Laura Vegas

After Alyssa's high school graduation, I was so excited that I had gotten some great photos of her and her friends after the ceremony. But I was even more excited when she showed me all of the selfies they had taken BEFORE the ceremony. I love that my girls can capture the moments when I'm not around with my camera (or when they don't want me around!), and with the quality of camera phones these days, they really do get some great quality photos that I can incorporate into my layouts. And I couldn't wait to get this layout put together for my next project that's up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today!

I wanted to incorporate the majority of the photos that Alyssa took that evening, and ended up with 31 photos that I printed as either 3" x 3" or 3" x 4" photos. I created a two page spread that can stand on it's own. But I took it a step further, and included two divided page protectors to hold even more photos. All of the 3" x 4" photos went on the actual layout pages, and the 3" x 3" photos all went into the divided page protectors. *** Alyssa would want me to mention that there are 2 photos in here that were taken by someone else. The other 29 were all taken by her.

I dug around in my patterned paper collection, looking for dark green, yellow, black, and grey papers. Our school colors are green and white, and black is usually mixed in when needed. I added in the yellow to tie in with the CSF cords and drapes that many of the students were wearing with their gowns. I now know that I need to stock up on papers in the right shade of green to go with our school colors. It was super hard to find any papers to match.

I went straight to Kerri after seeing these photos, and put in a request for a "but first let's take a selfie" cut, knowing it would be perfect for this project. Turns out, she'd been meaning to put a kit together with some other popular words/terms that teens use these days, which you can now find in her Urban Dictionary kit.

This particular phrase comes two different ways. You can either cut the words out individually, or you can have them all connected. I chose to cut them all individually, since my phrase on the second page contained individual words as well.

I used several background cuts, on a variety of patterned papers, to create the borders on the sides of my base pages. I chose the circle and petal 3" x 4" backgrounds from the Life Additions: Backgrounds kit. I like that these were meant to cut in smaller sizes, and the 3" width was perfect for adding along the edge of my page.

I thought the "And Now Let's Do This" would make a great sort of "ending" phrase for this spread. Now that the selfies were taken and the pre-graduation excitement was captured, they were ready to get out there and graduate!

I combined a few cuts, from different kits, to create this phrase. The "Let's Do" is from a freebie Kerri offered that read "Let's Just Do Today". And I used the "This" from "This Place", found in the Well Traveled kit. Always keep in mind you can mix and match words as needed from so many of Kerri's kits! Alyssa gets so annoyed at missing apostrophe's, so it bugged her that I didn't have one for "let's" on this page. I'm also missing the dot on the i in "this". I lost track of them and just forgot to replace them.

The "together" and "here & now" tabs are from the Love: Every Little Thing kit. There were only two of these tabs in the kit, and luckily, they both fit the theme of my layout. This entire spread contains very limited embellishments. Other than paper and some stickers, the only other things I added were a few buttons and some enamal dots and pearl dots.

Here you can see how the layout looks if you were to see it in person. This shows the two divided page protectors added right in between the base pages of my layout. It's very simliar to THIS layout I did last year.

I have a huge selection of divided page protectors from Becky Higgins and WeRMemoryKeepers. But I really love the October Afternoon 12" x 12" divided page protector. It's the only brand I've seen that has a full sheet of 3" x 3" squares, and it's actually the only 12" x 12" protector they have (unless I'm really missing something).

Just like the previous layout I mentioned, I chose to trim off one row of the 3" squares on the page protector. I like the idea of being able to see parts of the actual layout pages while looking at the inserts.

The "Love It" arrow piece is from the Need Directions kit. It's actually meant to be a paperclip, which I realized after I cut it. Of course, Kerri has a note on it that says exactly how it's going to cut, but I obviously didn't pay that much attention. It doesn't actually cut the arrow out, so I just slipped a piece of white cardstock in there (the green arrow is now behind the white cardstock).

I do realize that if I had left the divided page protector fully intact, and filled just about every pocket, I could have fit all of these photos into just one protector. But I like breaking up the photos, and adding in some patterned papers to some of the pockets. I also could have easily created 2 large photo collages, and fit all 31 photos on the actual two page layout. But it's fun to use the divided page protectors and mix it up a bit every now and then.

The patterned papers I ended up using are from October Afternoon, Pink Paislee, Echo Park, Little Yellow Bicycle, Fancy Pants, and Bo Bunny. I think that's everyone. I even dug around in my stash of Project Life cards (I own a ton, even though I'm not a Project Lifer) looking for some cards that might work, but I only found two that I ended up adding in.

The circle background came from the More Background Basics kit. You all know how much I love my circle backgrounds, right! I had even more little 3" x 3" pieces I was working on cutting, but my Cameo started having some cutting issues. At which point, I had this thought that maybe I needed to finally update my software. After I updated, I had no clue how to use the software, since it was very, very different from what I was used too. So I gave up at that point, and just went with what I had already cut.

I mentioned earlier that I kept my embellishments super simple. One reason being that I didn't have anything specific to go with the "high school graduation" theme of the page. And while I could dig around in my stash, looking for different types of things that could be mixed in, to make the pocket inserts a little more interesting, I'm totally fine with the simpler style and design that I ended up with.

I also used several of the square frames from the Sliders kit. I did spend more time than I cared to admit on whether I should round the corners of my photos and papers. The Slider frames had a slight rounded corner on them, while the "Love It" frames had a larger rounded corner on them, and the circle backgrounds weren't rounded at all. After rounding some corners of papers/photos, and then not liking how it looked (and having to reprint a few photos and re-cut some papers), I decided to not even worry about the fact that there's a variety of corner looks going on.

I also added in a few extra details on some of the patterned paper squares using a variety of alpha stickers. At some point, I'll see if Alyssa wants to add any more info to the pages. I really don't think she'll be forgetting anyone's name, but we can always add names in there.

If you're wondering, our school mascot is the Buffalo. We're the Manteca Buffalo's, which I couldn't fit with my alpha stickers. We're also known as the Manteca Buff's, for short, so I went with that.

Next up, I'm looking forward to doing some fun layouts with her graduation photos. And I should probably finish up the mini album I started with all of her band photos from the last 4 years. And while I'm at it, I should probably update both the girl's school album.