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

"Great Outdoors", by Laura Vegas.

Hey everyone! Laura here to share another two pager with you. Ever since the Campout collection came out, I've been meaning to scrap these photos from way back in 2006. My sister was out visiting from Denver, and her and my dad decided to take my husband and the girls camping for two days. I grew up in camping family. We would take these 2-3 week camping trips, driving hours and hours each day, sightseeing across the states, and setting up camp in a different KOA campground each night. We had systems in place, everything super organized, and we could set up and take down the entire campsite in record time, over and over. My little family? We don't camp.

While my go-to way of getting tons of photos on the page is to use photo collages, I've been making an effort to show different ways of including photos on my recent two pagers. But I just had to re-visit the photo collages for this layout, and looking back to the last time I used them on one of my two pagers (on my April layout HERE), I just now realized that I used the same exact collage template. Guess you could say it's a favorite of mine!

I'm glad my dad (or my sister) took these photos on their trip. They were taken on a simple digital camera, before I even got into the digital side of photography. They had some pretty funny photos, and of course, Sarah was her hilarious self in many of the pics.

My oldest daughter, Alyssa, would probably kill me for using this photo of her (second from the left). But the look on her face pretty much sums up how she felt about the entire trip. Because my sister was only in town for a few days, to take this 2 day camping trip, the girls had to miss a day of school. And that one day ended up being the ONLY day of school Alyssa ever missed in 13 years of her K-12 school years, and she will tell you about this trip being the reason for that to this day!

I like to size my collages so that I still have plenty of room up top for my title, journaling, and often times, more photos! I printed four extra photos, thinking I would add two to each side of the spread. I ended up wanting to include this 3x4" "keep calm and camp on" card from the Daily Details patterned paper, so I decided to mix it in with three of those four photos on the first page of the spread.

A large majority of the time when creating two pagers, I end up mirroring the two pages design wise. I'll use the same patterned papers, in the same sizes, along the top and bottom edges, and along the sides. This works well for me, as I'm a very linear scrapper. I might have to challenge myself to do something a little different for my next one, just for fun.

Only having one photo to add up top on the second page of the spread allowed me more room for my title, which ended up working out perfectly. I was originally going to die cut my entire title, as I completely forgot the Campout collection had coordinating chipboard. Once I pulled out the "outdoors" chipboard letters, I decided to die cut the word "great" to complete my title.

In the end, the only embellishments I added to this two page spread were a few chipboard clouds and a tree on the top part of the page, and a few tab and word stickers. Over the years, I've gotten to where I prefer my layouts without a lot of bulk, so simple and clean works well for me.

Supplies:
Campout: Let's Go Camping, Under The Stars, Collection Kit Bonus Pattern, Daily Details, Treasures & Text, Chipboard Icons; Color Chaos: Orange Stranz; Max: Text Me; Play Date: Chasing Rainbows; Trick or Treat: Alpha+Bits; Ciao Chip Elements: Flowers & Clouds