Laura Vegas

Every now and then, I take a photo that I completely fall in love with. This photo here is one of them. I recently came across a few photos that I had enlarged to 8×12", with the intention of using them on a layout. I've done several layouts in the past with these large photos and I love that it lets the photo take center stage. So when I found these photos, I knew I wanted to finally do something with them.

This photo of Sarah was taken back in February 2009. Almost a full five years ago. We live in almond country, which means we are surrounded by almond orchards in our little city. The almond trees blossom right around February/March each year, and there is usually a two week window to enjoy these gorgeous orchards before the blossoms fall.

This specific spot in the photo is literally a few blocks away from our house, right off a country road. Which means we pulled over on the side of this road, she ran to one side and positioned herself, and I ran to the other side of the road to get the full shot. In between cars whizzing by us, I would snap away. It was crazy how quickly we took this specific shot, and I just loved how it turned out. We took plenty more photos that day, and even went back the next day with Alyssa, so there are lots more where this came from.

This is one of two layouts I created for Kerri Bradford Studio this month. Both of them featuring an 8×12" photo. The great thing about using an enlarged photo is that it takes up a lot of the page, putting the focus on the photo, and you don't need a lot to finish up the layout. Sure, you can add as much as you'd like in that 4×12" remaining piece of the page, and you can even add things directly to the photo itself. But you can also keep it simple and clean, and have a gorgeous looking layout. Which is what I chose to do.

To go with the "love" theme of this page (meaning I LOVE this photo!), I choose a background from Kerri's Heart Backgrounds kit to fill up the rest of the page. I cut the background as a full 12×12 piece from some Basic Grey patterend paper, so I still have the other two-thirds of it left over for another project. I was going to also cut a fun border to add above the ribbon, but I remembered these super old border strips from Bazzill that I had laying around, so I used one of those.

My title is one of Kerri's Freebies, which you can find HERE. I loved this freebie, and it was perfect for this layout. I cut it from a dark brown patterned paper (more of a solid, but not cardstock) and an aqua patterned paper. I had to cut the brown one twice, since my blade wasn't as sharp as I thought it was, so I just layered that extra piece in to add even more texture. You know me. I never keep track of the dots to my i's. So I just plan from the beginning to add a little brad for the dot.

Tomorrow I'll be sharing my second layout, featuring an 8×12" photo of Alyssa, also taken in the gorgeous almonds orchards. Hope to see you back here!