Bella Blvd: Liberty Softball

I've got my last official layout up on the Bella Blvd blog today. Not that you won't see Bella on future projects, because you will! But I had committed to creating one of my monthly projects for September and here it is. And if this layout looks familiar to any of you long time readers here, it's because I decided to lift one of my favorite layouts that I created for Kerri Bradford years ago (seen HERE). 

When the new collections arrived on my doorstep a week ago, I knew the first collection I wanted to play with was Oh My Stars. I'm a sucker for star patterned paper, as it's such a great fit for so many every day projects. I wanted to continue with my recent focus on sports themed layouts, and dug up some older photos of Sarah on one of her softball teams.

I started out by die cutting an open circle background from the navy blue star patterned paper, using a cut file from Kerri Bradford. I built my entire page on the white grid patterned paper background, so I knew the background piece would stand out great against the white. I pulled out a few additional patterned papers to incorporate into my design, all from the new collections. 

You all know that I love to mix a cursive font along with a clean font for my titles. I often achieve this using all die cut words/alphas, along with my patterned papers. On my Bella layouts however, my go-to choice is to mix the Sienna chipboard alphas in with a die cut cursive word. In a way, I think this title work has become a signature part to almost all of my layouts. Also, I never even attempt to save the dots to my i's when I die cut words, so I always dot my eyes with a coordinating enamel dot. 

I always pull my colors from my photos when it comes to choosing patterned papers. Which helps explain the pink, as Sarah had pink on her glove. I didn't want to use just black, navy blue, and green, so the pink was a nice touch of color to mix in. I wanted to add the "shoot for the stars" designer clip to the page, and while I couldn't clip it to my journaling block, tucking it behind it worked just as well.

If I were to create this layout again, I probably would have picked a different pink patterned paper to mix in, as the one I used didn't quite match the designer clip and the chipboard star (which I picked out at the end of the design process). 

I adhered my photos along the bottom of the page, adding a few small strips of patterned paper in as well to add some more color. I also tore off small pieces of the navy blue washi sticker (from the Alex collection) to add where the photos overlapped. 

And that's a wrap! Catch me back here next week, where I plan on sharing three never-shared-here-on-the-blog before layouts with you all. I even dug them all out of albums to get the detail shots I was missing.

Comments

[staci]

Oh I love it. Again, another great sports page! I do not have a digital die cutting machine but want to add that navy to the top of the page (i just ordered this line!!). Any ideas on how to replace the circles? Thanks again for your fantastic layouts!!