Virtual Hosts Apache Blank page Ubuntu

I am trying to set up an existing laravel 5.1 project with a virtual host on an ubuntu apache server, I have configured the vhosts file accordingly and have done the following commands

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/example.dev/public
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

to give permissions to the my folder directories. When I go to my URL e.g 'example.dev'

Every time I try load the server I get a blank page. After looking at the error.log in the apache2 log files I see this

[Mon Jan 04 20:24:09.072782 2016] [:error] [pid 6002] [client 127.0.0.1:51627] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'UnexpectedValueException' with message 'The stream or file "/var/www/http://ift.tt/1R6KCOM" could not be opened: failed to open stream: Permission denied' in /var/www/http://ift.tt/1OF74Ig trace:\n#0 /var/www/http://ift.tt/1R6KDCi: Monolog\Handler\StreamHandler->write(Array)\n#1 /var/www/http://ift.tt/1OF74bh: Monolog\Handler\AbstractProcessingHandler->handle(Array)\n#2 /var/www/http://ift.tt/1R6KCOQ: Monolog\Logger->addRecord(400, Object(Symfony\Component\Debug\Exception\FatalErrorException), Array)\n#3 /var/www/http://ift.tt/1OF74bj: Monolog\Logger->error(Object(Symfony\Component\Debug\Exception\FatalErrorException), Array)\n#4 /var/www/http://ift.tt/1R6KDCk: Illuminate\Log\Writer->writeLog('error', Object(Symfony\Component\Debug\Exception\FatalErrorException), Array)\n#5 /var/www/http://ift.tt/1OF74YA in /var/www/http://ift.tt/1R6KD56 on line 13350

Any ideas , All I am trying to achieve is my own virtual host 'example.dev' by following this guide

http://ift.tt/1o9tAC9

Here is almost my vhosts.conf settings

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@pcpal.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/pcpal.dev/public
    ServerName pcpal.dev
    ServerAlias pcpal.dev

    <Directory /var/www/pcpal.dev/public >
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

via Chebli Mohamed