Laura Vegas

Scrapbooking And A Little Bit Of Everyday Life

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Kerri Bradford Studio: Their Weirdness Is What I Adore

November 24, 2015

I have a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today! These same photos in the same photo collage, only in black and white, will appear on another layout I'll have to share soon. I used them on a layout for Bella Blvd that had to be mailed in, and I won't be getting it back. I figured why not print out the collage again, and scrap it on a layout I can keep!

Back when my oldest daughter Alyssa was a senior in high school (a year and a half ago, but it seems forever ago), I had taken her out to the almond orchards by our house to try and get some senior pictures of her. I took Sarah along with us, with the hopes that she could help get some natural smiles out of her sister. That didn't work as well as I would have liked. But I did manage to get some photos of them, together in their element – being weird and goofy!

When I was pulling patterned papers for this layout and picking colors, I knew I wanted some browns and green. My mind also went to blue, as Sarah has a blue hoodie on (although only in one photo, which is weird) and her phone case was blue. I have no idea how I came up with pink, but I did. My papers are lots of older ones from Studio Calico (brown dots), Echo Park (blue diagonal stripe), and Basic Grey (pink).

I used the Hearts Background kit to add the heart background to the center part of the page, cut from a subtle pink patterned paper. I had already adhered the brown dotted patterned paper strips to the sides of the page, so I sized the heart background to fit the space in the middle. It was ok that it wasn't a full 12" tall, since I cut it into two pieces to go above and below where my photo collage would be.

I arranged a handful of these silly photos in a collage, using Kerri's Picture That [Go Long] storyboard templates. That photo on the top row, second from the left, is a favorite of mine. I have it hanging in the house as an 18×24 photo, and I had also added a digital brush from Ali Edwards to it that reads "loving life with you by my side".

I knew I wanted to use a large, brush script word for my title, and came across "adore" in the Something To Say kit. I thought it would be fun to combine it with tiny alpha stickers to read "it's your weirdness that I adore". I cut the title from both patterned paper and brown cardstock, and layered them slightly offset from each other to give a shadowed look.

Of course, in true Laura fashion, I had forgot to even add the tiny alpha stickers to complete the title. I photographed the layout and everything. It wasn't until I was getting ready to send this to Kerri that I realized I had forgot to finish it. Lol.

I grabbed these tiny kraft alpha stickers to add to the page, and it wasn't until I had them all laid out that I realized they weren't sticking that well. My first thought was to just add a dot of glossy accents to each one, to adhere them in place. And somewhere along the way, I didn't plan my spacing that well, and ran out of room for the "I' at the end. So it's not quite what I had in mind, but they were all stuck down and I couldn't change it. Still works, I suppose.

In looking for some tiny alpha stickers, I came across these incredibly old flower die cuts from Sassafrass. They're more like punch out dies, where they were on a sheet and half attached after all these years. I guess it pays sometimes to hold onto things for years and years, because they matched the layout perfectly. I had to use them! I did a little random machine stitching around the centers of each, and added some pink enamel dots to the centers. Done and done!
Bella Blvd: In My Heart Forever

November 19, 2015

It's time for another "Spread It Out" feature over on the Bella Blvd blog today, which means that I have a new two page layout to share with you.

I've been a home daycare provider for a little over 14 years now, and have had close to 36 kids (the 36th was actually born yesterday and will be coming here soon!) that I've taken care of throughout those years. There are actually a few more kiddos that have been in the mix, but these are my main ones.

Lately, for different reasons, I've had a lot of these kids on my mind and I felt this need to do a layout focusing on all of the little ones that I've been lucky enough to spend my days with, and to have a small part in helping to raise them during their first few years of life.

The amount of photos I needed worked out perfectly, since I love to line things up and collage photos together. I printed them all as 2×2" photos and they fit across the page in three rows of 12 (minus the one new baby, who I will add in when he gets here).

Finding all of these photos took me forever. Which is crazy, since I did THIS FRAMED PROJECT about two years ago, and I honestly would have thought I had saved all of these photos in a folder somewhere to work from. But I hadn't. So I dug around for hours on my external hard drive, looking for photos of each of these kiddos.

I arranged the photos in sets of four, so they were directly side by side and I could treat them as one "photo" when trimming them from the sheets after printing. I just had to cut some of them in half, since I had 6 kids in each row, on each page. I should have been a little more careful when trimming them, as I left a little white border along the top and bottom, and they're not all even. But they're close enough.

Once I knew where on the pages I would add my rows of photos, that left me the areas to fill with patterned paper. Since I printed all of the photos in black and white, I had way more freedom in choosing my colors for the page. I decided on a black, white, navy blue, green, and yellow color combo, and set out to find patterned papers and other elements in those colors. And I have to point this out, only because I just noticed it. That navy blue 2×2" card says "selfie", and I totally thought it said "captured". My bad. Lol.

I pulled patterned papers from the Daily Chevies, Lucky Stars, Fresh Market, and Whatever Is Lovely collections. I actually had more that I wanted to say on this layout. My original plan was to add my title along the top, and have journaling all across the green patterned paper along the center of the pages. Once I added my title to the center of the page, that didn't leave me with as much room for journaling, so I kept it short and sweet.

I went back and forth for quite a while on my title, finally settling on "In My Heart Forever". Because honestly, every single one of these kids, no matter how much or how little I see of them after they leave me, do have a special place in my heart forever. Ok, if I'm being totally honest, there are 2-3 on here that I haven't thought of since they left. Lol. But that's another story 😉

I kept the rest of the spread pretty simple, since I wanted the focus to stay on the photos, with strips of patterned papers, a few border stickers, and some simple embellishments. I used a few 2×2" cards, either taken from a sheet of patterned paper on the Candid Cards that used to come with some of the collections. I did add a few enamels at the end. But other than those few things, I didn't feel the need to add anything else to the pages.

And that one little spot in the bottom right corner is reserved for the new baby boy, born yesterday morning. Brother to the little girl two photos over. I'll just remove that little square of patterned paper and add in his photo later.
Kerri Bradford Studio & Bella Blvd Team Up: Love At Home

November 11, 2015

All this week, the designers at Bella Blvd are teaming up with Kerri Bradford's designers, to bring you projects that combine Bella's colorful collections and products with Kerri's cut files. And today, it's my turn to share the layout I created over at Kerri Bradford Studio.

Kerri's cut files and Bella Blvd's colorful collections pretty much go hand-in-hand for me, since I'm lucky enough to design for both teams. I've done quite a few layouts for both Kerri and Bella, featuring photos I've taken of my cousin and his family over the last few years, and I decided to scrap another set of photos of them for my team-up layout.

I pulled my colors from the photos themselves, and picked out some Bella patterned papers in navy blue, yellow, green, and brown. I used the confetti patterned paper as my "neutral" paper for the side of my layout where I knew I'd have my photos and title.

I usually don't die cut all of my elements from the same patterned paper, but that's just sort of how it worked out this time as I liked the navy blue woodgrain patterned paper for most of my pieces. I die cut the circle border from Kerri's Simplicities: Best Thing Ever kit to add along the left side of page, to break up the "heaviness" of too much patterned paper on the page (if that's even a thing?).

Alongside the circle border strip, I added a strip of yellow chevron patterned paper, layered with a strip of white Confetti Clear Cut transparency on top. I have to say that the white Clear Cuts are my favorite to use, as they're so subtle when laid over any patterned paper or even white cardstock.

To adhere the transparency in place, I cut it a little wider than needed, and added the adhesive under where the confetti patterned paper and the brown border stick were going. Then I machine stitched along the sides to secure it in place.

I love the "together" tab, from the Love: Every Little Thing kit, for tucking behind photos or layers of papers. I won't lie. I often have ideas of tucking things under the edges of papers or photos, and then I often forget to do it before doing my machine stitching. Luckily it all worked out on this layout.

I went with the "love at home" title from Kerri's All In The Family kit, as we took these photo at my cousin's house. We often take their photos in other locations, so I loved the idea of adding the "home" touch to the page.

And to embellish the page, I die cut some of Kerri's Friday Freebies: Flower Power flowers (yes, she's got tons of freebies on her site!) from coordinating patterned papers and added chipboard circles or enamel dots to the centers.

Be sure to visit both the Bella Blvd blog and Kerri Bradford's blog all week long to see what their designers are up too and what they've created for our team up feature. Both sides will also be having a few giveaways this week, so keep your eye out for those as well 😉
Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet – Family Frenzy Collection

November 2, 2015

It's the first Monday of the month, which means there's a new monthly project sheet up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For this month's layout, I was asked to work with the Family Frenzy collection, the new Clear Cuts, and to incorporate a "home for the holiday" theme into my page and title.

Luckily, I actually had a few photos that would work for this, so that I didn't have to make something up. Lol. The girls took these selfies of themselves when Alyssa was home from college for Thanksgiving last year. I knew they would match well, since Sarah was wearing a red sweater and there's red in the collection.

I started with the "selfie" patterned paper, since these were selfies that the girls took of themselves. I printed three photos – one at 3×4, and two at 3×3 – and arranged them on a strip of the selfie patterned paper. I used the navy blue border strip from the Borders patterned paper, cut into two pieces lengthwise, and added a strip to either side of the selfie patterned paper. I did wait to adhere this entire piece until all of my other papers and Clear Cuts were in place.

For the Clear Cuts, I decided to use the white hearts transparency and the green chevron transparency. I laid a strip of the white hearts over the red patterned paper along the left edge of the page. I made these strips wider than would show on the page, so that I could add the adhesive to the part of the transparency that was behind the other patterned papers.

I cut the green striped patterned paper and the green chevron transparency to the same size, both of which were just a little wider than would show on the page. I added some small glue dots to only the sides of the transparency when adhering it to the page, knowing that the selfie photo strip and the yellow border along the right side of the page would cover the glue dots.

I cut a larger piece of the white hearts transparency to adhere along the right side of the page. I had my green striped patterned paper pieces and the aqua "family" border strip arranged on the page, so that I knew how tall to make the transparency, adding a little bit extra so that I could hide my adhesive behind the other papers.

For the title, I wanted to incorporate more of the patterned papers and more color, so I decided to hand cut letters for part of my title. I did this recently on another layout, that I haven't shared yet, and I really liked the way it looked. Of course, it takes me forever to do, and the letters never turn out quite like I want them too. But it's still fun to try.

The way I went about this, because I most certainly cannot wing it and cut them freehand, is to sketch out my letters on a piece of tracing paper. I just played around with them until they looked ok, and were sort of the same size and looked good together. Then I cut those out, and traced them onto my patterned papers (I flipped the letters and traced them onto the backsides of my papers for most of these), and then cut out the final letters. I did add a dot to my "i" here, but that was after I had taken my photos. Kind of an afterthought on my part.

Once the patterned papers and transparencies were in place on either side of the page, I adhered my strip of photos/patterned paper in place. Then I went in and did lots of machine stitching, which also helps "adhere" the transparencies in place.

I fussy cut some of the flowers from one of the patterned papers, and used them to embellish the page, adding white enamel dots to the centers of some of them. Since I had added some black pen lines around my title letters, to help them stand out, I did the same to the fussy cut flowers, just to tie them in a bit more.

You can download the November project sheet, complete with full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.
Bella Blvd: Boo-Tiful

October 29, 2015

It's "Spread It Out" day over on the Bella Blvd blog today, and that means I have another new two page layout to share with you. I had it in my head that I wanted to make a Halloween layout this month, as I had come across these super old photos a few weeks back on a half done layout from years ago.

These are from back in October 2004, so a full eleven years ago. Just like THIS LAYOUT, I simply removed the photos from the previously started layout and did the best I could with them as is (since these are film photos, and not something that I can easily edit/reprint).

It's not often that I actually use typical Halloween colors when it comes to scrapping Halloween photos of the girls. And that's because it was never typical of my girls to choose costumes in typical Halloween colors. But this was one costume, a Spider Countess, that definitely worked with orange and black.

I was able to pull patterned papers and stickers from three different Bella Halloween collections – Too Cute To Spook, Trick or Treat, and Halloween Magic. I started out by die cutting a diamond background from one of the orange patterned papers, and used a piece of it on each page of the spread. I am a huge fan of using die cut backgrounds to break up the "heaviness" of too much patterned paper on the page.

I thought the "too cute to spook" text patterned paper would make a good background for the top of the pages, where I planned on putting my title and some other embellishments.

I came across the "frightfully adorable" sticker, which was the perfect size to fit across my die cut background piece. It ended up working out great, as I needed something to help organize that side of the spread. I fussy cut the spider from the Cute Cuts patterned paper and added a piece of string to the page for him to hang from.

I also fussy cut a few words from another patterned paper to add to the layout, like the "beware" seen above.

The one thing that I do miss about film photos is that you could simply have the camera set to add the date to each photo. I mean, looking at these photos now, it's extremely distracting. Lol. But it takes the thinking out of trying to remember (or having to look up) when the photos were taken.

For the title, I die cut the word "BOO" from the same orange patterned paper that I used for the diamond die cut background. I then added letter stickers to finish off my "boo-tiful" title.

I added some chipboard clouds, all taken from one of the Halloween chipboard sets, to embellish the page, along with a few other chipboard pieces and some enamel dots.

Hope everyone has a safe, and fun, and candy-filled Halloween this weekend!
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Grateful For Home Mini Album

October 26, 2015

Hey everyone! I'm back with a mini album share. Yes, you read that right. A mini album. I honestly can't even remember the last time I created a mini album. It's been years and years, other than a few 6×8 albums that I have started, in varying stages. So when I got my assignment for the Fall issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today, and saw the words "mini album" and "shaped album", I was scared.

Luckily, I was able to pick the shaped album that I wanted to use from Maya Road. Since they were looking for albums with a theme of gratefulness, I chose this house shaped mini album, with the plan to create an album about being grateful for my home.

I was also sent some patterned papers and stickers from Close To My Heart to work with. These tone-on-tone patterns fit my style perfectly, and I thought the colors worked really well for fall. For my completed album, I used just one of the silver rings to hold the pages together. I wasn't able to work in both rings, since my photos ended up being in the way. So I simply punched holes up near the roof, and added the ring there.

I am grateful for my home. After all, it's where I spend the majority of my time. I decided to focus on four of the main things I do in my home, since I had room for 4 spreads.

The shaped mini album consisted of raw chipboard pages. I started out by tracing the album shape onto several of the patterned papers that I wanted to include, and then traced it onto textured white cardstock as well. And then obviously, I cut them all out 😉 I ended up needing 5 patterned paper "houses" and 5 white cardstock "houses".

I then spritzed all of the patterned paper "houses" with white misting spray, and all of the white cardstock "houses" with tan misting spray.

I decided I wanted to emboss the white cardstock "houses" for extra texture, using several different embossing folders. The paper was too big to fit into the folders, but since I knew that I was going to add photos to the white cardstock "houses", I simply embossed the top and bottom separately. There was a small gap, without the embossing, that was later covered by the photos.

After embossing the white cardstock "houses" and letting the mist dry on all pieces, I took them to my sewing machine and machine stitched around the edges of each "house". I thought about just using regular adhesive to adhere the papers to the chipboard album pages. But in the end, I decided to use Mod Podge instead, as I wanted to be sure everything was really secure and in place.

For my photos, I went with either two or four photos for each section. I printed them in small collages, sized to fit across the width of the page. I adhered them to the page using glue dots (my photo paper has a textured backside, so regular adhesive doesn't stick) and then added a thin strip of patterned paper above and below the collage.

I kept with the "home" theme, I added the "home is where I _____" to each spread, filling in what I was focusing on for that page. I went with chipboard alphas from Bella Blvd in white text, since I had plenty of them to complete all of my words (home, love, work, make, relax), and also because they fit perfectly across the width of the page.

I then die cut the word "home" several times, along with the word "grateful" for the cover (and both from Kerri Bradford), from brown cardstock. I used some tiny alpha stickers from Lily Bee to add the "is where i" to each page.

And last, but not least, I added some stickers from Close To My Heart that coordinated with the paper collection. One of the sticker sheets had these words on it, and I was able to pull out a word that tied in with each of my spreads. Like "hooray" for relaxing, "create" for making, "wonder" for working (kids have lots of wonderment about them!), and "laugh" for loving. Then I finished each spread off with a few label stickers, hearts, starts, geotags, etc, and a few coordinating enamels.

There were 4 additional mini albums featured in the article, and you can download the Make It Mini PDF file to see all 5 albums RIGHT HERE.
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Lakeside Water Fishies

October 18, 2015

I somehow never got around to sharing this layout that I created for the Summer issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today. One of my assignments for that issue was to create a two page, summer themed layout. Easy enough.

I knew that I wanted to incorporate the Campout collection from Bella Blvd, so I went with these photos taken years ago on a family trip to my uncle's cabin up by the river. I have scrapped them before, but not on any particular layout that I loved. So I didn't mind scrapping them again.

I believe my original plan was to arrange the 3×4" photos, along with some 3×4" pieces of patterned paper along the outside edges of the page, leaving the center part open for my title and journaling. I'm glad I changed my mind along the way, going with this design instead.

I love mixing fonts for my titles, so I went with a die cut word using my Cameo, and some chipboard alphas and letter stickers. I mentioned that my uncle cabin is on a river, right? Well, this title might lead you to believe that we were on a lake. We weren't. But the sticker I used on the second page refers to a lake, and I just figured it was easier to go with the river for my title, since I was set on using that sticker.

For the longest time, I've been printing my journaling in strips. Which I still love. But I'm finding myself printing it in smaller blocks more and more lately. I matted my journaling blocks on a tone-on-tone orange patterned paper to add more color to the page.

I wanted to keep the background of the page simple, so that my photos would stand out, but I still wanted something of interest there. So I went with my all-time favorite circle background die cut from Kerri Bradford, using a summer themed text patterned paper from a super old Bella Blvd collection. I spritzed them both with brown misting spray before adhering them to my white cardstock pages.

I had to use the little chipboard fishies from the Campout collection. Luckily, I had several packs of the chipboard, since each one only had two fishies. I added some navy blue enamel dots for the bubbles.

When the majority of my background is white, I like to add thin pattered paper strips along the top and bottom of the page. If I'm doing a single page layout, I will often add a scalloped border sticker along with a strip of patterned paper. But when doing two page layouts, I usually pull out the scalloped border punches, and just use a second patterned paper.

If you never got a chance to check out the Summer issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today, you're not too late. You can find all of the previous issues on their website, for viewing and/or downloading.
Kerri Bradford Studio: Halloween Angel

October 14, 2015

Hey everyone! I have a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I came across these photos of Alyssa from Halloween 2002. I had actually started a two page layout that same year, but only had a few of the photos adhered to the pages, along with some patterned paper and one die cut frame (that gold one).

I knew I had a few additional photos in a box, along with some gold paper that I had wanted to include on the layout. I also had a vellum piece with a poem about an angel, which honestly had nothing to do with the photos. But it was something that was kind of trendy way back when. Lol. The fact that I had started this layout a full 13 years ago, and never got around to finishing it, doesn't actually surprise me. I have a lot of half-done layouts from my very early days of scrapping.

The main challenge for me, when using older photos from these half-done layouts, is that a lot of them had already been cropped to random sizes, or even into circles, ovals, or other shapes (that was a big trend way back then too). And since these photos are from my film days, it's not like I can just pull them up in Photoshop, edit them, and print them the specific sizes that I want.

I do have all of my negatives, and they're very organized so that I could get reprints made if needed. But I find that even reprints from old negatives don't always turn out that well these days. Scanning the photos is always an option too, but once again, I just don't get great results with that either. So I do the best I can with the photos I have, which is exactly what I did on this layout.

I rarely use standard Halloween colors when scrapping my Halloween photos. I let my photos, and the colors of the costumes, decide the colors I'll use. For these photos of my daughter, in an adorable angel costume, I went with gold, brown, and a shade of yellow that paired nicely with both the gold and brown. It just so happen that all of the patterned papers I picked out for this layout were from My Mind's Eye.

One of the first things I had pulled out for this layout was the gold Confetti Clear Cut transparencies from Bella Blvd. I don't own a lot of gold product, but this was one thing that I knew I had on hand. I added a large piece to the bottom of each page of the spread.

I used glue dots along the top and bottom of the transparency, knowing that I would be adding a strip of patterned paper along the edges (that would cover up those glue dots). Somewhere in creating this spread, I must have decided NOT to add the patterned paper strip along the bottoms of the pages. And I didn't even think about it until I was editing the photos, but you can see the glue dots, since I didn't cover them. You might not have noticed, but I love to point out the "mistakes" I make 😉

I was able to create my title to include the word "angel", as Kerri had that word in her Oh Baby kit. I paired it up with a handwritten "Halloween" word from the October Thirty-One kit.

I kept the gold die cut frame that was already adhered to one of my photos, since like I mentioned, I don't have a lot of gold products. And that gold paper that I had laying around in a box, with the photos, and have no clue where it's from or who made it? I used that for part of my title, and to die cut the stars.

I embellished the page with some simple stars from Kerri's Thank My Lucky Stars kit, and added gold glittered and brown enamel dots added to the centers. And at the last minute, I decided that I needed a little something to the right of the photo up there on the second page. I didn't want to have to think too hard about it, and the first thing that popped into my head were these little tags from Creative Imaginations, from their Creative Café collection of embellishments. A really old product, but one that I can never seem to get rid of.
Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet – Apple Pickin

October 5, 2015

It's the first Monday of the month, which means our free step-by-step monthly project sheet for October is available on the Bella Blvd blog (I also have the direct link at the end of this post). This month, I was asked to create a fall themed layout, using our orange Clear Cuts and squares in the design.

The majority of the time, I'm told a specific collection to use for every project sheet. This was the first time in ages that I wasn't given a specific collection, most likely because we didn't have a new fall collection this year. So the first thing I did was to find patterned papers from our newest collections that were fall colored, knowing I would also be using our orange Confetti Clear Cut transparency.

I pulled the green striped and red dotted patterned papers from the Family Frenzy collection. The navy blue diagonal striped patterned paper is from the Color Chaos collection. And the brown woodgrain is from last year's Hello Autumn collection.

My next challenge was to find some fall themed photos. I've always said that we don't really have a "fall" season here, like most people do. We have touches of it, sure. But it's not like I have a huge selection of photos that scream "fall". And I've pretty much scrapped all of our pumpkin patch photos from when the girls were younger. I did consider re-scrapping some, but I knew my plan involved square photos, and most of the photos I had just wouldn't work as squares.

So I went straight to someone that I knew would have some amazing photos. Designer and photographer Megan Klauer, who was also one of my Bella designers for a few years. I found these adorable photos of her kiddos from an apple picking adventure and knew they'd be perfect.

Knowing I had to incorporate squares into my page design, my immediate idea was to arrange 3×3" photos and patterned paper squares around the outside edges of the page. I also mixed in some 3×3" squares of the orange dotted Clear Cut. I used white cardstock as the base of my page, and just adhered everything onto that, letting the white show thru on the transparency.

That left me with a 6×6" spot in the middle of the page, where I could add a larger square of patterned paper to hold my title and journaling. For all of my squares of patterned paper, I distressed the edges and machine stitched around them before adhering to the page.

I used the same title idea as seen on THIS LAYOUT. Now that I looked at that layout again, after going to grab the link for it, I realized this title is pretty much exactly the same. Lol. Wasn't planned that way. I cut the orange scalloped border sticker into two smaller pieces, so that I could arrange my sticker and chipboard title letters on two "lines". And yes, technically I should add an apostrophe to "pickin", but I just didn't think about it at the time.

It was a little tricky to find embellishments for this page. I do stick to a budget of sorts for these project sheets, so I can't go using stickers from 5 different sheets to get what I need. I pulled stickers from the Family Frenzy Treasures & Text sticker sheet that would work for this fall themed layout, and would coordinate color wise.

I then added a few orange crochet hearts and some aqua enamel dots to tie in with the aqua corner stickers I used on my title piece.

You can download a copy of the October project sheet, complete with a fully supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Then & Now

September 25, 2015

Hey everyone! I had a new layout go up on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog earlier this week. A few weeks back my sister came out from Denver for a surprise visit home. She doesn’t make it home that often, so whenever she does come out, we try and make a point to take new family photos. And this time, we were smart enough to get a few photos of just our little family. It seems like the only time we get a photo of the four of us together is at Christmas.

The last time we had a nice family photo taken (not including Christmas!) was back in 2009. That’s six years, which is a little crazy. I thought it would be fun to include photos from the two separate years, 2009 and 2015, onto one layout. Showing us then, and now.

Our photos were pretty similar in look and colors. This really helped when making my paper choices. If the colors had been totally different, I would have most likely printed my photos in black and white. I printed a family photo and a photo of just the girls from each year, all 3”x 4” in size. I knew that my plan was to split the page in half, so putting the two photos for each year together would make them 6” across (half the page).

This layout is pretty much made up of paper, paper, and more paper! I dug into some new Amy Tangerine patterned papers, from her Finder's Keepers collection (one might be from another collection come to think of it), that I had just bought, and found a few patterns that I thought went great with my photos. By cutting small strips of each pattern, and also using one for my die cut title, I was able to work 5 different patterned papers onto the page.

For my title, "Then & Now" (but without the & because I just forgot), I used the Weathered Door Alpha kit from Kerri Bradford Studio. I cut the main letters from the blue dotted patterned paper and the outline of the letters from a dark brown cardstock.

I had already put my Silhouette Cameo away (it resides on the floor when I'm not using it) when I decided that I wanted to include a few die cut strips to mix up all of the solid blocks of patterned paper. I remembered a Die-namics die cut I had from My Favorite Things, and the 6" circle border die was perfect for what I needed.

For my journaling, I typed up just a few facts about our family for each year. I could have said so much more, but I wanted to keep it fairly short and sweet to fit the space I had to work with. Journaling is almost always the last thing I add to my layouts, so whatever space is left usually dictates how much I can say 😉