Kerri Bradford Studio: {inter} National Scrapbook Day

This coming Saturday is {inter} National Scrapbook Day, and all this week there's been fun stuff going on at Kerri Bradford Studio, leading up to the big day. She's got something different on sale each day this week, as well as announcing a few new items! Kerri's design team has been sharing new inspiration all week long, and today I've got a new layout up! 

A week ago today, I had one of my favorite daycare dudes, Mateo, leave me as he moves on to preschool. He's been with me since he was just 4 months old, and is now an awesome 4 1/2 year old. I made sure to get a good photo of him last week, as I was preparing an album full of photos for him to take with him on his last day. I loved seeing one of the first photos I took of him alongside the last photo I took of him, and knew that I needed to create a layout using both of them.

I wanted to create a white on white background for this layout, and I knew that I wanted to incorporate lots of stars. I used one of Kerri's basic star cut files to fill an entire page of stars to cut from my white cardstock. I ended up cutting two full sheets of stars, and only had a few leftover.

I adhered the stars in rows on another sheet of white cardstock, adding the adhesive to the center of the stars only so that they weren't fully adhered to the page and had some dimension and lift to them. Once I had all of the stars adhered, I spritzed the entire page with navy blue and green misting spray.

When I went to pick out some patterned papers for this layout, I had a few specific papers in mind from Pebbles. I didn't find the ones I was thinking about in my stash, but I did find these super old patterned papers from boy collection that I had always loved. So all of the papers on here are from Pebbles, but nothing that you'd be able to find these days (unless they're hiding in your stash as well!). 

I cut a few tabs from the Simplicities: Best Thing Ever kit to tuck under each photo, so that I could add the year and Mateo's age to go along with the photos. I dug thru a lot of my alpha stickers for adding the year and age, but was having a hard time finding stickers that were small enough for the allowed space. Good thing I still have a ton of Making Memories stickers on hand, as they're always perfect for little spaces like this. 

I had a few title options in the works, and kept playing around with them to see what stuck with me the most. I actually had a totally different design in mind for this layout when I started, but once I finally decided on my title, it changed up my plans a bit. I settled on using the "forever" from the Grateful kit and "always" from the This & That: Family kit, adding in a few letter stickers (from Jillibean Soup) to complete the title.

I wasn't sure how I was going to print my journaling, until I remembered that I had created another layout with a punched star background a few years ago (seen HERE). I went to see how I had added my journaling to that layout, and realized my go-to journaling strips would be perfect.

Mateo has been gone for just one week, and I miss him something awful. He really was the life of this house, in so many ways. And not just with the daycare kids. Even within our little family. He was part of our family in a sense, as he was here so much. It's been a long time since I've had a main kiddo leave me, especially one I was so attached too. But he's doing good, and that's what matters. It's part of the job. You spend so much time with them, helping raise them into little persons. And then you send them out into the big world of preschool and kindergarten, and hope that they remember you years from now. But my little Tator Tot had better come back to visit me or else ;)

Comments

[John Vonhof]

I love how you create these pages to remember your day care kids. Nice layout and text. Mateo will be missed. But I'd bet he'll come back to visit.

[Brenda]

I really like your layout and the sentiment expressed in the journaling. I have been watching 2 little boys (brothers) for 7 years and next year they will both be in school full-time so I won't see them very often and it is definitely hard. They really do become part of your family. My little guy told his mommy that I "wasn't family by blood but family by LOVE" and it put the biggest smile on my face and heart since that is a perfect description of how my kids and I feel about them.

[SandraA]

Great layout, and even greater love captured in the journaling.