Bella Blvd: Positively Love Watching Her Play

We're at the tail end of high school soccer season for my youngest, Sarah, and I thought it would be fun to create a layout around where you'll find me every Monday and Wednesday evening. At the majority of the games, I'll snap a quick photo with my phone, and share it on Instagram right before the game starts. I picked out a few of my favorites for this page. 

We brought back the sketch feature today over on the Bella Blvd blog, and this is the sketch that I created that both myself and fellow Bella designer Missy Whidden used for our layouts.

I love incorporating sketches into my design process. It takes so much of the guesswork out of the equation, as the general placement of photos, title, etc are done for you. Of course, I always remind people that you can tweak the sketch as needed or to give it a whole new look. Turn it or flip it around. It's all up to you how to interpret it. I'm pretty straight forward when I use sketches, and use them as is, but that's just me. 

When I sat down to start this layout, the first thing I did was go searching for patterned papers to go with my photos. Our school colors are green and white, and I always like to add in black and grey as well. I ended up with a random mix of patterned papers, some older and some newer, with most of them being tone-on-tone with simple patterns. I thought the star patterned paper from the Just Add Color collection would be perfect for the background of the page, instead of my original plan of using white cardstock.

I matted each of my three photos with different patterned papers, distressing the edges of the papers and then machine stitching around the edges before adhering them across the center of the page. Instead of cutting one large piece of the grey Strandz patterned paper (from the Color Chaos collection) to layer under the photos, I cut four separate pieces of the grey patterned paper. By tucking two pieces above the photos, and two pieces below the photos, it gave an even more layered look to the page.

As most of my titles go, I browsed thru my Silhouette library for a word and/or phrase to use for part of my title, knowing I would mix in either chipboard alphas and/or letter stickers to complete the title (the one I chose is from Kerri Bradford). I like to die cut my titles from both patterned paper and black cardstock. By layering them together, but keeping them just slightly offset from each other, it creates a shadow effect and adds some dimension to what is actually a flat title. I also used the grey chipboard heart in place of the word "love" in my title. 

I cut a few small, thin strips of coordinating patterned papers to add to the bottom and top corners, as shown in the sketch. I kept my embellishments super simple, as usual, by adding some enamel dots to the page. I hope you'll give this sketch a try the next time you sit down to create! 

Comments

[Tracey]

Loving the colour scheme on here! The green just pops! And that star background is pretty awesome!

[Janelle Ferrell]

Wow I just checked out your gallery and I LOVE your style!! Going to try this layout for my girl who just completed her tennis season. Thanks for the great ideas!!