It's the first Monday of the month, which means there's a new monthly project sheet up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For this month's layout, I was asked to work with the Family Frenzy collection, the new Clear Cuts, and to incorporate a "home for the holiday" theme into my page and title.
Luckily, I actually had a few photos that would work for this, so that I didn't have to make something up. Lol. The girls took these selfies of themselves when Alyssa was home from college for Thanksgiving last year. I knew they would match well, since Sarah was wearing a red sweater and there's red in the collection.
I started with the "selfie" patterned paper, since these were selfies that the girls took of themselves. I printed three photos - one at 3x4, and two at 3x3 - and arranged them on a strip of the selfie patterned paper. I used the navy blue border strip from the Borders patterned paper, cut into two pieces lengthwise, and added a strip to either side of the selfie patterned paper. I did wait to adhere this entire piece until all of my other papers and Clear Cuts were in place.
For the Clear Cuts, I decided to use the white hearts transparency and the green chevron transparency. I laid a strip of the white hearts over the red patterned paper along the left edge of the page. I made these strips wider than would show on the page, so that I could add the adhesive to the part of the transparency that was behind the other patterned papers.
I cut the green striped patterned paper and the green chevron transparency to the same size, both of which were just a little wider than would show on the page. I added some small glue dots to only the sides of the transparency when adhering it to the page, knowing that the selfie photo strip and the yellow border along the right side of the page would cover the glue dots.
I cut a larger piece of the white hearts transparency to adhere along the right side of the page. I had my green striped patterned paper pieces and the aqua "family" border strip arranged on the page, so that I knew how tall to make the transparency, adding a little bit extra so that I could hide my adhesive behind the other papers.
For the title, I wanted to incorporate more of the patterned papers and more color, so I decided to hand cut letters for part of my title. I did this recently on another layout, that I haven't shared yet, and I really liked the way it looked. Of course, it takes me forever to do, and the letters never turn out quite like I want them too. But it's still fun to try.
The way I went about this, because I most certainly cannot wing it and cut them freehand, is to sketch out my letters on a piece of tracing paper. I just played around with them until they looked ok, and were sort of the same size and looked good together. Then I cut those out, and traced them onto my patterned papers (I flipped the letters and traced them onto the backsides of my papers for most of these), and then cut out the final letters. I did add a dot to my "i" here, but that was after I had taken my photos. Kind of an afterthought on my part.
Once the patterned papers and transparencies were in place on either side of the page, I adhered my strip of photos/patterned paper in place. Then I went in and did lots of machine stitching, which also helps "adhere" the transparencies in place.
I fussy cut some of the flowers from one of the patterned papers, and used them to embellish the page, adding white enamel dots to the centers of some of them. Since I had added some black pen lines around my title letters, to help them stand out, I did the same to the fussy cut flowers, just to tie them in a bit more.
You can download the November project sheet, complete with full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.
Super fun page. How did your girls (and mine) get old enough to be in college! Man I have been reading your blog for a long time LOL love the holiday title it is so playful and fun. Cute page.
Posted by: Amy | November 02, 2015 at 07:21 AM
super cute--love all the layers and accents and brads!
Posted by: Diana | November 03, 2015 at 11:28 AM