Hey everyone, it’s Laura Vegas here! 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.

LauraVegas_ThenAndNow

Supplies: Cardstock: American Crafts; Patterned paper: Amy Tangerine; Number stickers: Jillibean Soup; Enamels: Doodlebug; Wood veneer: Studio Calico; Mists: Studio Calico; Die cut machine: Silhouette, Cuttlebug; Cut file: Kerri Bradford Studio; Metal dies: Die-namics by My Favorite Things

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.

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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).

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This layout is pretty much made up of paper, paper, and more paper! I dug into some new Amy Tangerine patterned papers 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. 

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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 ;)

Try doing a comparison on one of your next layouts. I love the idea of putting photos side by side, from separate years, and taking the time to notice what’s changed and maybe even what hasn’t!

~  Laura Vegas