? I've been cleaning out a lot of my supplies this past week and had gone through some drawers of chipboard the other day. I guess I missed that little heart, and I randomly found it on the desk while working on this layout. Rather than put it away, I just adhered it by my title 🙂

I cut a flower border from Kerri's Borderlines #1 kit, and adhere a piece of it along the left side of the photo collage to add a bit more green to the page. 

I kept the embellishments simple on these pages. I remember talking to one of my all-time favorite scrappers a while back, who is also a good friend of mine, and she mentioned that if she had an awesome die cut machine (which she didn't), she could probably get by scrapping with just cardstock, patterned paper, photos, and a few basic embellishments. 

I'm not sure I agreed with her at the time. But I'm finding that I'm fine with the simpler look for a lot of my layouts. I'm sure if I dug through my stash, I could find lots of fun little things to add to these layouts. But I'm totally cool with adding just a few buttons (my favorite basic embellishment) and calling it done!

For my second layout, I printed out three photos to line up across the page. I printed the main photo as a 4×6", and the other two as 3×4" photos. I cut a few scalloped borders from the Borderlines #2 kit, and adhered one above and one below my row of photos. I pulled out these navy blue jewel borders that I've had laying around forever, and adhered the larger strip along the bottom scalloped border.

I chose a flower petal background (once again from the Background Basics kit) for this page.

I love this chunky "Love" title from the This+That: Love kit. Once again, I wanted to pair a cursive word along with the chunkier word to create my title. "Priceless" is from the Giving Thanks kit, and once again, I misplaced the dot to my "i". Happens every time. I cut some smaller pieces from the smaller navy blue jewel border and added them to my title letters.

One page design, two layouts. Created at the same time, saving me lots of time. Love it!