Bella Blvd Studio Blog: Spread It Out: Two Page Layouts With Laura

"Adventure At Great America", by Laura Vegas.

Hey everyone, it's Laura here to share another two page layout with you. I've always said that I'm not scared of the two page layouts. I know some dread them, but not me! I love to incorporate as many photos as I can onto my layouts, and two pagers are great for just that. I almost always create two pagers for things like birthdays, holidays, family get togethers, as well as vacations and day trips. And this day trip to Great America theme park six years ago has been on my to-do list to get scrapped and in the album.

One of my favorite ways to work lots of photos onto my pages are by creating photo collages. As a clean and linear scrapper, it's a great way to keep the photos looking organized and clean on the page. I often pick the same template to use for both sides of the two page spread, and I simply rotate the template 180 degrees for the second collage. The nice thing about using collages is that when you sit down to start creating your layout, it's almost like you're only working with 2 large photos as you plan out the design of the spread. Once I figure out where my collages will go, I just start building the patterned papers around them.

I love to incorporate die cutting into my layouts as well, and use my Silhouette Cameo for the majority of my projects. Die cut backgrounds are a favorite of mine to use, as it helps break up the look of too much patterned paper on a page (if that's a thing?). This circle die cut background is my go-to background cut, and I use it more than I probably should. I was able to cut the background from just one sheet of the tan arrow patterned paper, as I knew I could then cut that piece in half and use one half for each side of the spread.

I needed a little something in the upper corner of the first page, so I thought I would die cut this funky sun shape. I die cut the sunbeams from black cardstock, orange Strandz patterned paper, and the white stars Clear Cut, and then layered them all together. I die cut the center of the sun from two additional patterned papers, and layered those together. I tend to keep my layouts fairly flat, without too much bulk. Even with a full seven layers of paper where the sun is placed, my layout is still very flat.

When choosing patterned papers for my layouts, I rely on the photos to dictate the colors I go with. I had a lot of black and tan in the photos, with touches of orange and green. Those colors stood out the most to me, so those are the colors that I went looking for when starting this spread. I tend to stick with mostly tone-on-tone patterned papers, as they don't overwhelm the page as much as busier patterns can do.

For my title, I used my favorite white text Sienna chipboard alphas, along with one of the new chip script words ("adventure"), which is also white. I'm always a sucker for a title that incorporates a cursive font, alongside a clean, solid font, so I'm really loving the new chip script words.

The last thing I do is add my embellishments. I'm a pretty simple scrapper, so I usually keep the embellishments to a minimum. Enamels and buttons are some of my go-to pieces to add to layouts, as they're fairly flat and super simple to sprinkle around the page.

I'm hoping there are others like me out there, that enjoy a good two pager now and then. I plan on sharing new two page layouts once a month, and am looking forward to getting lots of photos scrapped this way!

Supplies:
Color Chaos: Orange Strandz; Lucky Starz: Carrot Starz; Daily Chevies: Chevy Pickle Juice; Sand & Surf: GPS; Fresh Market: Whole Lotta Seeds; IF Whatever Is Lovely: Lovely; Clear Cuts: Stars White; Sienna Chipboard Alphas: Pony; Ciao Chip Elements: WhatNots; Chip Scripts: Adventure; Button Market: Pickle Squares; Enamel DooDads: Oreo Black