... just Laura

Through Their Lens

Lately, I have been turning to my girls for photos. I admit to being really, really lazy with my camera for the last year or so. I just don't take photos like I used too. I would give anything for a cool iPhone, or any cell phone that takes good photos on it, so that I could snap pictures at any given moment, no matter where I was. Instead of lugging out the huge camera, with the heavy lens.

Luckily, the girls have their iPod Touch's (4th Generation, which has the camera). They may not have the best quality images, but they're not half bad either. I'm constantly checking out their Instagram's, and telling them "Hey, email me THIS picture", and "Hey, email me THAT picture".

I have a few of these photos already printed out and am working them onto some layouts. They even captured their day at Great America last week on their iPod Touch's, and those photos filled up a two page layout that I'll be sharing soon. Alyssa is also doing the Photo-A-Day challenges, and posts her picture every night on Instagram. Lovin' it!

Post Coming Soon

I'm so stinkin mad right now, because I have typed up a blog post tonight ... TWO STINKIN TIMES. And both times, it just "poofed" into thin air. Typepad said it had experienced an "error". Whatever that means. I finally go to blog something, and the world is telling me not too. Ugh. It's 1:15am, and I cannot type it up again. Tomorrow, my friends. Tomorrow.

Bella Blvd: Things Going On

I thought I would let you know about a few fun things going on over at Bella Blvd right now.

First up, our June issue of the Bella Buzz Newsletter is now available. You can view and download it HERE.

Secondly, Bella Blvd and Core'dinations have teamed up this week, for five full days of inspiration by both design teams, mixing and matching our fun products. Each manufacturer is also doing a few giveaways, so you might want to check those out too ;)

Sarah's Turning Thirteen

Someone is turning THIRTEEN years old today!!! That's right. My little Sarah Bear isn't so little anymore. She has magically turned into a full-grown, just-about-taller-than-her-mom-and-dad, teenager.

I thought it would be fun to take a peek at her through the years. I wish I would have thought about this earlier, so that I could have dug out photos from the few missing years in this group. I can't exactly pull out old albums at 1:00am, to take photos of older pics taken before the digital days.

{2001 - 2 years old}

{2003 - 4 years old}

{2004 - 5 years old}

{2005 - 6 years old}

{2006 - 7 years old}

{2007 - 8 years old}

{2008 - 9 years old}

{2009 - 10 years old}

{2010 - 11 years old}

{2011 - 12 years old, taken from sarah's camera}

{2012 - 13 years old}

Happy, happy birthday Sarah Bear! I feel like you've already been in "teenager" mode for a while now. You might have accidently skipped right over "tween", and went straight to teen. LOL. You are so much like me, it's scary. Which is why we end up butting heads on a daily basis. But we are also both wildly funny and have a great sense of humor. We fight hard, but we love and laugh even more. Our dad and I cannot be prouder of you, and we love you to pieces!

Two Families

The last few weekends have been filled with family. My family and Joe's family. Our families got together for completely different reasons.

For my family, it was a visit from my sister, who lives out-of-state. She doesn't make it out here that often, so it's always nice when we get to see her. We spent two full days hanging out, BBQ'ing, swimming, catching up, and even golfing (I'm the only member of the family that hasn't been sucked into this "golfing" craze!).

For Joe's family, it was a family loss that brought us all together this past weekend. Sadly, and very tragically, we lost Joe's middle brother and also his uncle, within weeks of each other. Family and friends, near and far, came together to celebrate the lives of those we lost, and to re-live the memories and stories we have about them. While there was lots of tears and sadness this weekend, there was also lots of laughter and love at the same time.

Two weekends. Two different reasons to get together. Two weekends that will be remembered and not forgotten. Two amazing families that we are all so grateful to have in our lives.

Bella Blvd: Sunshine & Happiness Project Sheet Layout

Today, we have our new monthly project sheet up over on the Bella Blvd blog. For our June project sheet, I worked with the Sunshine & Happiness collection.

You can view and download Bella's Sunshine & Happiness project sheet RIGHT HERE.

I had a ton of fun creating this layout. I've shared a few projects recently, that had accordian pinwheel flowers on them. But the ones on this layout were actually the first ones I had ever made. Which makes sense, because I do these layouts a month ahead of when we release the project sheets.

The patterned papers in the Sunshine & Happiness collection are so bright and colorful. I wanted them to really stand out on the layout, so I used my favorite grid paper, from the Family Dynamix collection, as the base of my page. Once I had a good idea of where my photos, title, and flowers would be, I sprayed a bit of orange mist to the top left corner of my page and the bottom right corner, just to add a little splash of color.

It's kind of hard to see, but I added some pink paint around the edges of my photos. I haven't done that in ages. Because I left a white border around my photos, after printing them, I wanted to help them stand out a bit against the white grid background paper. I just used my finger to swipe the paint around the edges, and I didn't try to make it neat and perfect.

I also took a few torn pieces of designer tape, folded them over the sides of the "on a summer afternoon" sticker and also my journaling strips, and then stapled them to secure the pieces.

Then there was the flowers. Like I mentioned, this was my first time making these, so I tried a few different widths on my paper strips, because I wasn't sure how big the flowers would be. I ended up using a fun mix of different size flowers.

After I made all of the flowers, I arranged them in the bottome left corner of the page, overlapping them as needed. I used lots of glue dots and pop dots to adhere them. Then I dug out a mix of stickers and chipboard pieces to add to the centers of each flower. If you happen to notice that I left the date off of that chipboard piece, just pretend that it's really there. I forgot to write the date on there, before taking these photos ;)

One thing I love to do when using the stickers from these collections, is to adhere them to scraps of cardstock and cut around them with scissors. I love to add stickers to my projects using pop dots, and this is an easy way to hide the stickines of the "sticker", and turn it into a die cut of sorts.

If you missed my little tutorial from a few weeks ago, you can find out how I created the accordian pinwheel flowers in THIS POST.

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I'm Diving In

It bugs me a bit when I get skimpy on the blog. I wish I had projects to share, but I don't. I take that back. I do have ONE layout to share, that will be up on Monday. And it's one that I really, really love.

{Photo unrelated to this blog post. But I happen to think my girls are too cute, so I had to share}

But I can't promise that I'll have much else to share for the next week. Hopefully, I can find something to blog about, until I do have some projects to share. Not sure what. If any of you have any great ideas for something you'd like to see me talk about, feel free to let me know in the comments. Questions. Topics. Whatever.

In the meantime, I am diving into a box of brand spankin new Bella Blvd product! I just got all of the new collections and embellishments that will be released at Summer CHA in July. Yep, it's time for CHA madness again. That's one of the things that's been keeping me busy lately, is all of the planning. I have a TON of projects to make, and I cannot wait to get started. It's such fun stuff! I'm in love with the colors on these collections! On top of CHA work, I have some projects to make for a fun team-up feature we have coming on the Bella blog. Lots of Bella stuff going on around here these days and I LOVE it!

The New Stampin Up Catalog

Have you heard? Stampin Up released their new catalog last week! Their catalog is SOOOO yummy, and full of ideas. I love a catalog that not only shows all of the new products, but also tons of ideas for how to use them.

Stampin Up was generous enough to send me a box of their new product, which I was excited to play around with. I received their Comfort Cafe collection of patterned papers, along with their Specialty Designer Series papers. I love the kraft woodgrain paper, which has a raised glossy pattern to it. 

If I am going to use an alphabet stamp set, is has to have large letters. I like chunkier fonts, and don't always have the patience to use tiny little letters to spell things out.

I had to pull out my Stampin Up Scoring Board again. I've been using that quite a bit lately.

I'm NOT big on fussy cutting. So I'm really glad these were chunkier letters, otherwise I don't think I would have taken the time to hand cut these letters.

My new catalog is already seen a good amount of use. I've been turning down corners on pages where I see things I like. Their ink pads are by far some of my favorites to use, and they always have such great colors. I ended up with an extra copy, so I gave it to a friend of mind. I told her "here's something for you to drool over". That's exactly what this catalog is meant for ;)

Living The Dream: A Big Picture Classes Giveaway *WINNER*

Opps. I totally forgot that I had a winner to announce yesterday. My bad. This is for a free spot in the Living The Dream workshop, put together by the Creating Keepsakes Dream Team, and offered through Big Picture Classes. 

Congrats Laura! If you can send me quick email, we'll get you all set up in the workshop and ready to go when class starts. And for everyone else, there's still time to sign up. Registration is open until July 4th, and you can find all the details HERE.

Bella Blvd: Baby Boy Altered Projects

A few days ago, I had some altered projects up on the Bella Blvd blog. It seems like forever ago that I created these. I actually forgot all about them, since the images ended up in some random folder on my laptop. These were created for the booth at Winter CHA.

One of my favorite items to alter are wooden and paper mache boxes. They are so easy to cover with whatever pattern papers you like to fit your needs, and they're even more fun to fill up with memorabilia. I altered two wooden boxes, using the Baby Boy collection. These boxes would be perfect for storing little keepsakes from baby's first year. This first box is about 8 inches square, and was purchased at a craft and fabric store.

I started off by taking off the hinges from the box, and then I painted the box with white acrylic paint. I never sand my boxes, but that's a personal preference. Then I measure out the top of the lid, and the sides of the box, and cut my patterned papers to size. I used Mod Podge, and decoupage them to the box. I added another layer of Mod Podge on top of the papers as well, to give the box a nice shiny finish.

When it came to embellishing the box, I kept it pretty simple. I didn't want anything to bulky on the top of the box, since at some point, I'm sure this would end up tucked away somewhere. I cut a few banner shaped pieces from patterned paper, and added them to the top of the box. I wanted to keep a bit of dimension, so I did not decoupage those pieces, and instead just used lots of glue dots.

For once, I got smart and I made sure the hinges were on the sides of the box. This way, the box can sit on a shelf nicely. I used lots of chipboard pieces from the Chipboard Icons to embellish the top of the box. Love how one package of embellishments added so much to the project.

For my second wooden box, I choose a smaller version of the first box. This box is about 5 inches square, and I thought the inset area on the top of the box added a nice touch.

I covered this box the same way I did on the first box. Painting the box with white paint, measuring and cutting my patterned papers to fit, and decoupaging them onto the box using Mod Podge. The "Baby Love" sticker from the Just Write Journaling sticker sheet was the perfect size for the inside area on the top of the box. I adhered the sticker to cardstock first, and cut around it, and then adhered it using pop dots for just a touch of dimension.

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