... just Laura

Greatest View: Guest Designer, Part 2

I'm so thrilled to be guest designing over at the Greatest View this week! Gail has some super fun and unique embellishments in her Etsy shop, and I had fun working with them for these projects. I thought I would share a couple of cards I made today, and then I'll share my second layout tomorrow. 

I wanted to use a few of the small chevron bags, along with the happy birthday badges, to make a few birthday cards. I choose my patterned paper colors to coordinate with the badges and bags I choose. 

For this card, I pulled a few scraps of Pebbles patterned papers out to use. I distressed the edges of the papers and layered them all together. I pulled out some larger flowers to layer together, and adhered them to the center of the grey chevron bag. 

I added a petite paper doilies and my birthday badge to the center of the flowers, and added a few colored sequins to finish off the card. Super easy to tuck a gift card right inside theh little baggie!

I did the same basic idea on this second card. I wanted to pull in some green in my patterned paper to coordinate with the green candle on the birthday badge. I choose this green grid paper from Bella Blvd, but wanted to soften it up a bit.

So I used a trick that I see my good friend Wendy do all the time on her layouts. I pulled out some vellum, and laid it over the green paper to soften up the color a bit. I added my adhesive to the vellum on the areas that I knew would be covered up. And then I used a few mini brads on the corners to make sure the vellum stayed put.

We already gave this card away, to Joe's mom, who celebrated a birthday yesterday. And we tucked a gift card inside the orange chevron bag. When I called her last night, she said she just loved how clever this card was and thought it was such a fun way to give a gift card. I thought so too :)

Bella Blvd: Brothers

Someone asked me last week when I was going to share this particular CHA layout. How about today, Janet? Lol. Good timing, since it was up on the Bella Blvd blog yesterday.

First things first. I am well aware that there should NOT be an apostrophe in "Brothers". Was I aware of this when I adhered my letter stickers for my layout title? NO. But it was pointed out to me by a good friend. AFTER I had photographed it, and AFTER it was on it's way to the Bella office. Soooooo. I've received numerous grammer lessons on this already. Lol. I actually photoshopped the apostrophe out when posting this layout to the Bella blog yesterday, because I didn't want another lesson. But I figured I would just post the real deal here. I'm the furthest thing from perfect, and here's the proof ;)

Soooo. Now that I got that out of the way. Lol. Aren't these boys so handsome? Remember THIS LAYOUT from a few weeks ago? That was Miranda, little sister to Sam and Jeromy. Sam (the younger boy) was one of my very first daycare kids, about 10 years ago. I took these photos almost 5 years ago, so he's so much bigger now.

I created this layout to showcase Bella's stick pin flags. I laid out every pack of flags that Bella makes, including the new designs, and then set out to pick a variety of flags from those sets that would all coordinate nicely for this boyish layout.

I did have to get a bit creative. See that yellow flag? I knew I needed a touch of yellow, to tie in with my border sticker. But I wasn't finding a yellow flag that would work. But there was a yellow flag that said "Cat's Rule", and it had a pawprint on it. I figured I would just cover that up with a sticker or something.

 Funny thing was, I forgot. So I sent this layout in for the catalog, thinking I rocked it. A while later, Stephanie emailed me, saying she loved it ... BUT ... she wasn't sure how the "Cat's Rule" flag tied in. Lol. See. Just more proof that I'm far from perfect. I quickly covered it up with a piece of the border sticker, and re-photographed it. Too bad we didn't catch the apostrophe ;)

I've used this trick before, to add a bit of subtle interest to my patterned paper. I cut an extra strip of my striped paper, and then punched some half circles from the paper and from some scrap chipboard. I adhered the paper circles to the chipboard, sanded down the edges, and then adhered them across my striped paper strip, matching up the stripes. It's subtle, but still interesting.

If you're loving the new Bella collections, you'll be very happy to know that all of the product has arrived at the Bella offices, and is in the process of being packed up and shipped out to LSS's and online retailers! You'll be able to get your hands on our fun products very, very soon!

Greatest View: Guest Designer, Part 1

Hey everyone! I'm so thrilled to be guest designing over at the Greatest View this week! When Gail contacted me about guest designing for her Etsy shop, full of fun and unique embellishments, I knew I'd have lots of fun with it!

I think I was most excited to use her gorgeous flair buttons! I love the Chevron badges and the Sunburst badges. The assortment packs give you such a fun variety of colors to choose from. The photos I choose for this layout left it wide open, as far as what colors I used, so I choose an aqua, orange, grey, and black color scheme.

I pulled out quite a few patterned papers for this layout. I then settled on some really old blue dotted paper from KI Memories, some orange grid paper from Pebbles, and some black tone-on-tone diagonal stripe paper from Echo Park. And in the end, I really only used a few small pieces from each paper. So unlike me, since I really LOVE my patterned paper. But I had so many fun embellishments to work with, I didn't need all the paper.

I also got some of this gorgeous chevron ribbon, in both aqua and orange. I cut a few small strips to add to the top and bottom corners of my page, snipping out a little notch at the ends, and adding a few staples to secure them. The buttons are all from Fancy Pants, one of my go-to buttons choices.

This layout really started with this die cut title from the Silhouette store, and cut from black textured cardstock on my Silhouette machine. I was honestly just browsing through my Silhouette library, hoping that a title jumped out at me. And this one did. I knew I had these photos of Sarah from ages ago, that would go perfectly with it. I also added a few mini silver accent pieces to the sides of the sunglasses on the title piece. A fun, but simple touch.

To help make my flair badges stand out more, I layered them together with some really old Doodlebug flowers from my stash, and some petite paper doilies from Gail's shop. I actually put the doilies to the side when my package arrived, since I don't consider myself much of a doilie person. Lol. But the badges are such the perfect little fit on top of them, and I think they ended up adding a fun touch.

I also added some misting to my white background cardstock, before I started adhering all of my pieces to the page. I'm very hit and miss with my misting. Sometimes, it works well. Sometimes, it doesn't. If you ever see the bigger blotches on my layouts, they are most likely added after my layout was finished. If I feel like it needs a bit more, I tap the tube from the nozzle (not sure I described that right) on my paper. Sometimes a bit too much, and I don't always know when to stop ;)

And the chevron papers peeking out from under my photos? Those are small chevron bags. I cut down the sides of the bags and opened them up. To make the most of them, I just cut a piece from each end, and adhered them under my photos. I still have the center part of each bag that I can use on another project.

Head on over to the Greatest View blog, where you can read some of my Q&A's. Take a visit over to Gail's Etsy shop as well, as I noticed she has lots of new goodies in the shop for purchase. I may have loaded up my cart while I was linking products for this blog post. Lol. I'll be back later this week with a few more projects, using these fun and colorful embellishments!

Bella Blvd: Birthday Cards

This week, on the Bella Blvd blog, we've been having a bit of a birthday celebration! Bella Blvd is turning FOUR years old this week, and we wanted to share lots and lots of projects using the new Birthday Boy and Birthday Girl collections. I figured it was a good time to share a few of my birthday cards that I created for CHA. 

I think this card was my favorite out of the seven cards I created for CHA. I really, really love the colors in the Birthday Boy collection.

I wanted to have a bit of a confetti look to my card, so I used a small circle punch along with a regular hole punch, and punched out a ton of circles from the polka dot patterned paper. Punching out the polka dots is a great way to get solid colors that will perfectly match your other pieces from the collection.

There is a sticker on just about every Just Write Journaling sticker sheet, that goes with each collection, that is the perfect width for the front of a card. I used a scalloped edged border punch along some patterned paper, to frame the sticker. Such an easy card. 

I knew this adorable chipboard froggie would have to land on the front of a card. I thought the quote sticker would be perfect, along with the frog, so it looks like he's sending the birthday wishes.

I distressed the edges of the quote sticker, and adhered it to a scrap of white cardstock, trimming around the edges. This allowed me to adhere it to the card using pop dots. Then I cut one of the little phrase stickers, into smaller pieces, and used it for my sentiment.

One of my two cards using the Birthday Girl collection. Except my second card isn't really a birthday card, so I'll share that another day. This one is pretty simple.

I used the alpha stickers from the Alpha+Bits sticker sheet, to spell out "birthday". I machine stitched along the pink strip of patterned paper several times, before adhering my stickers. I added the little banner "wishes" stickers below the pink patterned paper.

I pop dotted the chipboard cupcake to the bottom of the card, added a few strips of designer tape, and finished it off with a little sticker.

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Make sure and visit the Bella Blvd blog to see all of the fun projects we've been sharing all week, using these two new birthday collections. We had one day focusing on birthday cards, one day focusing on birthday layouts, one day focusing on everyday layouts using the birthday collections, and today is all about birthday mini albums! And be sure to leave a comment on both of the TWO posts we have today, since we are giving away a total of FOUR birthday collection kits! 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Birthday Celebrate + A Layout

There's big stuff happening over at Kerri Bradford Studio this week! Kerri's store is coming up on it's second birthday. I was a huge fan of Kerri's design style from way back in the day. In fact, I even got to meet Kerri, about four years ago (picture proof HERE). She was one of the biggest reasons I finally bought a Silhouette, and I filled my library up with tons of her designs. When she branched out on her own, I followed. And I was totally honored when she asked me to be a part of her creative team. I just love getting to play with her kits every month.

When Kerri asked if we wanted to do a little extra project for her party, of course I was up for it. My first thought was do a birthday layout, for this birthday celebration. But after all of my CHA work for Bella, I admit, I was a little birthday'd-out. Lol. So I went another route, which is up on her blog today.

This is another set of photos that I swiped from Sarah's iPod a while back. These girls are all of Sarah's closest friends, and they took these photos of themselves (or someone else helped for the group shots, I would assume) at school. They were posing in front of a firetruck that was visiting the school, most likely for a safety day or something. I'm not actually sure who took these photos, but they came from one of the girl's cell phones or iPod's.

I knew these photos would be perfect to use with Fancy Pant's Off To School collection. Fancy Pants is an extremely generous sponsor of the 2012 CK Dream Team, and I am always grateful for the goodies they send us. This was a collection that I was really excited to play with, but I just never seemed to get around to it. I love the aqua and browns in this collection, mixed with the more traditional red and yellow school colors.

I knew I wanted this layout to be more about Sarah and her friends, rather than the fact that they were posing with a firetruck at school. But I also wanted to tie it into a school themed layout, if that makes any sense. I choose this title from Kerri's Graduation kit, and added a little subtitle using some tiny letter stickers from Jillibean Soup.

This layout came about quite a bit differently then most of my layouts. I printed out the photos, without really knowing how they would go on the page. They ended up taking up quite a bit of space, which led me to a more random design. I like the change, from my usual "linear, all lined up" style. I misted my white cardstock before adhered anything, and then ended up covering up most of my good misted areas. I printed my journaling, and then realized how tight the space was, so it got crammed together in order to fit.

I wanted to include the grade Sarah was in when these photos were taken, so I chose her school year from the School Years kit. And because I don't like to have to do the math, when trying to figure out what year corrulates to what school year, I added the actual year (2012) with some tiny number stickers. 

While I was cutting out my title pieces, I also die cut a few stars from each patterned paper, thinking I could work them onto the layout. I believe there are stars in quite a few of Kerri's kit, but my go-to star is from The Ol' Ballgame kit. I wasn't really thinking about how I would use them, or where on the layout, so I made them totally random sizes. No measuring, which is completely unlike me. I decided to add threaded buttons to the centers of the stars, so I wish I had made some of them a bit larger. 

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Here are a few of Kerri's newer kits that I've been itching to use. With all of the CHA work going on, I hadn't used my Silhoutte for a while. So I was unprepared when I realized I needed a new blade. And didn't have any on hand. Ugh. My new blades came just in time for me to whip out this layout last weekend. But these are the kits that I'm really wanting to use next.

To celebrate this big birthday milestone, Kerri is having a big sale all week long! Use the code "BIRTHDAY" and save 25% off orders over $15. It's a great time to pick up all of those kits you've been eyeing.

Supplies Used:

Bella Blvd: All Prettied Up

I had this layout up on the Bella Blvd blog over the weekend, and almost forgot to share it here.

I created this layout for the catalog, to feature Bella's designer tapes. It's not very often that I create 8.5x11" layouts. In fact, I can probably count the ones I have done on one hand. I started this layout by picking out an assortment of the tapes, in a color pallette that I liked. From there I went searching for a photo to go with them. This older one of Haley was perfect.

I used my favorite grid patterned paper (from the Family Dynamix collection) for the base of the page, and matted it on a fun aqua chevron patterned paper. Then I started adding strips of the designer tapes, lengthwise across the page, so that they would go underneath my photo. The grid background actually came in really handy for this, since I could line up the tapes nice and straight on the grid.

I adhered the photo over the tapes, to the right of the page. Then I added some cute little crochet flowers and some threaded buttons to embellish the tapes.

I pulled out some of the Simply Simona chipboard letters to use for my title, in both the pink and the black. I wanted a few black letters, to tie in with the black designer tape. Once again, the grid paper made it super easy to line up my title letters perfectly. I'm very picky about things being straight ;)

Speaking of Bella Blvd. This week, Bella is celebrating it's FORTH birthday, and we're having a big celebration over on the blog. What better way to celebrate a birthday, than to share tons and tons of inspiration using our new Birthday Boy and Birthday Girl collections? And I'm pretty sure there will be a giveaway in there as well. You can check out all the fun stuff HERE.

Bella Blvd: Endless Inspiration Week - More Birthday Girl

We are sharing more projects today, on the Bella Blvd blog, using the new birthday collections. I thought I would share another one of my altered projects with you, using the Birthday Girl collection.

These fun little paper ribbons can serve two purposes at birthday parties. First, they make for a great tabletop decor item. This would look cute on the cake table or food table, or even set out by the presents. Second, you can hand them out to the party guests, either during or after the party. This is a great project to make with your scraps of patterned paper, since they are all assembled using bits and pieces of papers.

I used my Silhouette die cut machine to cut all of the pieces needed for these paper ribbons.

The shape that I choose (called "Ribbon Pinwheel", from Lori Whitlock) actually came with every piece you see layered on here, including the ribbon tails. I arranged all of the individual pieces so that I could cut two sets at once. I just covered my cutting mat with 2 different pieces of pattern paper (4x12 for each, since I have the Silhouette SD), side by side. So I cut a full set from 8 different pattern papers, and then mixed all of the pieces together.

However, these would be simple to create even without a die cut machine. You could achieve the same look using a variety of circle punches, scalloped circle punches, or even certain flower punches, in varying sizes. The ribbon tails are just strips of paper, with notches cut at one end.

I layered the pieces together, using pop dots on a few of the layers. In between two of the layers, i added a piece of Designer Tape, adding small staples to each end to help secure it.

I finished off each paper ribbon with either a threaded button, a crochet flower, or a sticker added to the center.

I cut 4 long pieces of curling ribbon for each paper ribbon, and curled them with my scissors. I tied them onto a wooden stick, and then I hot glued the paper ribbon to the top of the stick. I created all of these assembly line style, doing each step for all 8 at the same time. So they really did come together very quickly.

To display these, I found a long (but small) metal tin, and added some styrofoam and filler grass inside. Then I just shoved the wooden sticks into the styrofoam to hold the paper ribbons in place.

Be sure and check out the Bella Blvd blog for even more project ideas using both the Birthday Girl and Birthday Boy collections!

Kerri Bradford Studio: Layout & Card Share

I was just looking at my posts from the last few weeks, and realized I've been sharing Bella Blvd goodness for a full THREE weeks now! And there's still more to come on that end, since I did so many projects. But today, I'm switching gears, to share a few projects that I did for Kerri Bradford Studio this week! 

There's still at touch of Bella on here, since truthfully, this started as a Bella layout about 2 months ago, for our team-up with Core'dinations cardstock (isn't the dotted embossed cardstock gorgeous!). It never got finished, and what I did have done, I didn't love. So I tore most of the layout apart, keeping the photo collage and a few of the papers I had picked out, and started over. I'm so much happier with how this turned out.

I wanted to use one of Kerri's storyboard templates from her Picture That [Squared] kit, for my photo collage, but didn't have quite enough photos to fill up the spaces on the one I choose to use. I played around with the layers, combining two of the openings to make it a bit larger.

For the upper left corner photo, my photos wasn't cropping in how I wanted it to, to fill up the full space. So I adjusted the photo to how I liked it, leaving a bit of empty space on the right side of the photo. So when I printed my collage, there was actually some of the grey box still next to the photo. I printed out my journaling on a piece of graph patterned paper, and adhered it over the empty space next to the photo. Just an easy way to add your journaling right into your collage.

I cut out several hearts, using the XOXO kit, to sprinkle around the page. Good old basic hearts are always great for embellishing in my book. I dug out some coordinating buttons to add to the center of each heart. I also wanted to add a little interest to my pattern papers on the layout, so I used a few background shapes with circles (I'm slightly addicted to circles these days ;)). It's hard to see it here, but that white text patterned paper is cut with a circle background.

Since my collage was being adhered over the strips of pattern paper, I only needed to cut a small strip of paper to go on either side of the photo collage. The Life Additions: Backgrounds kit worked perfectly for this, with the small sized background pieces. Btw, all of the patterned papers on this page are a mix of Bella Blvd and Echo Park. 

For my title, I choose this fun phrase from the All About You kit. I cut an extra phrase from white cardstock, and layered it behind the patterned paper phrase, just to help it stand out against the blue cardstock.

I had some leftover hearts cut from my previous layout, cut from the XOXO kit, and thought I would create a quick card to use them up. I had also cut the word "Happy", from the Say What 3 kit, for another project, and didn't end up using it. It just happened to be the perfect width for the front of a card. I love happy coincidences!

I thought the colors of my sentiment and hearts looked great against a white card base, but wanted to add a bit more interest to it. So I cut a few of the circle backgrounds from the Life Additions: Backgrounds kit, and spritzed them with a bit of pink misting spray. The background pieces cut 3 circles wide, so I cut out two of them, and then overlapped one of the rows of circles when adhering them to the card base. So you can see it's 5 circles wide in the end.

I added a few rows of random machine stitching, before layering all of my cut pieces on the card. A few tiny alpha stickers from Jillibean Soup helped complete my sentiment. 

Bella Blvd: Endless Inspiration Week - Birthday Boy

Today is all about the new Birthday Boy and Birthday Girl collection, over on the Bella Blvd blog. Since I have already shared a few of my projects using the Birthday Girl collection, I wanted to share one of my Birthday Boy projects today.

You all know that I have two girls. So when it comes time to create boy layouts, I turn to all the daycare boys I've had over the years, or family/friends that have boys. I can almost always pull it off. But birthday photos? That was a bit tougher.

Until I came across this adorable photo on Susan Weinroth's blog, of her son Noah on his second birthday, right after my CHA product arrived. It was as if this new collection was designed just for Noah's birthday photos. Luckily, Susan is such a great friend, and gave me permission to use this photo for my layout. Lucky me, because it made creating this layout SO easy!

I used lots of the chipboard pieces on this layout. I combined the "Party" letters and the "Birthday" banner piece from the Ciao Chip Icons, and some of the new Blueberry Sienna chipboard alphas, to create my title. I added in the chipboard asterick sign from the Ciao Chip Icons, and added one of the new orange star buttons to the center. And lastly, I used the cake from the Ciao Chip Icons as well, adhering it with pop dots and adding one of the new flags.

There are so many great patterned papers in this collection, and I wanted to use so many of them. So I pulled out my new Jenni Bowlin banner punch, that Fiskars generously sent me, and punched out lots and lots of little banner pieces. I adhered them all across the very top of the page, and machine stitched along the tops to secure them.

Stop by the Bella Blvd blog to see more Birthday Boy projects, along with Birthday Girl projects as well. We are only halfway through our Endless Inspiration feature. We'll be back next week, with even more CHA projects to share!

Bella Blvd: Endless Inspiration Week - Thankful

Today, on the Bella Blvd blog, we are showing off some of the CHA booth projects using the Thankful collection. I already shared my Thankful layout last week, but I have a few cards that I created with the collection that I thought I would share today.

I had used one of the quote stickers on a birthday girl card, and wanted to use this fun chevron quote sticker on one of my Thankful cards too. It's the perfect size for the front of a card. I used the leaf patterned paper as the base of my card, and then did my little paper framing trick with the brown paper, and just left the white cardstock showing through the center.

Love this cute little cloud from the Cute Cuts paper. I did a little back and forth machine stitching along the center of the cloud, which isn't super noticable here.

Once my chipboard alphas were adhered to the quote sticker, I adhered the entire piece to the card using pop dots. I also tucked the cute little sunflower flag in, and adhered it with pop dots as well.

I just had to use the adorable turkey from the Cute Cuts patterned paper for this card. I'm really not a fan of "fussy cutting" (which is the technical term for sitting and doing tedious cutting out of shapes), but every now and then I will do it. I hand cut the turkey twice, from 2 different sheets of paper.

Then I cut out some of the feathers from the second turkey, so that I could adhere them directly over the matching feather on the first turkey, but using pop dots to give them a little lift. I also decided at the last minute to cover those lifted up feathers with some paper glaze, to give them a shiny look.

Make sure to stop by the Bella Blvd blog today, where you can see more Thankful projects from our CHA designers! And I'm thinking that I'll share a fun birthday boy layout tomorrow. Yep, that's what I'm going to do ;)

Bella Blvd: Endless Inspiration Week - Button Market

On the Bella Blvd blog today, we are continuing our Endless Inspiration Week, sharing tons of booth projects from CHA. Today, we are focusing on our Designer Tape and Button Market collections. We have added new colors/designs/patterns to both the tapes and the buttons, and asked some of the designers to show off some fun ways to use them. 

When I started working on my assigned Button Market layout for CHA, I originally had a summery photo printed out for it (which then got moved to another layout), and lots of colorful plastic buttons pulled out of my Bella button stash. I was going to create a wavy button border along my page, to go with the summer theme. Then, with a last minute change in the catalog planning, I had to switch my focus to the wood buttons and mixes. I decided to move ahead with my wavy button border anyways.

Because there are quite a few wooden buttons that have black on them, I wanted to make sure I had a good amount of black on my page to tie in with the buttons. I built my page on a sheet of the Oreo Sprinkles & Lace patterned paper from the Sophisticates collection. I choose the aqua Turkey Tracks (how cute a name is that for a paper?) patterned paper from the new Thankful collection for the bottom of the page, and freehand cut a wavy line across the paper.

Then I just started arranging buttons along the wave, mixing lots of wood buttons along with a few plastic buttons and buttons from the mixed packs. I tried to stick to a certain color scheme, with the black, red, green, aqua, and yellows. I do take the time to thread each button, because I like the finished look it gives when adhered to the page. Just a personal preference. I thread them, and then add them to the page with a glue dot. I am not patient enough to actually thread them ONTO the page.

I choose this photo of Alyssa, not just because I love it, but also because she was wearing black, which tied in with the page. To add a bit more color to the page, I pulled out some papers in colors to match the buttons. Red from the Sophisticates collection, green from the Birthday Boy collection, and yellow from the Birthday Girl collection. I cut them into strips of varying widths and lengths, and then machine stitched around the edges, before layering them behind my photo.

After adding my title and journaling, I still had a bit of empty space on the top right corner of the page. I wanted to add another touch of color to the page, so I picked out some chipboard accents to add. Designer after-thought: I am sitting here typing this blog post, and writing about my layout, and I just literally said this out loud as I typed: "Is that an ORANGE star?!?!?!". I had to scroll up to look at my full layout, and I DO see a little orange star button. Must have made sense at the time. Just seemed very random, as I'm looking at it now. Lol.

Visit the Bella Blvd blog, where you can see more ideas using the buttons and also the designer tapes. And check back tomorrow, when we will focus on the new Thankful collection.  

Bella Blvd: Endless Inspiration Week - Birthday Girl

Today is the big day! CHA officially starts today in Chicago, and I am positive that the Bella Blvd booth is looking fabulous and busy as can be. I'm kind of wishing I was there right now, but it just wasn't in the cards for me for this show. It might be different if I had paid vacation at this job of mine. But seeing that I'm self employed, I don't, and just can't afford to take a week off during the summer. So I'm at home, watching all the craziness happen though blogs, Facebook, Instagram, and whatever other places I can find it ;)

Anyways. The real reason I'm here blogging, is that starting yesterday, and continuing for 2 full weeks, we are having "Unlimited Inspiration" weeks on the Bella Blvd blog. We are sharing lots and lots of the booth projects that our design team has been hard at work creating over the last few weeks. I love when it's time to finally share them, and not keep them hidden away in my files.

Today, we are focusing on the new birthday collections. So I thought I would share one of my altered projects I made, using the Birthday Girl collection. I came across this unfinished, wooden shadow box frame at Hobby Lobby (that store is new to us in CA, and I am in love with it after one trip!), and I knew right away what I wanted to do with it. Create a fun tabletop decor item, that would be perfect for any little girls birthday party.

I painted the unfinished wood frame with white paint, focusing on all of the edges and corners that I knew my pattern paper would not cover. Then I cut strips of paper and decopauged them onto the frame using Mod Podge. I brushed an additional coat of Mod Podge over the top of the papers, to add a nice shiny finish to them.

I trimmed a TON of 1/2 inch x 12 inch strips of pattern paper, using just about every sheet from the Birthday Girl collection. I then cut each strip roughly in half, eyeballing it, since they didn't need to be perfect. I took a pencil, and one by one, I rolled each strip tightly around the pencil. After holding it in place for a few seconds, I slid the rolled piece off the pencil and then loosened it back up a bit. Kind of like you would do when curling your hair :)

I took the "Eat More Cake" sticker from the Just Write Journaling sticker sheet, adhered it to a scrap piece of cardstock, and added small strips of punched scalloped edges cardstock around the edges. I glued together about 8 small blocks of thick cardboard (cut from a box), and then adhered my sticker on the top and glued it in the center of the frame. This raised up the sticker, and allowed me to fill up the rest of the shadow box frame with the curled strips of pattern paper, tucking them under the sticker as well.

Make sure and visit the Bella Blvd blog for lots more inspiration from our designer today, featuring both the Birthday Boy collection and the Birthday Girl collection!

Bella Blvd Sneak Peek Week: Flags

Yesterday, on the Bella Blvd blog, we shared some more peeks at our new embellishments and chipboard alphas. I shared one of the layout that was posted yesterday, and I'm back today to share the other layout.

Check out all of those adorable stick pin flags! For CHA Summer, there are 6 new designs, that coordinate with the three new collections. Flags are such a fun little embellishment that are great for tucking onto layouts and cards. And with such a wide variety of themes and sets, you're bound to find plenty of options for whatever your needs are.

I knew I wanted to use lots and lots of flags on this layout. I started with my photos (isn't Miss Miranda adorable!) and the title block from the Birthday Girl collection. 

Then I pulled flags from several different sets, in colors and styles that matched. From there, I pulled together my patterned papers and buttons, also in coordinating colors.

I thought this little title block was so cute, with the "You are the frosting to my cupcake" saying on it. I recently picked up this really cute canvas print, that had similiar types of sayings on it. I used that canvas to do my journaling. If you can't read it, it says: "You are the sun in my sky. You are the smile on face. You are the apple of my eye. You are the bubbles in my bath. You are the ink in my pen. You are the love of my life."

To help "ground" the flags to my layout, I layered punched circles of pattern paper together, and topped them with a button. These created fun little accents to scatter around the page, and I simply tucked a stick pin flag into each one.

Now, head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, where if you havn't already, you can enter in the FOUR giveaways we're offering up this week. We will be announcing winners next Tuesday. On Monday, we are kicking off our Endless Inspiration feature, where we will be sharing a TON of the CHA projects that the Bella designers have been hard at work on for the last few weeks. So there's definately more projects to come here on my blog as well!

Bella Blvd: Sneak Peek Week - Designer Tapes

Are you visiting the Bella Blvd blog every day this week? I hope so! For the last three days, we've shared the three new collections with you, each of which has some fabulous new embellishments that coordinate perfectly with the collections. Well, today we wanted to put the focus on the new embellishments and the new chipboard alphas. We want to make sure you know they're not JUST for that collection, but are meant to be mixed and matched with all of the Bella products.

I actually have two layouts up over on the Bella blog today, but I'm only going to share one here on my blog. I'll share the other one tomorrow. Today though, I wanted to share one of my Designer Tape layouts from the catalog.

I am in love with the Designer Tapes, both new and old. I decided to pick out a fun mix of tapes, in my favorite colors, and create a frame around my layout. Also, notice that I used pattern papers from the Birthday Boy collection. You know I'm always telling you that Bella's papers are so versitle, they can be used for anything, right ;)

I started from the outer corners and worked my way in, adding torn pieces of Designer Tape one after another, overlapping them as I went. Designer confession: See that tape that I added to the top of Sarah's photos? My original plan was to include it in my decorative tape border, but the roll of tape must have gotten away from me on my desk. I had all of the pieces neatly arranged, and in a very specific order, so I was bummed that I couldn't add it in.

Once I had all of the pieces adhered, I machine stitched along the tapes to help secure them. See that brown pattern paper, full of circles? I LOVE that paper! It also comes in pink, in the Birthday Girl collection.

For my title, I once again used a mix of the new Sienna chipboard alphas and the High Five alpha stickers.

The small circles were punched from the polka dot pattern paper in the Birthday Boy collection. I adhered some of them with pop dots to add a little dimension.

Now, head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, where you can see all of the new embellishments and the new chipboard alphas featured, piece by piece. There are also FOUR layouts that you'll want to check out! Don't forget to leave a comment on the Bella blog today, where we are giving one lucky reader a chance to win a set of ALL the new embellishments and chipboard alphas, before you can even buy them! Check on back here tomorrow, where I will share one more layout for this week ;)

Bella Blvd: Sneak Peek Week - Birthday Girl Collection

It's day three of our Sneak Peek week over on the Bella Blvd blog, and we're revealing our third new collection for CHA Summer. Monday, we introduced you to the Birthday Boy collection. You might have guessed that this next collection was on it's way as well :)

Birthday Girl is a fun, totally girly, collection. Lots of pink and purple, and touches of yellows, greens, and teal. The new Designer Tapes that coordinate with this collection are amazing! You'll see lots of chevron, polka dots, and stripes in the tapes, and they're fun, bright colors. I love that there are also new flags, and new buttons to match each of our new collections.

I dug quite deep for these photos from Sarah's 2nd birthday. I have plenty of birthday's that I haven't gotten around to scrapping yet. But the majority of our birthday parties have been swimming parties, where all of my photos are of wet little girls in swimsuits. Lol. I knew I wanted some really cute photos for this layout, and these photos were perfect.

Loving the music note paper! We're huge music lovers in this house, and I already have lots of ideas for this paper. I think my girls might too ;) The other side of the paper is a tone-on-tone pink music note pattern.

I used a few torn pieces of designer tape on either side of my smaller photo, and added a tiny staple to each one to secure it. It's just a fun and different way to use designer tapes.

I was spreading out my pack of chipboard alphas over a lot of projects, so I had to be choosey with the letters i used on this layout. So I used a mix of letter stickers and the chipboard alphas for my title.

I cut quite a few flowers from the Cute Cuts paper, and did a little random machine stitching in the center of each flower. I adhered them all using pop dots, and then bent up the petals on the flowers to add a little interest to them. I embellished the flower with stickers and buttons.

It just so happens, that I did a TON of projects with the Birthday Girl collection. Which means I have quite a few little peeks at some of my other projects ;)

Now, head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, where you can see the Birthday Girl collection in full, piece by piece. Don't forget to leave a comment on the Bella blog today, where we are giving one lucky reader a chance to win the Birthday Girl collection before you can even buy it! Check on back here tomorrow, along with the Bella blog, where we will be showing off the newest embellishments, along with more catalog layouts ;)

Bella Blvd: Sneak Peek Week - Thankful Collection

Soooooo. What did you think about the Birthday Boy collection we revealed yesterday on the Bella Blvd blog? Are you ready for our next collection? Let's get to it!

Thankful is Bella's newest fall collection. I have always loved fall collections, because I'm a huge fan of fall colors. Greens, aquas, yellows, reds, browns. These are the colors that fill my home. These are the colors I love to wear. So I am just naturally drawn to these gorgeous pattern papers.

I wanted to use a family photo on this layout, but the most recent one I had wouldn't have matched the papers. Note to self: take new family photo soon. So I pulled up a photo of each of us, looking for ones that matched nicely. If I line all our photos up, side by side, and add some designer tape to hold the photos together ... it's almost like it's a big family photo, right ;)

Loving the new chipboard alphas that coordinate with each collection. Especially these, with the text print on them. So cute. I adhered my title to one of the journaling stickers and adhered it with pop dots.

The sun was hand cut from the Cute Cuts paper, and embellished with a threaded button the center, and a cute little flag on the side.

The fun little cloud with the text on it, along with the "There is no place like home" piece, was also hand cut from the Cute Cuts paper. I machine stitched back and forth along the center of the cloud, and then added a few of the new buttons to embellish it. The cloud on the top is from the new Chipboard Icons.

I wanted to use so many of the different patterned paper that I couldn't narrow down my choices. So I cut small banner pieces from a bunch of the papers and arranged them across the bottom of the page, overlapping them as I went. I adhered a scalloped punched border strip on either side of the houses border strip, and adhered it above the banner pieces.

And here's a couple of peeks at a few more projects I created with the Thankful collection. More to come on these later ;)

Now, head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, where you can see the Thankful collection in full, piece by piece. And don't forget to leave a comment on the Bella blog today, where we are giving one lucky reader a chance to win the Thankful collection before you can even buy it! Check on back here tomorrow, along with the Bella blog, where we will be revealing our third new collection ;)

Bella Blvd: Sneak Peek Week - Birthday Boy Collection

There is LOTS of good stuff happening on the Bella Blvd blog this week! It's finally time to reveal Bella's new products and collections for the CHA Summer show.

First up, we are revealing the new Birthday Boy collection! This is a super fun, colorful collection, that is perfect for scrapping boys and birthdays, of course. Yet it can easily be used for girls as well. I have girls, and I'm actually quite drawn to the colors of this collection. I'm loving the navy blue, the greens, the oranges, the aquas, and the light browns. I know I say this all the time, but even with a themed collection, Bella's pattern papers can honestly be used for anything and everything.

And check out the fun coordinating embellishments. The Designer Tapes, the Flags, and the Button Market buttons. All the embellishments that we introduced at CHA Winter are back, with new colors, designs, and patterns to match the new collections.

I made quite a few projects with the Birthday Boy collection, but they're still under wraps for the time being. I can, however, show you some peeks at a few of them. You'll see lots more of these projects really soon ;)

Now, head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, where you can see the Birthday Boy collection in full, piece by piece. You can check out a super fun birthday layout by Bella designer Megan Klauer, that was designed for the new catalog.

And last, but not least, make sure to leave a comment on the Bella blog today, where we are giving one lucky reader a chance to win the Birthday Boy collection before you can even buy it! Check on back here tomorrow, along with the Bella blog, where we will be revealing our next collection ;)

Bella Blvd: Coming Soon

Just wanted to pop in super quick and let you know what's coming to the Bella Blvd blog next week!!! I am just putting the finishing touches on my last CHA project, for Bella, right now, and then I'll be mailing the last of three boxes of projects off. I can't wait to start showing you what we have all been working on and creating with. Make sure and check in, starting on Monday, both here on my blog, and the Bella blog ;)

Bella Blvd: Patriotic Project Sheet

Today, we have our new monthly project sheet up over on the Bella Blvd blog. For our July project sheet, I was challenged to create a patriotic layout, using a mix of Bella's products. 

You can view and download the July project sheet HERE.

Even though Bella doesn't have an actual "Patriotic" collection, it's really not that hard to find some great red, white, and blue products to work with. 

I pulled out a little Family Dynamix, a little Sophisticates, a little Winter Wonder, and a little Mr Boy pattern papers to use for this layout.

And then I added some Winter Wonder stickers, Sophisticates chipboard and alpha stickers, flags, and star buttons. Put them all together, and you have a fun patriotic looking layout.

Hope you all have a great 4th of July today!

Kerri Bradford Studio: Summer Escape

I finally had a layout up yesterday, over at Kerri Bradford Studio. I say "finally" because my Silhouette Studio software stopped working for a full week. My laptop was having issues too, so I knew it was somehow related. Got the laptop back up and cleaned up, but the software still wouldn't work. Finally, the fine folks at Tech Support got me back in business, and I was finally able to work on this layout.

About two weeks ago, Joe and Alyssa's dad took the girls, our two neices, and one of Sarah's friends to Great America for the day. They were both on vacation, so it worked out perfectly. Sadly, I had to stay home and work. Bummer. Anyways. The girls all took photos with their iPod Touch's, so I made sure they sent me all of the photos.

Because the photos from the iPod aren't the best quality for printing, I printed all of the photos at 2x3 inches. I really didn't have a plan for how I was going to arrange them on my layout. I just started with some white cardstock for the base of my pages, and lightly misted the pages.

Next, I laid out the photos, in a semi-collaged way. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I adhered all of the photos down. Then I went about adding my pattern papers, die cut pieces, and embellishments around the photos. 

All of the pattern papers are from My Mind's Eye. I originally picked up that ticket stub paper to scrap some photos from a trip to the county fair a few years ago. But it just seemed to go with these photos. I die cut the sun from Kerri's This & That Summertime kit, and layered it with a punched pattern paper circle and a large button.

I really went looking thru Kerri's kits to find shapes that I could use on this layout. I knew I was looking more for words/expressions, rather than fun little shapes, just because of the theme of the layout. I choose this "summer escape" title from the Escape kit. I'm always a fan of titles that have the different fonts, and where I can mix different papers together.

I randomly came across the fun quotes from the Say What #2 kit, and thought they would be fun to incorporate along with my journaling.

I typed up the journaling from the girls point of view, so it looked like I was quoting them.

I also cut the word "park" from Kerri's new Summer Lovin' kit, and added the year with a shape from the twentyTWELVE kit.

These 5 girls had a great day together, and I love that I was able to capture the day through their eyes/lenses, and with their journaling. 

Layouts, Layouts, and Fixing Layouts

When I'm done creating layouts, I usually add them to a stack on the scrap island. They sit there until I have a good sized stack, and then I take them upstairs to where all of my albums are. We have two of the large Expedit shelves, from Ikea, up in the loft, and all of my albums are kept there. They then go into more stacks. I shove them into the shelves, resting on top of other things, like baskets of DVD's and CD's. Once I have a huge amount, then I will take the time to sort them out and put them all into the albums they belong in, in chronological order.

I was clearing off my scrap island a few weeks ago, making room for all of my CHA projects, and took some layouts upstairs. I had no idea I had THAT MANY layouts, waiting to be put into albums. I had them shoved in about 5 different cubbies on the shelves.

When I have these quieter weeks on the blog, and don't have much to share, I get that feeling that I'm not really scrapping that much. But then I see a stack of layouts like this, and realize that I'm getting a lot of scrapping done! This hasn't been piling up for a year or anything. It's probably closer to four months worth.

And it never fails. While going through layouts, and putting them into albums, I come across layouts that need a little TLC. While I do try and adhere everything down really well when making my layouts, sometimes things just don't stick like they should.

Kind of like my accordian pinwheel flowers. This is how I found my layout. With a few of the pinwheels, you can see how the ends came apart, and they fanned out. And then a few just didn't stay flattened, and were popping up. Seriously. If that striped pinwheel pops up any more, I'll have to bake a cupcake in it ;)

When I typed up my tutorial a while back, about how I made my pinwheels, I mentioned that I used glue dots to adhere these all together, saying "they hold pretty well". I need to retract that statement. They do NOT hold very well. Lol.

I think I'll either hot glue these together, and then adhere them to the layout. Or I will staple the ends of each pinwheel together (I have done this on a few, using my Tiny Attacher, and the staples don't really show), and find a stronger adhesive to adhere them to the layout.

But for now, these two layouts have now moved to a brand new stack. On my Ikea shelf in my scraproom. Where eventually (meaning, within a few months ;)), they will get fixed. And that huge stack of layouts I showed you? Still waiting for me to put them all away. One of these days I'll have time to work on that.

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.

Supplies Used: 

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.