Laura Vegas

I mentioned last week that I had taken two vacation days from my adorable, but exhausting, daycare kiddos. I managed to get 4 new layouts created in those two days, and I still have 3 of them to share. This layout here came about very randomly. As do a lot of my layout, if I'm being honest.

I happen to be ordering a few photo enlargements from Costco, and had a 6×12" photo collage that I had to order, since I don't have a large format printer. I had room on the sheet for another long collage, so I started digging around for photos that I could use. I came across these photos of Alyssa and Zachary (my cousin's son, but also one of my previous daycare kiddos), taken this past Christmas, and decided to use them. I used a storyboard template from Kerri Bradford's recent Photo Strips #1 kit to create my collage.

I've had the collage laying around for a while, and would randomly add pieces to go along with it. The black text patterned paper (from Simple Stories) has gotten a lot of use. I received one sheet of it for an assignment, and used pieces of the paper on that layout. I've also used strips on THIS layout, and THESE cards. And I still have pieces left over.

The circle die cut background piece was something I had cut for another layout. I had sprayed it with silver misting spray to completely cover it. At some point, I realized how well it would work on this page, so I swiped it from it's intended layout.

I just love the "I love music" shape from the Silhouette store (found HERE). In fact, one of Alyssa's shirts from TriM club at school has a very similar shape on the back. And she has said that if she were to ever get a tattoo, this is what she would want to get. Random tidbit for you there 🙂

I also found my "Music" title in the Silhouette store. I have always loved the look of the outlined title words. I cut the outline part from that same black text patterned paper, and the block part from a tone-on-tone red dotted patterned paper. For adhering those thin outlined pieces, I usually just run them thru one of my Xyron create-a-sticker machines. I have them in varying sizes, and use them for the majority of my die cut pieces.

I searched high and low in my stash for some music note patterned paper. I did find two, but one had too much cream to it (I'm not a cream person) and the other was more cutesy, with girly colors. Not quite what I was looking for on this page. I did however, have this fabric sort of "paper" that was black and white, but a bit sheer at the same time. I honestly didn't want to cut into it, but since I couldn't find anything else, I had to do it.

I felt like the circle die cut piece needed a little something, and dug out some super old metal rimmed tags from Making Memories. I know the middle one in the photo above looks kind of green, but I promise you, it's black. I choose a few silver, a few black, and a few silver glittered tags. These were the metal rimmed tags that you would use in the MM Tag Maker, a little hand held tool that would flatten out the rims after you placed something inside the tags (patterned paper, photos, etc). I used to use them all the time just like this. Nothing added in the middle. Just the flattened rims.

I had two openings in the storyboard template that I didn't have photos for, so I had filled them with some black digital chalkboard patterned paper before having it printed. If I had planned ahead a little more, I would have added my journaling directly onto the collage as well. It could have all printed together. But I don't usually plan that well in advance, so I printed out my journaling as white text on a black background.

I love that music means so much to Alyssa. It's so hard to know at 17, when you're making college decisions, what you want to do with your life. She's still deciding on what her exact plan is, but I'm fairly certain that music will be a big part of her college experience, one way or the other.