... just Laura

Bella Blvd: Words With Friends

I'm a little late sharing this layout I created for the Bella Blvd blog, as part of our National Scrapbook Day celebration. There was just too much to share over the weekend, and this got pushed to the side. Might have had something to do with the 12 posts I put together on the Bella blog, just for Saturday.

If you missed it, you should check out the Bella blog posts from Saturday. I challenged all of the designers to create "All About Me" themed layouts and answer a few scrapping questions. I had this idea to do a layout about Words With Friends, the game I'm addicted to playing on my iPod Touch.

When I first started playing, forever ago, I was terrible. I lost every single game. Badly. Eventually, I started actually paying attention to the board, watching the triple/double letters/points tiles, and trying to be smarter about my moves. Don't get me wrong ... most of the time, I'm still just an average player. I lose. A lot. I have plenty of times where I make plays quickly, and without much thinking. But I also get in there and make some smart moves.

And what do I do when I make a great play? I'm a total dork and I take a screenshot of it. At first, I did it just so that I could prove to the girls that I wasn't terrible. They're not easily impressed by their mom, and believe me, these screenshots never seemed to impress them either. But it did make them laugh a little. Most likely at the fact that I felt the need to screenshot it.

When I realized how many screenshots I had started to collect, I knew I wanted to do something with them. I printed out a handful of them to use on this layout, all in a 2x3" size. I went through my stash of Bella papers and dug out some in blue, yellow, and grey, to match the photos of the game board. I even pulled in a bit of green, with the chipboard accents and the green patterned paper and vellum I used for the large circle.

I have created quite a few "All About Me" layouts in the past, but I've gotten away from doing them over the last year or so. This is a good reminder to get myself in the scrapbook albums more, even if it's about something as simple and silly as playing a favorite game.

Scrapbook & Cards Today: National Scrapbook Day

I'm getting a late start to posting a few projects that I created for National Scrapbook Day! Turns out, I never do any scrapping on NSD. I'm too busy blogging about it! First up, there's been a ton of good stuff happening over on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog.

For my contribution to the NSD activities, I created a layout for the Old & New Challenge.

This is a great opportunity to dig into your stash and pull out some of those older products that you've been hanging onto for years. I think we all have good intentions of using these products, but they sometimes end up forgotten as we collect all the latest and greatest products and enjoy using those items while they're fresh and new.

 

For my "old" product, I decided to pull out some very old Making Memories chipboard alphas that I have always loved. I pulled out one of each letter of the alphabet and arranged them around the outside edges of my page. I had good intentions of painting them all to match my background paper, but when I came across this older sheet of embossed cardstock from Core'dinations, I liked how the raw chipboard alphas created a tone-on-tone effect with the cardstock and decided to leave them plain.

I did want to spiffy up the chipboard alphas a bit, so I used a new-to-me embossing folder, along with my trusty Cuttlebug die cut machine, to emboss each letter with fun polka dots. It gives a nice, subtle effect to the letters.

For my "new" products, I pulled out some of the newest embellishments from Bella Blvd. A few feathers (in white, pink, and navy blue to match), a few crochet hearts (in white and grey to match), and a few fun little stick pin flags. I clustered all of these embellishments together, to go beside the adorable photo of one of my daycare kiddos.

Bella Blvd is the sponsor for my hour, and they are giving away an assortment of feathers, crochet hearts, and maybe even some flags, to one lucky winner. For this particular giveaway, you can leave a comment HERE.

However, you'll want to check out all of the posts from today on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog (there's a lot of them!), because there some fabulous giveaways on each and every post. All of the giveaways are open until 6:00pm, EST, on Sunday, May 11th, so you have lots of time to get your comments in for a chance to win!

Kerri Bradford Studio: Snapshot

I had a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio earlier this week.

Sarah had taken these photos of herself, using the remote control for my camera, which was set up in my scrapbook room on a tripod. I didn't know she took these until I was downloading photos from my memory card a few days later. It's totally "her" to ham it up for the camera and take crazy photos of herself.

I used one of Kerri's Storyboard #1 templates to arrange my favorite photos and print them out in a collage. I had actually printed out this same collage in black and white ages ago, with the intention of scrapping them with some particular papers I had been wanting to use. That never really worked out, and I think it's because I knew the photos looked better in color. Luckiy, I had saved it, so I printed it out again, but this time in color.

The "Snapshots: Capturing Every Moment" title is one of Kerri's freebie shapes, and fit the theme of my page perfectly. All of my patterned papers are from Elizabeth Kartchner's Lucky Charm collection.

I also cut a few filmstrip frames from the This & That: Love [Just Shapes] kit from several patterned papers, and tucked them under the top of my photo collage.

I don't plan my layouts out most of the time. Which is why sometimes, I end up with empty spaces that need to be filled. That upper left corner was one of them. I came across some flair badges with the camera theme to them, and figured I'd use them.

Then I came across these very old chipboard circles from American Crafts and realized that they matched the colors of the Lucky Charm collection perfectly. I love when happy coincidences make my scrapping decisions easier.

I have another project that I'm finishing up for Kerri and hope to be sharing soon. The majority of it is done, so I'm not sure why it's taking me so long to finish. It's a larger framed project that I can't wait to hang up on the wall for all of us to enjoy and reminisce about.

Bella Blvd: American

Last Friday we revealed our new All American collection on the Bella Blvd blog, and this week we are sharing All American projects from our design team all week long. Five full days, with a new project from every single designer on the team. My layout was included on today's post.

This collection was perfect for scrapping some of the photos I took on Memorial Day last year. I did use a few of these photos before on a project sheet layout, but I really wanted to create a layout using more photos from the day to give a better view of the day. I used a storyboard template from Kerri Bradford Studio to create my photo collage, allowing me to get 9 photos on this one page. I also love that when I use a photo collage, I'm really just trimming one large photo, rather than trimming and adhering 9 individual photos.

I wanted to use the blue star patterned paper, but I didn't want it to overwhelm the page. So I used my Cameo to die cut this circle border to go along the left side of the page. I like that you can still see plenty of the star pattern on the blue paper, but it still allows bits of the white cardstock background to show through. I think it helps to balance out the white on the other areas of the page.

I wanted to add a little embellishing to the page, since it was mostly paper, stickers, and a few chipboard pieces, so I added some simple metal star brads along my circle border.

I used the "American" chipboard letters from the Chipboard Icons package for my title, dotting the "i" with a silver star brad. Since I was adding my journaling strips directly to the white cardstock background page, I lightly inked the edges of my strips with a navy blue ink pad to help them stand out. I had also lightly misted my white cardstock background with a light blueish misting spray.

Check out the Bella Blvd blog all week to see a wide variety of cards, layouts, and altered projects featuring this new collection (which begins shipping April 1st). There's a good mix of patriotic themed and everyday projects as well, showing how versitle the collection is.

Bella Blvd: District Honor Band

I have a quick layout share today that went up on the Bella Blvd blog over the weekend. Twice a month we have designers do their own takes on a sketch from Becky Fleck, and last week it was my turn.

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with this sketch.The one thing that I really liked was how the photo and small blocks of paper formed a long row from one side of the page to the other. It actually reminded me of a recent photo that I thought would work perfectly for this layout.

Alyssa loves band more than anything. She's been playing the clarinet since the 5th grade, I believe. She loves being a part of the high school band. It's become such a huge part of her life, and the majority of her friends are all fellow band members. Yesterday, while trying to persuade Sarah to join band next year as she had to turn in her class picks for freshman year (Eek. I'll have a freshmen and a senior next year!), she said that "all of us in the band are like one big family". She also said today that "Sometimes I want to ask people NOT in band what they do with their life". I love that she loves it that much!

Alyssa is in Honor Band at school, and was also selected to be a part of the District Honor Band and the County Honor Band this year (same as last year). This photo was taken at the District Honor Band concert which took place back in February. Since it was such a long group of band members, I knew that I could crop out a lot of the excess space above them and end up with a long, narrow photo. I think I ended up printing this at 11 inches long and only 4 inches tall.

I knew I wanted to use the aqua tone-on-tone music note patterned paper from the Birthday Boy collection, and that I wanted to mix it with lots of black and white, since band members wear concert black and white for their preformances. I really, really wanted to mix in another color, but no matter what I tried, it didn't work. So I kept with the aqua, black, and white color scheme. I pulled some scraps of patterned paper from lots of different collections to layer behind the large photo.

I am pretty sure that I meant to add a few of the black text buttons to the "D" and the "R" text chipboard alphas. I must have forgotten after I got done adding the clear star buttons to the black chipboard alphas.

You can see more takes on this same sketch, from a few of Bella's other designers, HERE.

Jenni Bowlin: Guest Blogger Layout Shares

I am excited to be sharing projects over at Jenni Bowlin Studio this week and next. I was sent a few of their older 2012 kits as they are having a big sale on them right now. I have two layouts to share with you today and next week I'll share my cards.

I used the December Papercrafting Kit for this first layout. The more muted colors of the patterned papers reminded me of these photos of the girls and one of their best friends, Amanda, from years ago. The colors in the photos worked perfectly with this kit.

I started out with a few larger trimmed pieces of patterned papers that I knew I wanted to layer up against the right edge of the background paper. I distressed the edges of all of the papers to add some texture and had every intention of going back in and adding machine stitching along the edges. But it never happened. I did end up taking smaller pieces of some of the patterned papers and tucking them in here and there, adding even more layers to the mix.

I wanted my photos to stand out a bit more, so I rubbed some acrylic paint along the edges with my finger. In digging out my paints, I realized that the majority of my Making Memories paints are getting really dried up. But they still worked great for this. I loved that aqua burlap rose and debated whether to use it on the layout or on a card. The layout won.

I chose this "Friends" title card, made by Fancy Pants. These are manilla colored and are easy to alter to fit your needs. I painted the piece with some pink acrylic paint, trimmed off a little bit from the bottom, and distressed the edges. I then took the stamp that comes in the kit and stamped it onto the piece using some sort of ink. I wish I could remember what kind it was. It gave sort of a subtle glossy look, with a little touch of glitter.

You can find the December Papercrafting Kit on sale HERE.

I used the August Papercrafting Kit for this second layout. Since I had been digging around in older photos to find the ones on the layout above, I decided to keep looking to find more photos from back in the day. These photos of Sarah and Amanda are hilarious to me. There are even more crazy ones of them making all sorts of faces and being goofy. Not sure why I have never scrapped them before.

I stared with the graph paper which had a fun border of mixed patterns. So what you see going up and down the left side of the page is all one piece of paper, including the little tab up top. I wanted to adhere the green patterned paper piece right up against the edge of the border piece, but wanted to keep the tab intact. So I used my dreaded exacto knife (it's not a bad tool. I just really detest using one!) and cut a slit under the tab, so that I could actually slip my green patterned paper under it.

Once I added the green patterned paper, the black striped border sticker, the cream patterned paper, and the orange diagonal striped border sticker, I ended up covering up the entire graph pattern on the background paper. If I'd have planned things better, I would have just trimmed off the border strip so I could make good use of the graph paper. Hindsight, right?

I created my title using my Silhouette Cameo and one of the yellow patterned papers in the kit. I also wanted to use the fun stamp that came in the kit, with all the circles and dots. I picked out a navy blue ink pad, since there were touches of blue in the border paper, and stamped the image a few times onto a scrap of the same cream patterned paper that my title is adhered too. Then I used a circle punch to punch out lots of circles, and adhered them going up the edge of the page, slightly overlapping them as I went.

You can find the August Papercrafting Kit on sale HERE.

I created quite a few cards using these two kits, and one more additional kit. I will share those sometime next week.

Bella Blvd: She Is My Entire Heart

Hey everyone! I've got two things to share with you today. First off, I have the second half of my guest blogger post up on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog today. On Monday, I had shared a layout inspired by a Pinterest image, and that layout included feathers. Today, I am sharing lots of tips and tricks to working with and adhering real feathers to your papercrafting projects. You can read more HERE!

And speaking of feathers, I realized that I never got around to sharing my last Winter CHA layout from Bella Blvd. Which is kind of strange, since it was actually the first layout I made of the bunch. It includes feathers, so it ties in well with what else I've been sharing this week.

I created this layout for the catalog, and I was asked to make a "awesome layout with as much of the new product as possibe". I love a good challenge! I started with these photos that I had taken of Holly, my good friend Deneen's daughter (one of four daughters). I knew they would be neutral enough with the colors to go with any product I picked out.

Then I started picking out patterned papers. I set out to pick at least one patterned paper from each of the four new collections. The green dot paper is from the Sand & Surf collection, the aqua chevron paper is from the Freestyle Sophisticates collection, the pink hearts paper and the black ruled paper are from the Love And Marriage collection, and the striped paper is from the Engaged At Last collection.

I cut strips of varying sizes from each patterned paper and pieced them together on a sheet of white cardstock. I added a strip of the new black chevron designer tape across the top of the page, and also used some torn strips of pink and aqua designer tapes on other areas of the layout. We didn't release any new buttons, but I knew I had to include a few of the fun black text buttons to help embellish the page.

I choose three of the new feathers to include on the page: black, green and aqua. I also picked out some of the new crochet hearts to use. I had only gotten a few color packs for my CHA work, so I decided to stick with all pink hearts, since they matched the best.

I layered the feathers together and stapled them in place. I used my tiny attacher on the ends of the feathers, since I knew I wanted those staples to show. I actually added some staples further up on the feathers to help secure them better, knowing that I was going to add this "I love you. The end" sticker (from the Love & Marriage collection) on top of the staples to cover them up. I adhered the sticker to a scrap of cardstock first and cut around it, which made it much easier to adhere the sticker with pop dots over the feathers.

For my title, I used a mix of the new green Sienna chipboard alphas, the new black alpha stickers from the Engaged At Last collection, and some new aqua High Five alpha stickers.

Oh, and I also snuck on a few of the new flags from the Engaged At Last collection. Almost forgot about those. I think I did a pretty good job at representing each of the new collections as well as each of the new embellishments.

Scrapbook & Cards Today: February Colour Suite

Happy Valentine's Day! I have a new layout to share today. Summer Fullerton puts together a fun colour challenge each month for Scrapbook & Cards Today, and the February installment went up on the blog today.

Summer invited me to play along with her and I couldn't pass it up. I love a good color challenge, and when I saw the colors she picked out, I was excited to dive into my stash and see what I could come up with. 

Purple, two pinks, yellow, and white. Such a lovely color combination that I most likely would have never put together on my own. I started out digging through my patterned papers, putting together a mix of papers in the chosen colors that might work. I ended up with papers from Pebbles, Jillibean Soup, and Bo Bunny. One thing I learned? I don't have a wide selecion of purple patterned papers.

The next thing I did was go searching for photos. I really didn't have any particular ones in mind, so I just browsed through my external hard drives. Nothing was grabbing my attention or calling out to be scrapped. I'm not sure what made me think of this photo of Alyssa. I just suddenly thought about it, which worked well, since it was already printed.

My next step was cutting the circle background piece with my Cameo. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to cut this from a full sheet of patterned paper and adhere it to a sheet of white cardstock. Since I had my Cameo out and plugged in, I went digging for a possible title to use.

I usually just type in key words in the search box, since it's easier than browsing through my entire library. I believe this popped up when I had typed in the word "beautiful". It is a print and cut file, an it just so happened that the colors matched perfectly! Love when stuff like that happens. I printed it on white textured cardstock and trimmed around the edges.

I cut two large pieces of the two pink patterned papers to layer behind my photo, and tucked the title piece on the side. I wanted to add a bit more purple, so I used a large circle border punch along my tone-on-tone purple dot paper and tucked them under the top and bottom of my title piece.

I added some buttons and ribbon pieces to embellish my title piece. I won't lie. It was hard to find some purple buttons. Which is strange, because I own a gigantic amount of buttons.

And this trim from Webster's Pages. Pure yumminess! Such a gorgeous shade of yellow. I helped secure it on the ends with a few pink and purple-ish brads. I used the title piece to help guide my journaling. And a small secret? I have no clue how close that date is to the actual date that this photo was taken. Lol. This photo was take at a modeling session Alyssa attended when she was about 4 years old. I have scrapped other photos from this day, but I apparently never dated any of those layouts. Yes, I do guesstimate dates from time to time ;)

To see this challenge in it's entirety or to see Summer's past challenges, make sure to stop by and visit the Scrapbook and Cards Today site.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Love Cards

Just in time for Valentine's Day, I created a few cards that went up over at Kerri Bradford Studio earlier this week.

I started out with a few sheet of patterned paper from Authentique that I had picked up at a not-quite-so-local scrapbook store a few weeks ago. We were away at soccer games, and it turned out I was just a few blocks from a LSS. Figured I might as well stop, since I NEVER go to stores. My mom happened to be with me, and she commented about the roughly 11 sheets of patterned paper in my hand "don't you have enough paper???". The first clue that she's not a scrapbooker. Lol. Paper is one of the cheapest things you can buy, and it's always nice to have a variety on hand to choose from. While at first glance, one would assume I was drowning in paper, I'm honestly not. I have quite a bit of paper, but I also have quite a bit of duplicates, triplicates, quadruplicates (are these words?) of most of those papers. I came home and put this new paper right to work.

Long paper story that probably wasn't necessary ;)

I used two of Kerri's circle background cuts from the More Basics Background kits to create the base of my cards (the square for this card, and the rectangle for the next card). I cut them from a text patterned paper, adhering it to a white cardstock card base that I very lightly misted with some tan misting spray.

The heart is from Kerri's XOXO kit, and it's one that I use quite often. My go-to heart, I guess you can say. I cut the hearts from the red polkadot patterned paper. One thing I didn't know, or maybe I knew and just didn't remember, is that the Authentique papers have a great texture to them. I love a good textured patterned paper.

Kerri's new Feathers kit is such a fun one, and at just 99 cents for 4 different feathers, you can't beat it! I originally cut these larger feathers for my square card, but then decided they just weren't fitting with the heart like I wanted. So I cut some extra pieces to make a regular, standard card (4.25 x 5.5). That way, I was able to use the larger feathers here, and I simply cut a few smaller ones for the square card above.

And lastly, the "Love" cut is from the This & That: Love kit. These cards are quite simple in design. My plan was to embellish them in some way after getting my pieces adhered. Or adding some machine stitching. But I actually liked them just as they were, and decided that "simple" was good for me this time.

And speaking of Kerri, she is celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary this week! And in honor of that, along with it being the week of love, she has put a selection of her love themed kits on sale for 25% off through the end of the week. Check HERE for the details and to see which kits are on sale.

My Week Facebook Style: A Creating Keepsakes Layout

Once again, my week got away from me. I'm pretty sure the month of January got away from me, just like the month of December did. Lol. The last two months have been a crazy blur. Between work, scrapbook work, the holidays, winter break, school, soccer, band, etc, we never seem to know if we're coming or going. Luckily we are finishing a few things up that will free up a bit more time in our days. Give us a little breathing room. We're all playing catch up and getting things back on track. As best we can. 

As seen in the January/February 2013 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher.

I realized I hadn't gotten around to sharing this Creating Keepsakes layout yet. I was asked to create a two page layout, incorporating Facebook status posts into my journaling. What seems like ages ago, I used to occasionally do these "Facebook Style Randomness" posts on my blog, where I would round up a bunch of my status updates and put them all together in one post. It was a way to catch up on little odds and ends in my life, for those of you that aren't on Facebook.

So when I got this assignment, it was easy enough to pull up just those posts, and find one that would work on a layout. I looked for a post where I had a decent number of status updates to pull from. I also made sure that I would have photos to support several of the status updates.

 

I was working on this layout right after Summer CHA, so I picked out several of the Bella Blvd patterned papers that we were coming out with at that time. I choose papers from the birthday collections and the fall collection, along with some of the new buttons.

I chose to print all of my journaling (or my Facebook status updates, I should say) and my photos in squares, since I was going with a grid design on my two page spread. I created text boxes in my word document and copied my updates into the boxes, formatting them to fit.

I had a few of these photos in my blog post to go with the updates, and some of the updates I had to find photos for.

I also added digital frames around the text squares. Don't ask me what frame, because I honestly don't remember. I made this layout forever ago.

See that little wood grain Facebook logo? By the time I had all of my status updates printed out and my photos printed out, I ended up with one empty spot on my grid. So I thought a Facebook logo would be nice to add in there. But the usual dark blue one you see wasn't going to work. I just googled "brown facebook logo" and ended up with tons of them to chose from.

I guess it is true. If you can't google it, it doesn't exist!

Bella Blvd: We Said I Do

Still powering through the week. It's Friday, which is a good thing. I love my Friday's now, since I only have one daycare kiddo. He's my one full-timer, and at 15 months old, he's a pure ball of energy and fun to be around. After the craziness of four very busy days, he gets me all to himself on Fridays!

I'm back with another layout that was up on the Bella Blvd blog earlier this week. This was my second layout using the new Love And Marriage collection.

I have borrowed photos of my cousin's wedding a few times over the years for other projects I've done. I don't think I've used these particular photos though. As I was browsing through the photos, I knew I wanted something to go with the "Going to the chapel" die cut card from the Cute Cuts paper, and these photos were perfect.

I love the softer colors in this collection, and used the green and aqua patterned papers for the base of my page. Sidenote: I just noticed the date and realized their wedding was almost exactly four years ago. And they are expecting their first baby in the next few months. A new little second cousin in the family.

I added a few of the lighter pink feathers to the page, and tucked them under the die cut "Going to the chapel" card, which I adhered using pop dots. I also added the chipboard chapel piece directly over the chapel that was printed on the card. It fit perfectly.

I used some of the Sienna chipboard alphas, along with a chipboard "i do" heart, to create my title. With a little "Bride & Groom" stick pin flag tucked in for fun.

You can see more projects featuring the Love And Marriage collection HERE, and check out THIS post for some gorgeous altered projects using this collection!

Bella Blvd: April's Bachelorette Party

I don't know about you all, but the past two months have been a huge blue to me. No matter how hard I try, I cannot catch up on anything these days. Life, the house, scrapbooking deadlines and work, the day job, the laundry. I'm behind on all of it. I'd give anything to be able to take a few vacation days and work like crazy to get myself back on track. Not sure I see that happening any time soon though.

Anyways, I still have a few last CHA layouts for Bella Blvd to share with you. I feel like I've shared a ton of them this past month, but I only created 11 of them for the booth. I'm down to my last 3 that I haven't shared yet. This one was up on the Bella Blvd blog on Monday.

Once again, I borrowed photos for this layout from my good friend Krista. I'm so glad she was able to help out with photos, because I wasn't sure how I was going to use the Engaged At Last collecion based off my own photos. I got married forever ago, and never had any engagement photos, and we never had bachelor or bachelorette parties. I've only been to two weddings in the last ten or so years, and those family members didn't have any photos to fit either. Thankfully, Krista had lots of photos to fit.

I think the text patterned paper is really cute, with lots of fun bachelor and bachelorette party phrases. I like to use paper like that in small amounts, so I cut a large circle out of it to use in the upper corner.

The chipboard frame is so cute, but I didn't have a photo that would work in it. So I used it to hold the "Bachelorette" chipboard piece that was part of my title. I added some threaded black text buttons to the bottom of the frame.

I used a piece of the new Freestyle Sophisticates hand drawn grid patterned paper, in grey, on the top part of my layout. I think we all know that I love to use the regular grid patterned paper from Bella on a lot of my layouts. It's just a great neutral paper for backgrounds. This new hand drawn grid, in a variety of colors, will be a great basic as well.

I added a few of the new feathers, in black and yellow. Love the punches of black in this collection. I stapled them to the layout, and then adhered a crochet heart over the stapes. I tucked in a stick pin flag, and added a few more threaded buttons to embellish.

You can see more projects using the new Engaged At Last collection on the Bella Blvd blog right HERE, and if you want to see some gorgeous altered project ideas using this collection, click HERE.

Bella Blvd: Just Like Them

A few days ago, we shared some projects using the Kiss Me collection over on the Bella Blvd blog. While Kiss Me isn't a brand new collection, it was new enough to be shown and featured in the booth at CHA, which meant we needed some new projects showing it off.

I started this layout with the colorful chevron patterned paper, and pulled all of my colors from there. Navy blue is a favorite color of mine (especially to wear), even though I don't use it often on my layouts. I love the navy blue feathers, and decided to add in a sheet of the blue Sophisticates patterned paper to match, knowing I'd also be using the navy blue chipboard alphas.

I used some pink, yellow, and aqua designer tapes on the edges of my photos, so I used embellishments and stickers in those same colors.

I was trying to come up with a title for this page, and had a few colors of the chipboard alphas out. I was very limited with the green alphas, since I had only received one package for CHA work and had used quite a few of the letters. Took me a while, but I finally came up with a fun title, adding in some tiny alphas from the High Five stickers to add my subtitle. I cut the "I'll tell you a secret" sticker in half, to hold the entire subtitle.

Stop by the Bella Blvd blog to see lots more Kiss Me projects. We've also been sharing altered projects, featuring the new collections, and there are some gorgeous projects! You won't want to miss them.

Kerri Bradford Studio: 2 Words. In. Sane.

I had a new layout go up for Kerri Bradford Studio yesterday. I hadn't used my Silhouette since the last time I did a project for Kerri, which was at the beginning of December. I never use my Silhouette on my CHA projects for Bella Blvd, and that has been the only other projects I've done in the last month and a half. So it was really nice to get my machine out again.

I wasn't really sure at first what I wanted to scrap. I was actually going to do a soccer layout, using some divided page protectors. I was in the middle of printing photos, and had all of my shapes picked out that I wanted to cut. And then I realized that there was no way I would be able to finish it in time, since it was going to end up being two double page spreads. So I switched gears a bit, but stuck with the idea of using some divided page protectors. And this is what I came up with.

We have all been crazy busy around here lately. But Alyssa has had an extremely busy month, with school, winter league soccer, conditioning for high school soccer, County Honor Band, District Honor Band, homework, and every day life stuff. I thought it would be fun to document one of her busy weeks, and get her schedule down in a fun way.

I decided to use one of the Design F pocket page protectors from Becky Higgins. I like that it has room for one 4x6, perfect for the title, and then lots of 2x3 spots. I started out by digging through all of Kerri's kits to see what shapes I wanted to use. I came across the inFORMS kit, which I haven't used yet, and printed out the library card on white cardstock for my title piece.

I spritzed a bit of green misting spray on the card and went about finding a title. When I came across the "2 Words. In. Sane." phrase from the Say What 3 kit, I knew it would be perfect for the title. I first cut the entire title from black cardstock, and then cut a few of the pieces from green and red ruled patterned paper from Bo Bunny.

I picked out the days of the week from the Life Additions: Weeklies #2 kit, and cut them all from black cardstock. In the back of my mind, I thought I might go and cut them from colored cardstock to layer on top. But in the end, I just stuck with the black.

I should add that I actually picked out all of the shapes that I wanted to use, and cut them all from black cardstock at once. I copied and pasted the arrows a few times, so I could print more than one. I wasn't totally sure of my plan going into this, but figured I would have a good selection to start out with and could add or subtract as I went along. I like to layer two cuts together to create a shadow effect, and find that black cardstock works great for that bottom layer.

I also picked out a few phrases that I thought I could maybe incorporate into the page, knowing what my theme was. The "green grass" from the A Beautiful World kit stood out to me, since Alyssa had a ton of soccer stuff going on that week.

For the pockets without a photo, I trimmed 2x3" pieces of patterned paper. I used a few creamish tone-on-tone patterns from Bo Bunny and also some super old white grid papers from Scenic Route. For the creamish papers, I added a block of white cardstock that I machine stitched before adhering down.

I had borrowed a few photos from Alyssa's Instagram account ("steal", "borrow". same thing, right?) that I wanted to include that summed up what her week was about. Since these were all photos taken with her iPod Touch, they weren't the best quality. Also, because I took them from Instagram, they were square photos. So I couldn't print them as 2x3" photos.

I thought I would print out a few more of the cards from the inFORMS kit. When I pulled up this Score Sheet card and went to put my photo on top, I realized I could actually layer the photo under the form, for a sort of see-thru look. I thought this one looked really cool. You could also achieve the same look by printing the form on a transparency and layering it over your photo (thanks for that idea, Kerri!).

Once I had my three photos printed out and inserted, I started putting together the cards for the days of the week. I added my day, cut from the black cardstock, to each card, and the white cardstock squares. For the white grid cards, I simply misted them with the green spray mist.

I added a few arrows (from the Say What 3 kit and the Need Directions? kit) here and there, cutting them from the same green and red patterned paper that I used on my title cut.

I printed out my journaling, which is really just a list of her schedule and activities for the week. It was fairly simple, since I could copy and paste the things that happened more than once. Like "7.5 hours of school", which I needed four of (she missed school one day to attend a 7.5 hour band rehearsal). I adhered all those tiny journaling strips to the appropiate days.

I added a little washi tape here and there, in greens, reds, and blacks.

I used this group shot from the County Honor Band concert (Honor Choir too, but she's not a part of that). It was a fantastic 2.5 hour performance that just leaves you in awe of the musical abilities of these teens. It's the best of the best from the county, and Alyssa was one of twelve band members chosen from their school to go. I printed it behind the library card, and I meant to add some letter stickers to the top saying "County Honor Band". I am just now noticing that I didn't do that. Oops.

I also added some tiny number stickers to each card for the date. I started to put the entire date for the week on the title card, but it wasn't looking right. So I put the "January 2013" on the title card, and added the number for each day to the appropiate card.

And yes, I am pretty sure that she DID find a little bit of time to relax on Sunday!

I won't lie. This page took me FOREVER. And I am pretty sure that this is the most cuts I have ever made with the Silhoutte for one single page. I am planning on something similiar for the soccer page I mentioned earlier, so hopefully I will find some time for that soon.

Bella Blvd: Love For Life

I ran out of time last night to get this post scheduled and am not trying to toss it up super quick before the daycare kid realize I've snuck away for a minute. They don't like when I try and be productive during the day ;)

Today, we are sharing layouts on the Bella Blvd blog that use the new Freestyle Sophisticates patterned papers. I love the Sophisticates patterned papers, as they are great "basics" that an be mixed and matched with any other given collection. For this layout, I only used two small strips of patterned paper from the Kiss Me collection, and then picked out four different colors of the Freestyle patterned papers to match.

When Stephanie first showed me these designs, I loved the hand drawn chevron design. But I also commented on how the fact that they weren't totally straight and even was going to drive me a bit crazy, seeing as how I love things perfectly straight. Once I had them in my hands and started cutting, I realized that if you trimmed off two rows of the chevron arrows at once, they made a straight piece. If that even make sense.

And then, after all that worrying about things being straight and even, I went and adhered them down on my page in uneven rows. A bit wonky, if you will. I might have even used a ruler to make sure my uneven rows were still somehow even by the time they were stacked up.

I added a few feathers for fun, along with a few threaded buttons. If you look closely here, you can see where I hand stitched this feather in two places using some coordinating green thread. Just to be sure the feather stayed where I wanted it.

Stop by the Bella Blvd blog to see more projects using these new papers! I will be back late tonight with a new layout share for Kerri Bradford Studio.

Bella Blvd: Aptos Beach

Today, on the Bella Blvd blog, we are sharing some of our CHA layouts and cards using the new Sand & Surf collection. This is such a fun summer collection, and it might have been my favorite to work with.

You might recognize these two adorable little girls from THIS layout. When my friend Krista was sending me photos to choose from, I had a hard time deciding which beach photos to use for this layout. I'm glad I was able to use both sets of pics that grabbed my scrapbooking eye.

I got a lot of use out of the Borders and Cute Cuts patterned paper on this layout. I used four different border strips, adding machine stitching along all of the edges.

The arrow, cloud, and sun along the top of my layout are all pieces that I cut from the Cute Cuts patterned paper. I love the Sienna chipboard alphas, and am excited that we have a few new colors coming out. Pickle Juice green is a color I will use over and over.

I printed out four photos in 3x3" squares. I choose to crop them leaving a bit of white space in at least one corner of the photo. I thought it would be fun to add some of the word/phrase stickers from the Alpha+Bits and Miniatures sticker sheets.

I also added a stick pin flag to one of the photos. I glue dotted the actual paper flag part, and added a few small torn pieces of designer tape to the pin part of the flag. I adhered all of the photos using lots of pop dots, and added the chipboard wave in between the photos.

I wanted to use the tall ruled journaling sticker, knowing I would print out my computer printed journaling (or Krista's journaling, I should say) and add the strips to the sticker. I ended up cutting off part of the journaling sticker to make it fit the space, so I still have a piece of it left for another project.

I used a small piece of the sandcastle border strip in this lower corner of the page, and added some scalloped punched strips of white cardstock to the top and bottom. I wanted to get some designer tape on the layout and decided to use a variety of pieces to create a little banner border. I cut a notch in one end of each piece, and layered them together.

Stop by the Bella Blvd blog to see lots more projects using the Sand & Surf collection. And stay tuned, as we have a ton more projects to share next week.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Christmas 2007

What a week. My broken power cord forced me off the internet for two days, and then when my new cord arrived, I forced myself off the internet for another day. Too much going on at once, and not enoug time to do it all in. Anyways. I'm finally back and wanted to share a layout I had up at Kerri Bradford Studio earlier this week.

I came across some Christmas photos from a family get-together, taken back in 2007, that I had never gotten around to scrapping. I had quite a few photos, and wanted to get them all onto a layout, so I picked out one of Kerri's Storyboard templates to create two quick photo collages. 

I knew the collages would go side by side, on the two pages, so that it created one large collage across the two-page spread. So I simply turned the template upside down, so that the template design was flip flopped on the second page.

I love using Kerri's handwritten words. I can only dream of having such gorgeous handwriting. Believe me, you would NOT want my handwriting on your layouts. Lol. I used the "Christmas" from the newer December Twenty Five kit, which has TONS of handwritten words.

I never use snowflakes, being as we live in California, where we just don't have true "winters" or see any snow. But since the majority of the family was wearing a lot of blues, browns, reds, and lighter colors, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to go with a more "winterey" color scheme and use the snowflakes instead of Christmas trees, presents, or other typical Christmas themed shapes.

I used one of the snowflakes from the This & That: Winter [Shapes Only] kit. I cut a lot of these, from several colors of cardstock and patterned paper, along with some from white cardstock. I knew what I wanted to do, but I also didn't take the time to figure out how many snowflakes I would really need. Turns out, it was a LOT less than I thought, meaning I had tons of leftovers.

All of the patterned papers that I chose for this layout are older papers from Fancy Pants. I believe from their 2011 Christmas collection.

I didn't add any journaling to this layout, which isn't normally something I skip. But I'm not that worried about it, since this is really just a collection of photos from Christmas day, which we know involved family, good food, gifts, and spending time together. I added the year and called it "done".

I really hope you've been checking Kerri's blog these past two weeks, for her "12 days of Christmas" feature. She's been sharing projects, video's, and tips, along with having a freebie shape available each day. But only for that day. Which is why I will feel terrible if you havn't been checking in, since we're 11 days in now. Rest assured, if you've missed downloading these shapes, she will have them all available as a kit later on.

Scrapbook & Cards Today: Fall Issue Layouts, Part 2

I'm back to share another layout that I created for the Fall issue (you can download and/or view the issue FREE, right from that link) of Scrapbook & Cards Today. I was asked to work on the Easy, Detailed, Expert column. It focuses on showing three versions of a layout, so that no matter what level of difficulty appeals to you, there's an idea for everyone. Yesterday, I shared the Easy and Detailed layouts, and today I'm sharing my Expert layout.

Here is my take on an "EXPERT" version of my layout. While both of the first two layouts fit my style and are designs that I can see poppping up on lots of my layouts, this layout here is a great representation of my normal style of scrapping. It's got a touch of technique, but not anything that's super involved. It's got lots of texture, but without a ton of bulk.

I started by printing my photos all individually. I went from five photos to four photos, printing the main photo as a 4x6, and the other three photos as 2x3's. I knew that my photos and embellishments would add color to the page, so I wanted the center of the layout to be all white cardstock to built on.

I used the brown burlap patterned paper for my background (all papers and stickers by Bella Blvd), and then trimmed up a piece of embossed white dotted cardstock to add to the center of the page (which I sprayed with some green mist first). I used a scalloped border punch on some aqua patterned paper, and tucked a strip under each side of the white cardstock, so that just a little bit was peeking out.

I wanted to add a bit more texture to my flower sticker on this layout, so I started by roughing up the edges of the petals and then bending them up as well. I added a green punched circle to the center of the flower and machine stitched around it. I added a nice, chunky button to the center, with silver mini brads placed in the button holes.  

I adhered a few of my smaller photos to the page using pop dots. I added silver mini brads to my smaller buttons as well as the large button, which is a little trick I've done for years.

I used my Silhouette for the title on this layout, just as I did for the second layout. I chose a "pumpkin patch" title that had one word in a scripty font. I love having one part of the title in a regular, more basic font, and the second part of the title in a large script font. I also added some tiny alpha stickers to create a longer title.

I had a lot of fun working on this column. If you havn't checked out the Fall issue (you can download and/or view the issue FREE, right from that link) of Scrapbook & Cards Today, definitely give it a looksie. The Winter issue is due out later this week and I can't wait to see it.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Family Thanksgiving

I had my layout go up over at Kerri Bradford Studio yesterday, and am finally finding some time to get it posted and shared here. 

Back in 2009, we were having all of the family together for Thanksgiving, which hadn't happend in a long time. So I posted HERE about this fabulous plan for a family mini album that was all about what we're thankful for. I took a nice photo of each family member, and had each person write down what they were thankful for on some journaling pages. 

Then, a full year later in 2010, I came back and posted HERE about how I hadn't done anything with the album all year, and how I was going to try and get it done by Thanksgiving (which was the next day). It's now two full years after that, and I never did finish the album. It's been sitting in a bag under my desk all this time. I can be pathetic, I know.

So when Kerri asked us to create some Thanksgiving or Christmas themed projects this month, I decided to take the general idea that I had started with for that album ... a photo of each person and their handwritten page ... and incorporate them into a two page spread. While the idea of putting out a mini album at Thanksgiving for everyone to look back on sounds lovely, the realistic side of me knew that I would be better off just getting it done and in my album, otherwise it would never get done.

I started by printing out all of the photos 2"x3", and trimmed them all up, leaving a small white border around the edges. I adhered them in three rows, tucking the bottom edges slightly under the patterned paper strip below. Then I machine stitched across the rows, below the photos.

I am IN LOVE with all of the handwritten words that Kerri is working into her new kits! I used a few words from her Giving Thanks kit on my layout. I cut all of my words from white cardstock, and then either the brown or blue cardstock. I thought just a tiny amount of white showing from behind the words would tie in with the white borders around my photos.

I never seem to keep track of the dots to any i's in my cuts. I have gotten to where I don't even attempt to keep the dots anymore, as I will just dot them with a brad or something. I just now, as I'm typing this post and looking at this photo, realizing that I never went back to dot any of my i's. And I highly doubt that I will remember to do it after I finish this post ;)

The leaves are from the This & That: Autumn [Just Shapes] kit. My patterned papers are mostly from Little Yellow Bicycle, with a little bit of Fancy Pants and Bo Bunny mixed in (I just didn't have time to link up products for this layout, but if there's something you want to know about, just ask me and I'll help you out finding it). I made three sets of these three different leaf designs, sizing each leaf in varying sizes. I just eyeballed them, since I didn't have a set plan for them when I did my cutting. I cut them from three different patterned papers, and also from white cardstock for layering.

I knew that I wanted to include the journaling pages, where each family member wrote what they were thankful for that year. I figured an envelope was the most logical way to include those on the page. The nice think about tucking them away in the envelope was that I didn't have to worry about the journaling pages clashing with the papers I chose for my layout.

I chose an envelope from the Signed.Sealed.Delivered kit, and sized it to fit the journaling pages. I was a bit limited in the size I could cut the envelope, since I have the Silhouette SD, and can only cut about eight inches wide. Luckily, when I went as big as would fit on my cutting mat, it was just large enough to hold my pages inside. It's times like this when I really, really, really wish the Cameo was in my budget.

I had all of the handwritten journaling pages adhered within the mini album that I had started. So I had to go through and tear them off. Luckily, the adhesive wasn't super, so they came off very easily. Unfortunately, there is still adhesive on the back of these pages that can be removed, if I had the desire to spend a TON of time doing it. I will probably just put them back to back to make my life easier, even if they do sort of stick to each other.

I had planned on machine stitching down the centers of each leaf. However, I was finishing up this layout while the daycare kids napped, and the machine was making way too much noise (I was doing it in the kitchen). So I just adhered them all with pop dots and added some matching threaded buttons to a few of the leaves.

In fact, as I'm typing this and looking at the above photo, I can even see a stray piece of scrap string. Geez. What's even funnier to me, is that I'm sitting on the couch in the family room typing this blog post, and on the couch opposite me, there is a piece of string stuck to the arm of the couch that looks exactly that same size. I'm not even sure why I haven't picked it off. It's just there for me to keep noticing. Lol.

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Don't forget about Kerri's sale going on right now. Place an order over $20, and you can get 25% off by using the code above. This sale goes through Sunday.

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And now for my randomly drawn winner for the $25 gift card to Kerri's store:

Congrats Kim! Send me a quick email, and we'll get your info over to Kerri, so that you can get shopping!!!

Click: A Layout Share

I made a layout the other day. Not for an assignment, not for design team work. A layout, just for fun. And it took me FOREVER! I have become very assignment driven over the years, and I go into most of my projects with a specific theme, specific manufacturer, specific technique, etc that I'm supposed to focus on. So some of the choices have been made for me, and I go from there.

Without that direction, it's really up to me to decide what photos to scrap about, what product to scrap with, and what to do with the products that I pick out. It can be very overwhelming, and I tend to do a lot more sitting and staring at everything in my scraproom, then actual scrapping. I find this so strange, and I feel like such a wingnut as I sit there and say "I forgot how to scrap". But that's how it feels sometimes.

This layout did not come together easily. And it's nothing like I intended it to be. I actually started with some brand new papers, stickers, and washi tape from KI Memories (so glad that they're back with new stuff!). In the end, I used 2 of the tapes, 1 sticker, and one small strip of the patterned paper. In the process, I pulled out a lot of older product. Not what my plan was. Just how it happened.

I also started with these photos of Sarah that I borrowed off her iPod Touch. She had the photos individually, but she had also created this collage of four photos for Instagram. I decided to just use that, since the work was done for me. I printed it out as a 5"x5" photo.  

I've really been into using grid patterns or ruled line patterns for my background paper on a lot of layouts. It's just a really neutral piece to built the page on, but not as plain as a solid piece of cardstock. I dug out this grid paper (it already had "October" printed in the upper left corner) from a My Mind's Eye Halloween collection. That's also where I found the black and white star patterned paper.

I started the page by adhereing the days of the week glitter border sticker (from KI Memories) along the top of the page, and a few strips of patterned paper along the bottom of the page. Then I picked out some yellow and red patterned papers, to go along with the black and white star paper, and added in a text paper as well. I choose my colors to go with Sarah's pajama pants in the photos. They are Mickey Mouse, so lots of red, with some black, white, and yellow.

I cut my patterned papers into strips of varying widths, and cut a little notch at the bottom of each piece to resemble banner pieces. I layered them all side by side, in the middle of the page, and towards the right side of the page. I was originally going to adhere my photos right on top of those papers. But I changed my mind at the last minute, and moved the photos to the left side of the page.

I knew I wanted some large red letters for my title. Since the days of the week sticker was glittery, I decided to use these super old red glittered chipboard letters from Making Memories. I added in some fun little tabs from Ormolu, and the red washi tape is from KI Memories. I'm in love with that tape!

What's that camera? A rub-on? I can't even remember the last time I have used a rub-on. Lol. The little camera badge fit perfectly in the center! And check it out. I even wrote out my journaling by hand. I'm not a fan of it, even though I know it's important to get our handwriting onto some of our layouts for future generations. I won't lie. The main reason I wrote it by hand is that I was in a rush. I actually started taking pictures of this layout, when I realized that I hadn't journaled on it. I grabbed a pen and scribbled something out, without even moving from where I was taking pictures. 

While this layout didn't exactly come easily, I think it's kind of a fun one. I pulled out some more product, and printed more photos, so I'm hoping to work on some more layouts. Just for fun. I've been missing doing that, and really want to make an effort to do more of it.

Supplies Used:

Bella Blvd: Love Her

Did you catch the Kiss Me collection reveal yesterday on the Bella Blvd blog? I hope you love it as much as we do! For the rest of the week, we're sharing lots and lots of layouts and cards using the Kiss Me collection, so that you can see it in action.

One of the things that I love about Bella Blvd's collections, is that while they may be themed at first glace, but they are also very versitle and can work with so many everyday photos. While Kiss Me is a Valentine's collection, it's got so many great patterns and pieces that can be used for anything. I've had these photos of Alyssa and Haley for years, and never got around to scrapping them. Until now.

I have been wanting to use this Background Lace Circle cut from my Silhouette library for ages. I love circles, and the idea of filling the circles up with patterned paper, cardstock, or embellishments seemed like fun.

I used the navy blue patterned paper to cut the background piece from, and I intented to then cut circles from all of the other patterned papers to fill in the empty spaces.

However, when I was pulling off my die cut background piece, and all of the circles from the negative space, I realized that those circles would work just fine if I flipped them over. The backside of the blue patterned paper is a fabulous grid pattern with lots and lots of large patterned circles all over. I liked the way my pieces looked when flipped over, and they were already cut to size, which was a big time-saver, instead of cutting all new circles. So I just went with it.

I didn't originally plan on using this sticker on my page. But when I was trimming my photos after printing, they ended up being just shy of 6" tall for some reason, so they didn't quite reach the length of my page. I just covered the tiny gap between the photos with this sticker, adhered with pop dots.

I love that all three of the Sienna chipboard alphabet sets that were a part of Bella's summer release match perfectly with the Kiss Me collection.

I also added some buttons into my circle design, just so my layout wasn't all paper and stickers. A few simple threaded buttons, along with a few stickers adhered with pop dots, add the perfect finishing touch to embellish the page.

I loved the little ice cream cone on the Cute Cuts sheet of patterned paper, and knew it was perfect for the front of a card. I cut the card on my Silhouette as well, using the 3x3 Circle Pattern Card design, but I cut mine as a 4x4" card.

I cut the actual card base from this fabulous chevron paper. It cut out all of the circles as well, and then you cut out the top piece seperately. I cut this piece from the navy blue patterned paper, and adhered it to the front of the card using pop dots.

The backside of the chevron paper is a great pink text paper with tone-on-tone hearts on it. I was going to leave it like that, so that you would see that pink text paper through the holes in the front of the card. But in the end, I felt like it needed a touch of white, so I adhered a scrap of white cardstock inside the card.

Head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, and check out what some of the other designers have created with the Kiss Me collection! There are a ton of layouts and cards featured today, and it really shows the collection in action, and the different ways it can be used!

A Couple Of Digital Boy Layouts

Computers. I don't know about you all, but I have this love/hate relationship with my laptop. I love it to death. When it works and does all of the stuff I want it to do. I hate it with a passion. When it gives me problems, and won't let me do the things that I normally do. And lately, I'm definately leaning more on the "hate" side of our relationship. So frustrating.

I've been in this funk lately. I havn't done any actual scrapping in almost 2 full weeks. So weird for me to go that long without cutting paper and gluing stuff. The craziness of life is wearing on me. Girls back in school. Soccer in full swing. Daycare kids running me wild. Scrapping jobs sucking down my creative energy. Just been really, really tired lately, which makes me avoid my scraproom. So last night, I thought I would make a few quick digital layouts, just to do something creative.

Meet Mateo. He's been with me for about six months now, and he's just about 10 months old. He is unbelievably adorable! And such a great baby. I really love this age, where they are developing such strong personalities. I love that he is more mobile, crawling around, pulling himself up, cruising around the furniture. But that also means he can get to where he wants to go. And that's usually straight to me. Lol. He loves to hang on me, and have me sit and play with him. Which is all good. Except that sometimes, I do actually have to get stuff done around here. But it's so hard to resist that cute little face!

As for the layout. I have used this digital template before for another layout (seen HERE). I love this template, and figured I would just use it again, for both of these new layouts. It's not like these layouts will be side by side in my albums, so it's totally fine with me to use the same basic design.

I've already introduced you to Zachary. He's getting so big. He's two and a half now, and he's a real character. While we tell Mateo how adorable he is all day, we tell Zachary how hilarious he is all day. On days when he's not here, it's so quiet and sometimes a bit boring. He definitely livens up this joint, and keeps us laughing. He's even funny when he's trying to be all serious. He gives us these straight faces, with the pouty lips and one raised eyebrow, and we just bust up laughing because he's so funny.

And if Photoshop had let me finish this layout, and add my journaling, it would have said something to that effect. How he makes us laugh all the time. BUT. Photoshop kicked me out last night.

As in, it literally kicked me out and apparently decided to un-do my layout that I had saved and re-saved about 10 times as I created it. When I went to open it this morning, my file showed nothing but a red line on it. Lovely (said sarcastically, in case you didn't pick up on that).

So I pulled up everything I had picked out for this layout last night, and re-created it this morning. However, I cannot get into my folder that has all of my digital journaling stuff. That's the same folder that started locking up my computer last night. So I gave up on the journaling for now. Just imagine that I have journaling strips on that blue diagonal striped paper. If I can get it all working later, I'll swap out the finished layout.

Supplies Used:

Bella Blvd: Summer Memories + A Sunburst Background Tutorial

This week, we are sharing some simply tutorials from some of our design team members on the Bella Blvd blog. I put a tutorial together for today's post, on how to create these fun sunburst backgrounds.

I created this layout for the booth, for CHA Summer, using the Sunshine & Happiness collection. I wanted to use several of the colorful patterned papers, and thought a fun sunbursts background would make a great backdrop for this photo of Sarah. I grouped the photo and journaling together on a 9x9 piece of green cardstock, which sort of gave the appearance of a smaller "layout" on top of my layout. If that makes sense.

I cut out several shapes from the Cute Cuts paper for accent pieces. The polka dot cloud and the sun, topped with a button, are so cute together. I also added in some white embossed dotted cardstock from Core'dinations, to help all the other patterned papers "pop" more off the page.

I love the look of machine stitching along the edges of each "burst" piece, but it's a bit time consuming to do. I started out with the intention of only doing a few rows of machine stitching. But I couldn't stop, and ended up doing each and every row.

I had a bit of a gap between my photo and my long journaling sticker, so I layered two strips of designer tapes together, and stapled the ends. I also added a sprinkling of threaded buttons to the page, to embellish.

Some of you may know that I am NOT a fan of using my own handwriting on my layouts. I know, I know. It's important to include your writing, for future generations. But for the most part, I just think it takes away from my style. So I still print out little journaling strips, even when my journaling sticker has lines for easy writing.

Check out the Bella Blvd blog for a full tutorial on how to create this sunburst background.

Greatest View: Guest Designer, Part 3

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. Today, I'm sharing my last project. 

I came across these photos of the girls a while back, and printed them out with the intention of scrapping them. Then they got tucked away somewhere. When I was trying to decide what to do for my second layout, I was really just trying to find some photos that I wanted to scrap, but that would also match with some of the embellishments that Gail had sent me. I had an entirely different layout started, and it just wasn't working, so I gave up on it. Then I saw these photos tucked away, and thought that the blue and purple color scheme would be fun.

I picked out some of the purple and navy blue chevron badges and sunburst badges, and mixed in some of the aqua chevron ribbon and an aqua chevron bag.

Then I went looking for some patterned papers to match. The purple dotted paper is a super old KI Memories patterned paper. For some reason, when I thought about purple, I automatically went to my KI Memories folder. Then I decided to add in some tan/light brown pieces, so I pulled out one of the new Bella Blvd birthday boy papers.

I am not going to lie. This chevron ribbon is gorgeous, but it really did a number on my eyes. Lol. An optical illusion of sorts. Add in the fact that, for the first time in years, my paper trimmer isn't cutting perfectly straight anymore. And that when I use border punches, I usually never manage to punch straight either. I am usually tucking the borders under another paper, so I just adhered it so that it looks straight.

But add all these uneven and illusional (is that a word?) things together, and I could not figure out if anything on my layout was straight. Which may not seem like a big deal to most of you. But I am very anal and particular about my papers, photos, etc being totally and perfectly straight. My poor rulers worked overtime on this layout. Lol.

I used my Silhouette to cut my title. The "Sisters and Best Friends" was all one cut. I just cut it from my tan patterned paper and some navy blue cardstock. It never fails. I always lose the dots to my i's, after using my Silhouette. They're tiny, and I usually scrape them off the mat like they're scrap pieces. Which is why I tend to use brads to dot my i's ;)

Every now and then, the girls will write each other fun notes or hack into each other's Instagram accounts and write about why they love their sister, and I thought it would be fun to print some of those out and tuck them inside the chevron bag. These photos were taken 4 years ago (I'm convinced that is wrong, but I'm too lazy to go back and see when these photos were taken. I'm thinking it was more like 6 years ago.), and it's nice to know they still can have as much fun together as they did in these photos.

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 want to thank Gail and the Greatest View team for letting me join them on their blog this week, and share some of my projects with them. It was definately a lot of fun!

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!

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!