Laura Vegas

I have a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I've had this photo of the girls and their two cousins, taken several years ago, that I've been meaning to scrap for the longest time. You see, my girls don't have a ton of cousins. In fact, Alyssa doesn't have any first cousins at all. Her dad's sister, along with my brother and my sister, don't have kids and we're not exactly holding out hope that they ever will have kids at this point.

However, on Joe's side of the family, his one brother has a daughter and his other brother has a step daughter. So Sarah does in fact have one cousin by blood, and one by marriage, and Alyssa has two by marriage. Confusing? I know Alyssa had a TON of distant cousins on her dad's side (I want to say third cousins to her), and both the girls have a few distant cousins on my side. But they didn't get to grow up playing with cousins at the family get-togethers, so it was always just the two of them for the most part.

I've been slightly addicted to the same circle die cut background for the last year or so. I'm sure some of you may have noticed me using it over and over again, on so many of my layouts. It's just a favorite of mine, so it's become my "go-to" background design.

I was excited to play with some of the backgrounds in the new Background Basics #3 kit this time around, and I choose the plus sign background for this layout. I cut it from a sheet of white textured cardstock, and then spritzed it with a few colors of misting spray before adhering it to another sheet of white cardstock.

For my title, I wanted to go with a longer title, arranging it both above and below my photo. I love mixing and matching words and/or phrases from different kits, cutting each word and/or phrase from different patterned papers and cardstock. 

I dug up the word "cousins" from the All In The Family kit, and cut it from two different tone-on-tone patterned papers, which I layered together. The little banner was pulled from the Banners kit. I knew that I was going to use some alpha stickers for part of my title, so I sized the banner to fit directly below my photo to hold those stickers.

Kerri has a few choices when it comes to the word "grateful", but I went with the one from the Giving Thanks kit. I knew that I wanted to use the number "4", instead of using the word "four", as it would also represent the four girls. The Weathered Door Alpha kit is one that I turn to whenever I can't find exactly the word I'm looking for. Or in this case, the number I was looking for.  

All of my patterned papers on this layout are from Echo Park, but pulled from several different collections, both old and new. The plastic pink circle with the heart at the top of the layout was from a kit I got I a huge sale at Studio Calico, and I attached it with some chunky silver brads. And my little alpha stickers and the "beautiful" sticker are both from Bella Blvd.