... just Laura

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.

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Monthly Project Sheet - Alex Collection

Yesterday was the first Monday of the month, which means we had a new project sheet up on the Bella Blvd blog. For this month's layout, I was asked to use the new Alex collection, and to create a layout with a back to school day theme. 

I obviously don't have boys, so my first task was to track down some photos. Luckily, the lovely Kelly Goree has three handsome young boys who had just gone back to school, and the colors of her photos were perfect for this collection. My main photo is the three boys together, and then I collaged their individual photos together into a little strip. 

My original plan for this layout didn't quite work out, and since I had already cut a few of the patterned papers, I had to be a little creative going forward (I only had 1 sheet of each paper to work with). I did a lot of piecing together of small pieces and long strips. 

I was also asked to incorporate the designer clips into this layout. The new clips are made of plastic, and come in a variety of shapes. I knew that I wanted to include a few above the photo strip, but I didn't want to cover up the boys faces by actually clipping them in place. So I simply adhered them behind the photo strip. 

I always build my layouts on white cardstock. Always. As I was piecing together papers and photos, I ended up leaving two sections of the page open so that I would have white cardstock to work with. I layered two pieces of the white star Clear Cut transparency over those areas, just to add a little interest. 

For my title, I used the grey alpha stickers from the new Fundamentals sticker sheet that comes in the collection, along with a chipboard word from a Chip Script sheet and some Tiny Text alpha stickers. And I just had to use the fun little backpack, which was trimmed from a 4x6" card from the Daily Details patterned paper. 

I think one of my favorite things from the new release is the Tabbies. A package full of tabs, in all different sizes and shapes. They're great for tucking here and there on projects. It wasn't until I was halfway done photographing this layout that it dawned on me that the aqua designer clip needed something. So I quickly added a "3" number sticker, since there are 3 handsome boys on the page. 

You can download the September project sheet, complete with supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: Great Outdoors

I'm sharing a new two pager over on the Bella Blvd blog today. Ever since the Campout collection came out, I've been meaning to scrap these photos from way back in 2006. My sister was out visiting from Denver, and her and my dad decided to take Joe and the girls camping for two days. This was right after a family wedding, where I played a big part in organizing the day. And also during a time when I was going thru some chronic pain issues, so that big wedding day totally kicked my butt. Which explains why I didn't tag along on this trip. 

I grew up in camping family. We would take these 2-3 week camping trips, driving hours and hours each day, sightseeing along the way, and setting up camp in a different KOA campground each night. We had systems in place, everything super organized, and we could set up and take down the entire campsite (tent and sleeping bags of course) in record time, over and over. My little family? We don't camp. Ok, we did take the girls camping once when they were little. But it was with a previous daycare family, and they were experts, which made it easy for us. We wouldn't do well on our own ;)

While my go-to way of getting tons of photos on the page is to use photo collages, I've been making an effort to show different ways of including photos on my recent two pagers for Bella. But I just had to re-visit the photo collages for this layout, and looking back to the last time I used them on one of my Bella two pagers (on my April layout HERE), I just now realized that I used the same exact collage template. I guess you can say it's a favorite of mine. 

I'm glad my dad (or my sister) took these photos on their trip. They were taken on a simple digital camera, before I even got into the digital side of photography. They had some pretty funny photos, and of course, Sarah was her hilarious self in many of the pics. 

Alyssa would probably kill me for using this photo of her (second from the left). But the look on her face pretty much sums up how she felt about the entire trip. Because my sister was only in town for a few days, to take this 2 day camping trip, the girls had to miss a day of school. And that one day ended up being the ONLY day of school Alyssa ever missed in 13 years of her K-12 school years, and she will tell you about this trip being the reason for that to this day! 

I like to size my collages so that I still have plenty of room up top for my title, journaling, and often times, more photos! I printed four extra photos, thinking I would add two to each side of the spread. I ended up wanting to include this 3x4" "keep calm and camp on" card from the Daily Details patterned paper, so I decided to mix it in with three of those four photos on the first page of the spread. 

A large majority of the time when creating two pagers, I end up mirroring the two pages design wise. I'll use the same patterned papers, in the same sizes, along the top and bottom edges, and along the sides. This works well for me, as I'm a very linear scrapper. I might have to challenge myself to do something a little different for my next one, just for fun.

Only having one photo to add up top on the second page of the spread allowed me more room for my title, which ended up working out perfectly. I was originally going to die cut my entire title, as I completely forgot the Campout collection had coordinating chipboard. Once I pulled out the "outdoors" chipboard letters, I decided to die cut the word "great" to complete my title. 

In the end, the only embellishments I added to this two page spread were a few chipboard clouds and a tree on the top part of the page, and a few tab and word stickers. Over the years, I've gotten to where I prefer my layouts without a lot of bulk, so simple and clean works well for me. 

Bella Blvd: Junior Year

It's that time of year. Time to send our kids back to school, to new grades, new classrooms, and new teachers. The schools here went back last week, I'm seeing many of you starting this week, and some of you may be lucky enough to have a bit of summer break left with your kids. Whenever your child returns to school, one thing that I think we all end up with are those must-have "first day of school" photos. And today, over on the Bella Blvd blog, I've got a new layout up with just that kind of photo!

I used to scrap these first day of school photos as just that. "First Day Of School" layouts, with journaling that said something along the lines of how they were excited to go back to school, meet their new teacher, and see their friends again. A few years back, I got the idea to scrap that first day of school photo at the end of the school year (you can see that layout HERE). This allows me to document all that happened in that particular school year. Sort of a "looking back" take on how the year went. Of course, I didn't get this idea until my Sarah was in high school, so I'm a little late to the game on this way of documenting. But I love the idea none the less. 

For my layout, I turned to the Star Student collection and pulled out a few patterned papers that coordinated with my photo. I knew that I wanted to keep with a white cardstock background for this page, so I layered a white woodgrain Clear Cut over my cardstock for a little subtle interest. 

I usually only manage to get one or two photos of my daughter, as she's a typical teen and thinks I should be happy that she allowed me those one or two photos! So I picked one photo and printed it big. Really big. I also typed up my journaling ahead of time, which isn't something I normally do. I wanted to be sure the photo and my journaling were the focus of this page, so I wanted to plan around those from the start. 

I arranged my photo and journaling block in the center of the page, and then randomly cut my patterned papers, along with an embossed piece of cardstock, into pieces to layer on either side. I distressed the edges of all of my papers and machine stitched around the edges before adhering them in place. 

I really do love the idea of journaling about the school year and pairing it up with that first day of school photo. It's hard to remember what happens from year to year, as they all start to blend together (or maybe that's just me!), so I welcome the chance to sum up the year on this type of layout. If you never got around to scrapping last year's "first day of school" photos, why not give this approach a try!

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - Oh My Stars Collection

It's the first Monday of the month, which means the August project sheet is up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For this month's layout, I was asked to use the new Oh My Stars collection, which will begin shipping later this month. I was also asked to incorporate texture and dimension into the page design, and to use our new Tabbies as well. 

If you remember, I created a catalog layout for this collection, that I shared a few weeks ago (seen HERE). It just so happens that I had incorporated all of those things in that layout, without even realizing I'd be creating something similar for the project sheet layout. And without really meaning too, I lifted some of the same basics design ideas of that first layout into this layout here. 

I was looking thru the patterned papers in this collection, trying to decide what color combo I would use. I came across this fun circle patterned paper, with the aqua, yellow, orange, and green circles against the white with black dots. I knew this would make a great background paper for the layout, and then pulled the star patterned papers to match. I also loved this 4x6 "Super Star" card from one of the patterned papers, and decided to use that as my title. 

I used the black/white striped border from the Border patterned paper, cut in half lengthwise, along the top and bottom of the page. I also tore off a few piece of washi tape from the new Washi Sticker book, and added those to the top left corner and bottom right corner of the page. 

I printed several 2x3" photos to use on the page. I was originally going to use five photos, but in the end I used one of the spots for my journaling instead, using four photos on the page. From the star patterned papers, I cut pieces slightly larger than my photos, and then some more pieces slightly larger than those first pieces of papers. I knew I would be double matting my photos, but wanted to have plenty of pieces to play with until I got the final combinations right. 

I went thru the Tabbies pack, and picked out several tabs in coordinating colors. I knew I wanted to add a tab to each layered piece, whether it was a photo, the journaling block, or my title piece. I used my Tiny Attacher to staple them in place. 

I ended up using the black star patterned paper on each photo, the title piece, and the journaling block. I love how all of the other colors really "pop" against the black, so I wanted to pair the black with all of my layered pieces.

As usual, I distressed the edges of each paper and machine stitched around the edges. I did this all before adhering any of the pieces together. I matted my photos with the smaller of the two papers, and then adhered them to the larger pieces with pop dots for extra dimension. 

To embellish the page, I pulled out some coordinating star die cuts from the Paper Pieces package, and adhered those around the page. I also used some of the large black enamel dots to add a little something to the centers of some of the circles on my background paper. 

You can download the August project sheet, complete with supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bell Blvd: He Will Forever Love The Game

Hey everyone! I've got a new two pager up on the Bella Blvd blog today. I've had sports on the creative brain lately, and have numerous projects started using sports photos of my two girls. But when a photo of my husband, Joe, popped randomly into my inbox one night, I knew it was time to make a layout about him doing what he loves to do - umpiring baseball. 

Joe has been umpiring for years and years, and I have to admit that I've never been out to watch him in action. He does mostly high school baseball, so I'm usually working when games are happening. So to have a photo of him land randomly in my inbox, sent from another umpire, it's a nice surprise. I have a few of those photos that I wanted to include here, and I also have some photos I took of him and his gear several years ago. I printed my two main photos as 4x6's and the others as 4x4's. 

When it comes to scrapping sports photos, I turn to some simple basic patterns for my patterned papers, as Bella doesn't have a recent sports collection. I'm a huge fan of star patterns in general, and they're perfect for sports layouts. I also love a good grid pattern, and anything with circles. Three of my favorite patterns to scrap with. Although in all honesty, when I set out to pick my papers, I really look for anything and everything that will match my photos. That's my main goal. 

An on-going trend you'll find on my layouts is a multiple font title. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I love to mix a large cursive die cut word with clean looking alphas. And the Sienna chipboard alphas are my go-to pick, as they add a bit of dimension to what is often an "all paper" layout. I die cut the word "forever" using a cut file from Kerri Bradford's Grateful kit. 

Because I often use quite a bit of patterned paper on my layouts, I like to add a bit of die cutting to the background of my page. In this case, I die cut a circle border piece to go on both sides of the spread. Even though I die cut the border from patterned paper, that bit of whiteness that shows thru helps break up the heaviness that can come from covering the entire page with patterned papers. 

I started out having four 4x4" photos, but one of the photos just didn't look right on the page. So I decided to leave that photo off, and added a 4x4" piece of star patterned paper in it's place. To help my chipboard star stand out, I punched a circle from patterned paper to layer beneath it. 

I am a huge advocate for journaling on layouts, and it's very rare that you'll see a layout from me without it. Sometimes, I have more to say than other times, but there's always journaling there. I had more to say for this layout, so I printed out my journaling in a large paragraph, and matted it with some green patterned paper. I took out some of my older Bella Designer Tape to add to the top, and machine stitched over it. 

This photo here is the one that recently showed up in my inbox, and it's such a great shot! It was this photo that inspired me to create a new layout about Joe, doing what he loves and what he puts his whole heart into. I fully admit that most of my layouts are about our girls, my daycare kids, and even about myself. I guess I needed a little nudge from the universe (or whoever sent that photo to me) to get my husband in the albums too!

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - Fresh Market Collection

So, funny story to the making of this month's project sheet for Bella Blvd. Usually, I'm given a specific that I'm supposed to work with, and  some sort of "challenge" to incorporate into the design. Well, for the July project sheet, I was told I could use whatever I wanted. Knowing that the project sheet would be going up on the blog on the 4th of July, I had plans of doing a patriotic layout of some kind.

I did my best to dig out some navy blue, red, and grey patterned paper and got started on a creative star background for the page. I had photos printed, matted on patterned paper, title done and adhere, and even did some machine stitching. And then? I threw it in the trash. I hated it, and after showing it to a friend that said "I don't love it", I decided it needed to go. 

I decided to start all over, and pulled out the Fresh Market collection, thinking that would make for a great summery layout. These are actually photos from Sarah's birthday party years ago, but I pulled out photos specifically of the family members that were there that day to use on this page. I had a basic page design in mind, and knew I wanted to use small square photos, so I printed out eight photos as 2.5 x 2.5" squares.

I had this vision of doing three rows of photos, with three main patterned paper strips, and then adding borders and other thin strips of patterned paper between the rows. I also knew that I wanted to use several strips of the black and white dotted patterned paper, as it's a favorite of mine. I happen to love the fruit slice patterned papers in this collection. I'm going with "fruit slice", since the orange slice patterned paper shown above also comes in yellow (lemon slice?), and there's a strip of it in green (lime slice?) on the Borders patterned paper. 

So I knew that I would use the orange and yellow fruit slice patterned papers as two of my main paper strips - the ones where my photos would go. 

For my third main patterned paper strip, I decided to go with the aqua scalloped lines paper. I added in a few strips of the black and white dotted patterned paper, and a few border strips, in between each row. 

I arranged my photos along my three rows of patterned paper, and then adhered them, tucking the top or bottom edge of the photos under the thin patterned paper strips. Grounding them in a sense. I used the "Summertime Fun" 3x4" card from the Daily Details patterned paper for my title.

Along with my 2.5 x 2.5" photos, I also cut out several of the 2 x 2" squares from one of the patterned papers to add into the mix as well. I machine stitched around the edges of each little card, and distressed the edges, before adhering them along with my photos. 

To embellish the page, I added some white chipboard hearts, black enamel dots, and a few stickers. 

You can download the July project sheet, complete with supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: Summer 2016 Reveals - IF CHRISTmas Collection

This week and next, over on the Bella Blvd blog, we're revealing our new Summer 2016 collections and products. There are five new Bella collections, three new Illustrated Faith collections, and a new release of Illustrated Faith basics as well. I’ll be sharing peeks at these collections here as well, along with some layouts that I created for the catalog. 

     

Today, we are revealing two new Christmas collections - a Bella collection called Holly Jolly Christmas (which you can find on this morning's post on the Bella blog), and an Illustrated Faith collection called CHRISTmas. I'm pretty sure that Bella has had a new Christmas collection every single year. While they are always fun collections, for me personally, they have never really worked with my own Christmas photos. So when I saw the new Illustrated Faith CHRISTmas collection, I was really excited to see a collection that would work so perfectly with my photos. 

I got to work with the IF CHRISTmas collection for one of my catalog layouts, so I pulled out photos of my girls from this last Christmas. I printed them as 3x4" photos, knowing that I wanted to arrange them across the page, along with a 3x4" card from the Daily Details patterned paper. 

I love when there are patterns in a collection that make great backgrounds. This heart patterned paper, with randomly colored in hearts, is a great example. With the black hearts on white, it's still a good subtle pattern that allows the other patterned papers and photos to stand out. 

I matted my photos with the red dotted patterned paper, and added the "Joy to the World" 3x4" card to a piece of the black and white dotted patterned paper. As I usually do, I distressed the edges of all of my patterned papers, and machine stitched around each one before layering them together. 

Just like on my other catalog layouts, I used a mix of alpha stickers from the new Fundamentals sticker sheet and a Ciao Chip Script chipboard word for my title. I did add in a piece of yellow patterned paper from one of the older Illustrated Faith collections, since I needed some yellow paper to tie in with the embellishments from the collection. 

To embellish the page, I added some die cuts from the Paper Pieces package, a few tabs from the Tabbies package, and even a few stickers. I finished it off with some black enamel stars. 

Head on over to the Bella Blvd blog to check out the new Illustrated Faith CHRISTmas collection in full, and get in on a chance to win-it-before-you-can-buy-it!

Bella Blvd: Summer 2016 Reveals - Oh My Stars Collection

This week and next, over on the Bella Blvd blog, we're revealing our new Summer 2016 collections and products. There are five new Bella collections, three new Illustrated Faith collections, and a new release of Illustrated Faith basics as well. I’ll be sharing peeks at these collections here as well, along with some layouts that I created for the catalog. 

     

Today, we are revealing the new Oh My Stars collection, along with a new Spooktacular collection for Halloween (which you can find on the Bella blog from earlier today). The Oh My Stars collection is a new basics collection. What I love about these collections is that you get one great pattern, in all of the colors Bella is known for. And I could not be more excited to have a large variety of star patterned papers coming out, as they can really go with just about any theme or subject matter. 

I got to work with the Oh My Stars collection for a catalog layout. There are so many colors to choose from within the collection, so I had to narrow down my choices for printing purposes. I knew the white plus-sign patterned paper would make a great background paper, and from there I picked out some of the star patterns, along with a few tone-on-tone patterns, in navy blue, aqua, yellow, green, and blacks. 

I had the idea to create square blocks of layered papers/photos, in order to work lots of different patterned papers onto the page. I printed out a few old photos of Sarah, as I thought the blue and green in the photos worked perfectly for this page. From there, I cut little blocks from all of my patterned papers, in two different sizes. 

Then I just started playing with the papers, trying out different layering options, and placement on the page, to get a color combination that I liked. This took way longer than it should have. I love to over think things, to the point of it being a little ridiculous. I also pulled out the Tabbies package (actually mock up product, so a piece of paper that I cut them out of) and found a coordinating tab to add to each layered square.

I distressed the edges of each and every square of patterned paper, and then machine stitched around the edges. I did all of the machine stitching on these before I layered them together. I adhered the bottom patterned paper directly to the page, and then adhered the smaller square of patterned paper using pop dots. 

I printed out my journaling to add to one of the layered squares and trimmed down a 3x4" card from the Daily Details paper to fit another layered square. Luckily, trimming it down still kept the design in tact. Whew. I had pulled out one of the Caio Chip script sets, and pulled a chipboard word out to add to another layered square, and realized that the little plus signs fit perfectly over the x's on the "I Love You More" card, so I added a few of those on there. 

I also used some of the stars from the Paper Pieces die cut package to embellish the page. I lucked out, and was able to find enough in the colors I was using on the page, and added them to the top and bottom of the page. A few white star enamels finished them off. 

For my title, I used the "Love You" letters found in the Paper Pieces die cut package. I just love the fun font on the letters. 

Head on over to the Bella Blvd blog to check out the new Oh My Stars collection in full, and get in on a chance to win-it-before-you-can-buy-it!

Bella Blvd: Summer 2016 Reveal - Alex Collection

This week and next, over on the Bella Blvd blog, we're revealing our new Summer 2016 collections and products. There are five new Bella collections, three new Illustrated Faith collections, and a new release of Illustrated Faith basics as well. I’ll be sharing peeks at these collections here as well, along with some layouts that I created for the catalog. 

  

Along with revealing the new Addison collection yesterday, we also revealed the new Alex collection. This collection is geared towards teen boys, but just like the Addison collection, this collection can definitely work for boys of all ages. 

I worked with the Alex collection for one of the catalog layouts. Since I don't have boys of my own, I asked the talented Kelly Goree if I could borrow some photos of one of her boys. I mentioned that some of the pieces I had picked out to have printed had a music theme to them, and she came back with these fun photos of her youngest son. 

My plans for this layout started with the fun headphone patterned paper, the 3x4" "Rock Out" card from the Daily Details patterned paper, and the music notes from the Paper Pieces die cut package. I also knew that the grey arrow patterned paper would make a good background for the center of the page where I knew my photos would go. 

I also love this painted patterned paper, with the navy blue, aqua, and white. Once again, I used a mix of Chia Chip script words and the alpha stickers from the new sticker sheet for my title, mixed with a few Tiny Text alpha stickers. Because the grey alpha stickers didn't really stand out as much as I'd like (I tried them against all of the papers), I outlined them with a black pen. 

I had my photos adhered, along with the "Rock Out" card, across the grey arrow patterned paper. But then I spent pretty much forever and a day trying to figure out how to add the music notes to the page. I tried so many combinations, and none of them looked right to me. It wasn't until I pulled out my enamel dots and started sprinkling those across that center part of the page, and adding in the music notes, that I was finally happy with it. 

One of the new products in the new collections are the Tabbies. A package full of tabs! There has always been a few tabs on the sticker sheets, and in the Paper Pieces package, but I love that we'll have a full package of them to work with now. I picked out several of them to add to the tops of each patterned paper strip in the upper corner of the page. 

Head on over to the Bella Blvd blog to check out the new Alex collection in full, and get in on a chance to win-it-before-you-can-buy-it!

Bella Blvd: Summer 2016 Reveal - Addison Collection

This week and next, over on the Bella Blvd blog, we're revealing our new Summer 2016 collections and products. There are five new Bella collections, three new Illustrated Faith collections, and a new release of Illustrated Faith basics as well. I’ll be sharing peeks at these collections here as well, along with some layouts that I created for the catalog. 

  

First up, is the new Addison collection. It's a collection geared towards teen girls, but could honestly be used for girls of all ages. There's some new products worked into all of the new collections that you'll want to check out. In addition to patterned papers, stickers, and die cut Paper Pieces, there are now Tabbies, Designer Clips, Washi Stickers, and a 6x8" paper pad that I think is going to be awesome for smaller projects.

I created a layout with the Addison collection for the catalog, and ended up using some photos I took of a friend's daughter forever ago (she was only one of my first daycare kiddos 14 years ago). I have plenty of photos of my own girls, but there was something about these photos of Alison that caught my eye. That sassy look in her eyes said "pick me for your layout", so I did :)

I think I've mentioned this before, but when doing catalog layouts, we are almost always working with mock up product. So we pick what papers we want the office to print out for us, hopefully having some sort of idea what we'll do with the pieces we picked. I knew right away that I wanted to use the feather patterned paper, and also the blue and black gingham patterned paper. 

From there, I also picked out the black and white polka dot, because I knew it would really pop against the other papers. For whatever reason, I only asked them to print me half a sheet of the black and white polka dot, and it wasn't big enough to mat under the photos and the pink patterned paper. So I had to get creative. I cut it up into smaller blocks of paper, machine stitched around the edges of each one, and then layered them under the pink patterned paper. So a little paper went a long ways. 

For my title, I used one of the Ciao Chip script words, along with some alpha stickers from the new sticker sheet. Because I had to fussy cut those alphas from a sheet of paper (mock up = no stickers, just paper), there was no way I could get the center of the letters to cut out nicely. So I added the enamel dots to the centers. 

Head on over to the Bella Blvd blog to check out the new Addison collection in full, and get in on a chance to win-it-before-you-can-buy-it! We're also revealing a second collection today, and I have a layout for that as well. I'll be sharing that one here tomorrow. 

Bella Blvd: Loving Life With Them By My Side

Hey everyone! I know it's been quite around here, but I finally have a new layout to share. I have a new two pager up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For my layout this month, I thought it would be fun to incorporate an enlargement into the design. When you have a favorite photo, let it stand out on the page, by printing it big. Really big!

This photo of my two girls is one of my absolute favorite photos of them. We were out taking some senior pics of Alyssa, and Sarah was just there to tag along with us. At some point, she wanted in on some pics too, and I mostly captured photos of them being funny and goofy together. But this one photo shows their genuine love for each other. Even though Sarah's eyes are closed in this photo, I absolutely love it. I had it printed 8x12" and adhered it to the right side of the page. 

Since my photo actually had a lot of "white space" to it (meaning nothing important in part of the photo), I ended up adding some strips of patterned paper over the left side of the photo. So my 8x12" photo ended up being more of a 6.5x12" photo. 

I printed five more photos to include, all 3x4" in size. I am a huge fan of lining up photos in rows across the page, as it fits well with my linear style of scrapbooking. I'm also a huge fan of white on white backgrounds, and love to die cut white backgrounds into my pages. Adhering a die cut white background directly to my white cardstock page adds subtle interest to the page, and just the right amount of texture for this clean and semi-simple scrapper. 

For my title, I once again did a mix of die cut words, cut from patterned paper, and chipboard alphas. The Sienna chipboard alphas are by far my favorites of the Bella chipboard alphas, as once again, you guessed it ... they fit with my linear style. 

I printed out my journaling to run under my photos, even adding a bit of the journaling to the second page to make the design flow from page to page. I pulled my patterned papers from both the Hello Autumn collection and the older Birthday Boy collection, as I specifically set out to find good navy blues, and browns, knowing that my chipboard alphas would cover the green I needed on the page. 

And to finish off the page, I kept the embellishments simple, by adding some of the IF enamel hearts to the centers of the circles on my die cut background. If you're looking for a fun challenge for your next two pager, try incorporating an enlargement into your page design. The photo doesn't have to be as big as mine here, but it's a fun size to play with if you're up for it!

Bella Blvd: Happy Birthday Cards

Hey everyone! I'm talking about birthday cards today over on the Bella Blvd blog. I don't know about you, but the cards that I need the most seem to be the cards that I never have on hand when I need them. At the top of that list is birthday cards. Once we hit May and June in this family, there are birthdays left and right, and I knew that I needed to replenish my stash if I was going to be prepared. When it comes to making birthday cards, I love coming up with a design that I can use for multiple cards - cards that I can mass produce and create assembly line style. I also love to keep these cards simple, and flat for the most part, since that makes them super easy to mail.

The first step was picking out my patterned papers for each card. I knew that I wanted a set of cards geared towards men, a set geared towards women, a set geared towards younger boys, a set geared towards younger girls, and a set geared towards teenage girls (being that I have two teenage girls myself, who both have lots of friends). I dug through all of my Bella collections, picking out a few patterned papers for each set of cards. 

I love incorporating my Silhouette into the design when mass producing cards. If I am making a single card, or even two to three cards, I don't mind using alpha stickers or chipboard letters. But when it comes to making a large amount of cards at once, using a die cut sentiment, paired with patterned paper or cardstock, is much more cost effective then using alpha stickers or chipboard, where your letters are more limited. 

I die cut the word "birthday", along with a scalloped border (sized for the width of my card), from patterned paper, and the word "happy" from cardstock. I cut enough pieces to make 20 cards, using essentially 4 sheets of paper.

I cut all of the additional pieces of patterned paper needed for each card at one time. I like to think of this as assembly line card making. Doing all of one step first (for all cards), then all of the second step next, etc. I always use textured white cardstock for my card bases, and will often leave the top part of the card as is, adding the patterned paper to the bottom part of the card. But this time around, I decided to use a lined patterned paper and a grid patterned paper for the top parts of each card. 

I started assembling the cards by adhering all of the pre-cut pieces of patterned paper to the card bases. Once I had the three pieces of paper adhered (as shown above), I zig zag stitched down the thin strip of patterned paper with my sewing machine. From there, I adhered my scalloped borders and sentiments.  

Here's my masculine card - perfect for dads, brothers, grandpas, or any other guy on your list.

Here's my feminine card - perfect for moms, sisters, grandmas, or any other gal on your list.

Here's my card geared towards younger boys - although I think this could easily work for any age.

Here's my card geared towards younger girls - although I think this could easily work for any age.

And last, but not least, here's my card for teen girls - although this could work for any age as well. It just so happens that with two teenage girls of my own, a lot of teen girl birthdays come up around here.

Because I did these cards in steps - cutting all of the patterned paper pieces at once, die cutting my sentiments and borders at once, doing all of the machine stitching at once, etc - I put 20 cards together in no time at all. I hope you'll try this out the next time you find yourself running low on a card that you know you will need many, many more of. 

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - IF She Blooms Collection

The June project sheet is up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For this month's layout, I was asked to use the IF She Blooms collection and Clear Cuts specialty papers. I'm pretty sure I was also asked to create a layout about flowers, but photos of my girls with flowers in the background was as close as I could come to that request ;)

My favorite Clear Cut transparencies to use are the white ones. I may have mentioned this before, since I do use them quite a bit. I love to use a lot of white cardstock on my layouts, and the white transparencies layer over so nicely, adding a subtle look. 

For the base of the layout, I used the fun black and white polka dot patterned paper, and adding a smaller piece of the pink plus sign patterned paper along with my white cardstock. 

I printed my photos as a collage, since I knew they would be arranged side by side on the page. They're 3x4" photos, so you could also just print out three photos and use them individually across the page. I picked out several patterned papers from the IF She Blooms collection to layer under my photos, pulling the colors from the die cut and chipboard flowers that I knew I would be embellishing the page with. 

I layered all of the patterned papers together, and adding my photo collage to the top, and then machine stitched around the edges of just the top patterned paper (the floral one). If my patterned paper layers were just a tad larger, I would have machine stitched around each layer of paper. 

I used the alphas from the Treasures & Text sticker sheet for my title, and added some black Tiny Text alpha stickers to a chipboard banner for my sub-title. 

I embellished the page with some of the flower die cuts from the Paper Pieces pack and a few chipboard flowers from the Chipboard Icons sheet. These flowers are so pretty all on their own, but it could also be fun to add some enamel dots to the centers of each flower.

You can download the June project sheet, complete with supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: Pacific Theta's Bid Day

Hey everyone! I'm back with another two pager this month on the Bella Blvd blog, and this time around I decided to scrap some photos of my oldest daughter, Alyssa. She's been living the college life for two years now, and this is the first time I've scrapped any photos from her college days. In a sense, her life is her story to tell now that she's older. I am including bits and pieces of her activities in my project life album that I started this year, so she does send me a handful of photos each month to use. And since I had all of these fun photos on hand from a sorority event earlier this year, they were just calling out to be documented. 

When I have a lot of photos that I want to include on a page/spread, I love to turn to one of my favorite photo sizes, the 3x4" photo. I printed the majority of the photos for this layout as 3x4's, and kept the two main photos as 4x6's as they wouldn't crop well to the smaller size. I then do what my linear-self loves to do, and I line them up across the page, mixing in pieces of patterned paper as well. 

I also pulled out a few of the white Clear Cuts, both stars and hearts, to layer over several of my patterned paper pieces. The white Clear Cuts are by far my favorite, as they layer so well over any and all patterned papers. Since tone-on-tone patterned papers are my go-to papers, they add a nice touch of white to them, and I'm also a huge fan of lots of white on my layouts. 

When I need a little something to fill an empty space, I love to turn to Bella's Candid Cards or our Daily Detail sheets of patterned paper. The 2x2" cards (or even the 3x4" and/or 4x4" cards depending on the space) are usually perfect for filling those spaces. I love to trim the bottom of the cards at an angle before adhering them, so that it appears they're tucked into the papers below them. Unless I was smart enough to plan them in advance, and I really did tuck them under. 

And if anyone plans on going all grammar police on me, I'm well aware that I forgot to add an apostrophe to "Theta's". I left room for it, and planned on finding an apostrophe sticker or something. And then I obviously forgot to take care of that. I make no promises that I will dig out the layout and add it on, since I know myself all too well ;)

Before I adhered my fussy cut flowers, I lightly crumbled them up a bit to add some texture to the page. I used to be addicted to pop dotting everything on my layouts, and now, I can't remember the last time I've used a pop dot. I added a little adhesive to just the centers of the flowers, so the petals all have a little lift on the page. A little dimension, without the bulk. 

I mentioned last month that I really rely on my photos to dictate the colors I use on the page. The 4x6" photo on this page was my starting point, with all of the red, blue, yellow, and white. The girl's shirts also have these super cute flowers on them, so I knew I just had to incorporate lots of flowers onto the page. 

I came across a sheet of patterned paper from a much older collection, Family Dynamix, filled with flowers in just the right colors that I could fussy cut out. Once I had that paper picked out, I went digging for my blue, red, and yellow patterned papers to mix in. I don't usually turn to just a single collection when it comes to finding papers. I like to pull from multiple collections, looking for the best patterns that fit my page/photos. I also ended up adding in a tan and a brown patterned paper, as there were touches of brown in many of my photos. 

Once I had all of my fussy cut flowers adhered to my 3x4" pieces of patterned paper, I adhered some small stickers to each for some simple embellishing. And as luck had it, Alyssa was home from college just in time to help me add the journaling, so that all of my info for her photos/story were accurate!

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! 

Bella Blvd: {inter} National Scrapbook Day

Happy {inter} National Scrapbook Day everyone! We've been celebrating all day long over on the Bella Blvd blog, with 12 straight hours of posts. You'll find 10 new projects, from all 10 of our Creative Team members, and two giveaways mixed in as well. I love challenging our designers to create "All About Me" layouts each year, when this day rolls around. I think it's important to get ourselves into our scrapbooks, and document pieces of our lives, even if it's about something silly or random.

I had a photo picked out for this layout from the start. That was the easy part, since I don't have that many photos of myself to choose from (something I'm working on). I knew I wanted to use my Silhouette for part of my title, so that was my next step. I randomly browsed thru my library, and for whatever reason, the word "look' stood out to me. I used the alpha stickers from the IF She Blooms Treasures & Text sticker sheet to finish my title, "Look, Here's The Thing". 

I took this selfie while working on my taxes earlier this year. Which explains the calculator and paperwork in front of me. Those don't tie into my journaling at all, but the look on my face goes well with what I had to say. I printed my journaling block on white cardstock and layered it in with pieces of patterned paper across the page, tucking them under my photo. I distressed the edges of all of my papers, and machine stitched around the edges before adhering them to the page.

I pulled patterned papers, and a Clear Cut transparency, from both the IF She Blooms collection and the IF Whatever Is Lovely collection for this page, as I just really love the colors and watercolored look to them. I layered the ink splattered Clear Cut over the aqua heart patterned paper for the main part of the page. I'm not the best at making random ink splatters, so I love that the work was done for me! 

I kept my embellishments simple, by adhering some chipboard flowers to a few spots on the page. I felt the layout needed a few more touches of black sprinkled around, so I added some black enamel dots to a few of the flowers. And just like that, one more layout to add to my own album! If you haven't made a layout about yourself in a while, I would encourage you to give it a go. We all have so much that's worth documenting!

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - The Zoo Crew Collection

It's the first Monday of the month, which means we've got a new monthly project sheet up on the Bella Blvd blog. For this month's layout, I was asked to focus on our new The Zoo Crew collection. Seeing as my girls are older, I can't even tell you the last time we've been to the zoo. And the zoo photos I do have are from back in my film days, and not easy to reprint. So, I had to think of someone that I could borrow photos from. 

There's little Luna! One of my daycare girlies that just moved out of state. I lucked out, as her mom had tons of great zoo photos. I thought this photo of Luna in an adorable little zookeeper outfit was perfect for this layout, and found a few fun animal shots to go along with it. 

I knew I wanted to use the white text patterned paper, with the faint grey dots, but I also wanted to tone down the pattern a bit. I layered the white chevron Clear Cut transparency over the text patterned paper and it was just what I was looking for. It helped soften the look of the text paper, while adding that extra something to the page.

I matted my photos with two different shades of green tone-on-tone patterned paper. I had picked out three different animal photos to use along with the photo of Luna, knowing I had these adorable chipboard animals to coordinate with the photos. 

I stuck with browns, greens, yellows, and oranges when it came to picking out my patterned papers, die cuts, border strips, etc. I mixed a die cut tree in with one of the chipboard trees in the bottom corner and added a few chipboard grass pieces.

The alpha stickers on the Treasures & Text for this collection are green, and didn't quite stand out enough since my title was going on the brown woodgrain patterned paper. So I created my title on a scrap of white cardstock and fussy cut around the stickers. 

I used a few of the 3x4" cards from the Daily Details patterned paper to mat the journaling block on. I finished it off with some additional die cut pieces from the Paper Pieces package. 

You can download the May project sheet, complete with supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: Adventures At Great America

I'm finally back with something to share! I had a new two page layout up on the Bella Blvd blog yesterday. We've changed on the format on the blog a bit, and left the assignments a little looser to give our designers a bit more freedom to scrap what they're inspired to scrap. In keeping a few of the regular features going, one that I felt strongly in keeping was the two page feature. I don't think you see enough two pagers anymore, yet I do believe that there are plenty of people out there looking for two page inspiration. I could be wrong about that, but I like to think I'm on to something ;)

I love to incorporate as many photos as I can onto my layouts, and two pagers are great for just that. I almost always create two pagers for things like birthdays, holidays, family get togethers, as well as vacations and day trips. And this day trip to Great America theme park six years ago on my to-do list to get scrapped and in the album.

One of my favorite ways to work lots of photos onto my pages are by creating photo collages. As a clean and linear scrapper, it's a great way to keep the photos looking organized and clean on the page. I often pick the same template to use for both sides of the two page spread, and I simply rotate the template 180 degrees for the second collage. The nice thing about using collages is that when you sit down to start creating your layout, it's almost like you're only working with 2 large photos as you plan out the design of the spread. Once I figure out where my collages will go, I just start building the patterned papers around them.

Die cut backgrounds are a favorite of mine to use, as it helps break up the look of too much patterned paper on a page (if that's a thing?). This circle die cut background is my go-to background cut, and I use it more than I probably should. I was able to cut the background from just one sheet of the tan arrow patterned paper, as I knew I could then cut that piece in half and use one half for each side of the spread.

I needed a little something in the upper corner of the first page, so I thought I would die cut this funky sun shape. I die cut the sunbeams from black cardstock, orange Strandz patterned paper, and the white stars Clear Cut, and then layered them all together. I die cut the center of the sun from two additional patterned papers, and layered those together.

I tend to keep my layouts fairly flat, without too much bulk. Even with a full seven layers of paper where the sun is placed, my layout is still very flat.

When choosing patterned papers for my layouts, I rely on the photos to dictate the colors I go with. I had a lot of black and tan in the photos, with touches of orange and green. Those colors stood out the most to me, so those are the colors that I went looking for when starting this spread. I tend to stick with mostly tone-on-tone patterned papers, as they don't overwhelm the page as much as busier patterns can do. 

For my title, I used my favorite white text Sienna chipboard alphas, along with one of the new chip script words ("adventure"), which is also white. I'm always a sucker for a title that incorporates a cursive font, alongside a clean, solid font, so I'm really loving the new chip script words.

The last thing I do is add my embellishments. I'm a pretty simple scrapper, so I usually keep the embellishments to a minimum. Enamels and buttons are some of my go-to pieces to add to layouts, as they're fairly flat and super simple to sprinkle around the page.

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - Cute Baby Boy Collection

We've got the new April project sheet up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For this month's layout, I was asked to focus on either the Sweet Baby Girl collection or the Cute Baby Boy collection. Since I had already used the girl collection for a catalog layout, I decided to play with the boy collection this time. Plus, I've got an adorable baby boy attached to me five days a week, so I knew I had photos to work with. 

I picked out this 3x4" card from the Daily Detail patterned paper to use for my title and tried it out against different patterned papers in the collection to find the best match. I ended up picking the grey squiggly lined patterned paper, which happened to be the backside of the same Daily Details paper that I got the title card from. 

I knew my plan was to layer several patterned papers under my photos, so I wanted to keep the background of the page fairly subtle. Since I'm supposed to stay away from using solid cardstock for these layouts, I've taken to using the Clear Cuts transparencies a lot, paired with white cardstock. Adds some interest, but in a subtle way. Here, I layered the silver Confetti Clear Cut transparency over my white cardstock, after spritzing my cardstock with some misting sprays.

I printed my photos as 2.5" squares, and trimmed them leaving a small white border around the edges. I tried out several patterned papers, layering them in different ways, until I found a combo that I liked. The light blue dotted pattern, the polka dot pattern, and the green dotted pattern. I cut two pieces from each patterned paper, adding a half inch to the width and length of the second and third papers, to make them all layer-able. 

I love using the border strips on my layouts, and added one along the bottom of the page, and one along the bottom of the grey squiggly lined paper on the top of the page. I added baby boy's name with some alpha stickers, and since they didn't stand out as much as I would have liked against the grey paper, I outlined them with a black pen. And since I outlined the alpha stickers, I decided I had better out line the other stickers on the page to match.

Each of my layered patterned paper strips were sized to hold two square photos. After layering the papers together, I machine stitched around each of the patterned papers. I knew I wanted to adhere the finished photo/paper strips at an angle, so I eyeballed where I needed to trim the papers so that I could adhere them right along the edges of the border strips at angles. 

You can download a copy of the April project sheet, complete with full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: Playground Antics

All this week, we've been introducing the new 2016-2017 Creative Team members on the Bella Blvd blog, and today's my turn to re-introduce myself. I'm coming up on my fifth year of working for Bella, as their Creative Team coordinator, so I feel like my introduction is mostly the same from year to year. I just change out how old my girls are, and how many daycare kids I'm taking care of. Not much else in my little life changes. Along with sharing a bit about ourselves, all of the designers are also sharing their first layouts as part of the team. Here's a little excerpt from my bio I shared today:

"I definitely have two different styles, depending what I'm working on. When I have free reign, with no particular guidelines to follow, you'll find my true style. Very linear and clean, lots of color, lots of patterned paper, die cut elements (especially titles), and simple embellishments. I love a good photo collage, and the layouts that I love the most have lots of photos on them and a story."

Yes. So, so, so very true. I've known for a while that I have two different styles. While I do enjoy both styles and the finished projects I come up with, the layouts that tend to mean more to me - the ones that I love more - are the ones that show my go-to style. And when it comes to that go-to style, I'm all about clean, simple, and not a lot of fuss. 

So that's exactly the style I worked into my first layout for our introduction week. I knew I wanted to start out with a photo collage, as that's a huge part of my style. I happen to think about these photos of the girls from years ago, playing at the park a few blocks from our house. I had actually scrapped some of these photos for a project sheet layout for Bella back in 2012 (seen HERE), but the accordian pinwheel flowers I had included on the layout had literally fell apart shortly after. Obviously, I did not adhere them together that well. Lol. I've had that layout in a pile to fix for years, and just never got to it. As much as I really did love that layout, I decided I would just toss that layout and create a new one. 

I collaged my photos together on my own (without using a template), and printed them out. From there, I started digging out some patterned papers to coordinate with my photos. I pulled out a few papers from the new The Zoo Crew collection, one from the Star Student collection, and my favorite grid patterned paper that I often use in place of white cardstock. Along the way, after adding in a yellow border sticker, I also pulled out the yellow confetti Clear Cut transparency to work onto the page as well. 

I mentioned I love to use die cut titles, and one way I love to use them is by mixing them with chipboard alphas or letter stickers. I've always said that I love a good cursive font, mixed with a clean, simple font. My favorite Bella chipboard alphas are the Sienna alphas, and I just love the navy blue ones. I die cut the word "playground" with my Cameo from the brown woodgrain patterned paper. It put up quite the fight as I was trying to adhere it to the page, and there's one part I can now see didn't get adhered quite right (the "g" is on top of the "r"), but it's on there and I consider that a win in my book. 

I usually do the patterned paper, photos, title, and journaling part of the page, and then see what I think needs to be added embellishment wise. It's usually not a lot. I've been big on using enamel dots, as they're pretty flat on the page and super easy to add on. I wanted a little something to add next to the title at the bottom of the page, so I ended up adding a few little chipboard words to finish it off. 

I hope that you'll stop by the Bella Blvd blog, if you haven't been by this week, and get to know the other nine Creative Team members. They're a fabulously talented group and I'm excited to work with them over the next year. 

Bella Blvd 2016-2017 Creative Team

It's that time of year at Bella Blvd, where we announce our new Creative Team, and today is the big day! While it's always hard to say farewell to the team of designers that I've worked so closely with for the past year, there's also the excitement of getting a new team of designers lined up and in place. We have some familiar faces sticking around from our last creative team, a familiar face that designed for us a few years back, and a few new-to-Bella designers that are just amazingly talented.

We've moved to a smaller team this time around, and have some exciting changes in the works for what you're going to find on the Bella blog here on out. We will be introducing each one of the ten designers, including myself, on the blog next week. I hope you'll stop by, starting on Monday, and get to know more about these talented designers! In the meantime, you can check out all of their blogs here:

Becki Adams | Leanne Allinson | Stephanie Buice | Megan Klauer | Gail Lindner | Krista Lund | Jamie Pate | Laurie Schmidlin | Laura Vegas - Creative Team Coordinator | Missy Whidden

A Quick Little Album For A Special Little Girl

Hey there! I know it's been quieter on the blog lately. I was doing so well for a while. I was creating more, which meant that I had more to share. Then I got a new three month old baby in the daycare, and the ninth month old baby decided he would only sleep if I'm holding him. And that, my friends, is when my life apparently fell apart. Lol. Anyways. 

One of my little daycare girlies, Luna, had her last day with me this past Friday. I started watching her exactly three years and one week ago, when she was not quite nine months old. And now, just months away from turning four years old, she's moving on. Literally, as they are moving to another state. 

I had this idea to make her a little album, so that she could have some photos of her friends to remember them. I actually had the idea for a few weeks, but it wasn't until the night before her last day that I decided to actually throw something together. 

I had picked up a little 4x4" album from WRMK a few weeks ago, just in case I did decide to create the album. I knew that I didn't have a ton of photos, so I wanted something small. I also knew that I had a bunch of little 2x2" photos already printed that I could incorporate into this size album, with the little divided page protectors. 

I started the album with one of those divided page protectors. I had some crochet hearts from Bella Blvd sitting out, that I had torn off of other projects. Since they didn't have the adhesive tabs on the back anymore, they were easy to slip into the pockets. I then machine stitched along the openings to close each pocket up so the hearts don't fall out. 

I followed the opening page with the "lucky" 4x4" clear card that I found in my stash (from Heidi Swapp) and slipped into a full page protector. I honestly don't have many photos of Luna. One reason being that she was always part time, so she wasn't around every day. And one reason being that she didn't really like me to take her photo. But I did have this really cute one from when she was smaller, so it's the main 4x4" photo of her in the album. 

I included just two 4x4" journaling cards in the album, and wrote my journaling by hand on both. Mostly because it was quicker, as I would always prefer printed journaling for sure. 

I then printed out one 3x4" photo of each of the kiddos that have been her with her over the last three+ years. All of the 2x2" photos in this album were all phone photos that I had printed a while back thru the FreePrints app. I didn't have a plan for them at the time, so I just went thru the pile and tried to find two photos to go along with each of the kids. 

I don't take that many photos of the kids these days. Not like I used to years ago, when I would have tons of photos of them, month after month. Abby here was one kiddo that I just didn't have many photos of, as she moved on a while back to preschool, and is only here during the summer. So I just included some random photos next to her photo.

When it came to filling the pockets without photos, I ended up turning to my Bella Blvd stash. While most of the collections do contain a few 2x2" cards that can be cut out from one of the patterned papers, some of the older collections had Candid Cards, which contained lots of smaller 2x2" cards to choose from. 

Most of the cards, I simply slipped in the pocket and that was it. There were a few cards that I did add an enamel heart too, because they were simpler cards that seemed to need a little something extra. 

Next to the 3x4" photos of the kids, I added a piece of star patterned paper. I actually cut 4x4" pieces of white cardstock for these pockets, and adhered both the photo and the patterned paper piece, and then machine stitched along the edge of the photo.

I found a coordinating tab to go with each kid's photo, pulling them from the Paper Pieces from some older collections. I tucked those under the side of the photo before doing the machine stitching. 

I also added each child's name to their photo, using some alpha stickers. Easy peasy.

This is a super simple album. Like I said, I threw it together in just about two hours, start to finish. I kept thinking I should add more, to bulk it up a bit. But in the end, I decided it was just enough and that Luna would love it. 

I snapped this photo of Luna, and three of the other kiddos that were here on her last day. These are the four older kids, and the ones she always played with the most. So it was nice that they were all together on her last day. I printed it out during their naptime, and slipped it in the last page of the album. 

Luna's mom said that Luna loves her album. She told me that she was trying to get a photo of it, but Luna wouldn't let go of it, and that she even slept with it Friday night. So cute. I'm really going to miss that girl.

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - Sweet Sweet Spring Collection

Yesterday was the first Monday of the month, which means that a new monthly project sheet went up on the Bella Blvd blog. For this month's layout, I was asked to use the new Sweet Sweet Spring collection. I decided to go with some photos of the girls coloring easter eggs years ago, as I'm fairly certain I have never scrapped these before. 

I printed my photos as 2x4" pics, which isn't something I do very often. But I had the idea of doing four strips of patterned papers and photos across the center of the page, with an extra smaller strip of patterned paper mixed in, so the skinnier and taller photos were in order. 

I picked out several of the tone-on-tone patterned papers to use as the strips my photos would be on, and then picked one of the busier patterned papers to use on it's own. I also cut a strip of a aqua dotted clear cut transparency to layer over the aqua grid patterned paper, to give it a bit more interest. 

I added a few border strips along the top and bottom of the page. The yellow dotted border strip and the "happy easter" border strip, both along the bottom of the page, and a thin piece of the aqua dotted border strip along the top of the page. 

The new collections all come with newly designed Paper Pieces, which are filled with a variety of die cuts that are all ready to add to your projects. I knew I wanted to add several of them to the page, and pulled out the easter eggs, a few banner pieces, tabs, and flowers.

I didn't have any of the chipboard to work with for this layout, and I wanted something a little larger to fill the upper left corner of the page, so I fussy cut the cute little tree from a 3x4" card on the Daily Details patterned paper. 

For the title, I used the purple alpha stickers from the Treasures & Text sticker sheet and some alphas from the Tiny Text alpha stickers. I went back and forth on what color to use for the "fun coloring" part of my title, and settled on navy blue, since there were touches of it in the busier patterned paper strip and my photos. 

I added several of the die cut flowers down my busier patterned paper strip, and added some enamel dots to the centers of several of the flowers, as well as sprinkling them around the rest of the page. 

You can download a copy of the March project sheet, complete with full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: First Day Of School

After a two month break, we're back with the Spread It Out feature today on the Bella Blvd blog, focusing on two page layouts. I went back and forth on what I wanted to do for my layout this time. At one point, I was just randomly scrolling thru my Silhouette library, looking for a fun cut file to jump out at me, and I eventually found one. I've had this circle/star cut file for years (it's from Pink Paislee), and have never used it. I just knew it would be perfect for a school layout. 

And I happen to have some first day of school photos in mind. These photos were scrapped on a layout I created for Creating Keepsakes magazine years ago. It was almost six years ago when I created the original layout, seen HERE, which was for an assignment that led to a very bulky and heavy layout. I actually had it pulled out and in a pile to re-create at some point, because it was just too bulky for my taste in the albums. 

I was able to pull the photos right off the old layout, and use them as is. This saved time, since if I had printed these again, I would have most likely re-edited the photo a bit, or I would have wanted to include more photos than just these four. Any time I can just grab photos and start saves me a ton of time. This also helped with the decision making, as to where the photos would go on the spread, as I kept them pretty much the same design wise. 

I sized the circle/star cut file to fit the left side of the first page of the spread, knowing that it would fill up a lot of the page. I cut it from black cardstock, and also cut out a few extra stars, thinking I would add them to the other side of the two page spread. Once I had most of the page planned out, and I knew where my patterned papers would go, I went back and cut out a few circles from the coordinating patterned papers to add to the large circle/star die cut. 

When it came to picking out my patterned papers, I turned to the Star Student collection first, and pulled out the few patterned papers that would match my photos - the black text, aqua stars, and navy blue dotted patterns. I was pulling my colors straight from my photos, using the colors of the girls shirts and backpacks. So I also added in the green dotted patterned paper and the pink woodgrain patterned paper. 

I also die cut the "first day" from black cardstock, for my title. I knew I wanted a mix of cursive die cut words and clean looking chipboard alphas. Once I had everything laid out, I realized the only way my "first day" really fit was to have the word "first" split between the first and second page of the spread. I don't usually cut things in half, between pages. But it had to be done. And just now, as I'm typing this, I realized that I forgot to dot my "i". Oops.

I knew I wanted to keep the entire center of my spread simple, so that the photos and the circle/star die cut would stand out, but I also didn't want to leave it plain white cardstock. I knew the typewriter Clear Cut transparency would work out great for my background. 

That loopy part of the "y" is part of the reason my title had to be split between pages. I had to find an empty space in my photos for it to fall. Those extra stars that I die cut came in handy too, and luckily, my guesswork on the sizing worked out perfectly.

I used both green and navy blue Sienna chipboard alphas for the rest of my title. It was a great way to work in a little more green onto the page, since I didn't have much green elsewhere. 

My original page had some large silver brads added to the center of punched stars. Since I had pulled them off that old layout, and had them out, I figured I might as well use them on this page as well. It was all the extra embellishing I needed for this spread. 

Sharing My Own School Album

  

So, if you missed my post from a few days ago (seen HERE), I shared a bit about how I decided to put together a school album of my own. And I promised I would come back and share the completed album. Actually, it's an almost complete album. I do have a few small things to finish. But I wanted to share what I do have done, in case I drag getting the last parts done. Be warned, I'm probably sharing way too many photos in this post ;)

I mentioned before that I was doing an 8.5x11" album. The one that I'm using is a Modern album from American Crafts, with the black fabric spine. I actually went to the same school, Fremont Christian School, for my entire thirteen years of school. So I was actually thinking of using my varsity block letter on the cover of the album, since it applies to everything in the album. The more I thought about it, I will probably just adhere it to the inside cover of the album. The photo on the right shows the little zipper pouch that contains the stuff I have left to work into the album. It's not much, which is a good feeling. More on that stuff at the end of this post. 

  

I gave a little look in my last post at the basics that I had for most of the grades. So a lot of these grades look pretty much the same. The flow of the album mimics how I do my girls school albums in many ways. In what order I have things arranged, and what I'm including. Of course, with my own album, I'm basically using whatever I was able to find. 

  

I started each grade with the divider pages I created (and I talked about in my last post). I followed that with my school photo, so you can see my photos thru the transparency divider pages. I think I was able to find 8x10" photos for all but three years, and for those I had 5x7" photos. 

  

I adhered my school photo to white textured cardstock, and added a few torn strips of washi tape to the top and bottom. I used the same black w/white polka dot thin tape though out the album to make it simple. 

  

On the backside of the cardstock with my school photo, I adhered the class photos. On these, I added a few torn strips of washi tape to the top and bottom as well, but I used a black and white chevron design. 

  

After the class photos, I added in any awards and/or certificates I might have earned. All of my certificates had been taped into a "scrapbook" of sorts that I made back in high school. So they all have some scotch tape on them that I can't peel off. Not a huge deal. 

  

Most of these awards and certificates were smaller than 8.5x11", so I adhered them to white cardstock and added a few staples to each corner of the certificate just for fun. And only once, did I actually staple thru a photo that was on the other side without realizing it. Lol.

  

Following the awards and certificates came the report card. I love that these things were saved! I think I was only missing one report card from thirteen years of school. The comments are funny to read too. Most of them were along the lines of "Laurie needs to learn to talk", as I was super, super shy in my earlier years.

I pulled out some older Bella Blvd patterned paper, with a hand drawn grid design, and matched up the colors to the color of the divider for each grade. I adhered my report cards to this patterned paper, and added some rough pen lines to "frame" the report cards. Some of the report cards had info on the backside that I didn't want to hide by adhering the report card in place, so I just stapled the inside page to hold it in place, and that allows it to be flipped up to read. 

  

And yes, while my name is Laura and that's what I prefer to be called, I was always Laurie to my family and that's how I was known at school as well. And my last name was ALWAYS spelled wrong, even on report cards and certificates. 

  

Once we hit junior high, they did away with the class photos. Kind of sad. I did however find some spring school photos that were taken, so I just added those in, in place of the class photo. 

   k

Why was the double photo thing even a thing? Two of me in one photo? So weird. Lol. I know at the time, it was new and trendy, and I'm sure we all thought it was so cool looking. Tell me some of you have these types of photos too? Please tell me that ;)

   

It looks like eight grade is where I started to have a little more going on, which meant I had more certificates and awards. Plus, we had eight grade promotion, which led to a few extra papers.

  

Good old high school. I played varsity girls soccer for four years (although my girls would make me point out that we only had varsity, as I went to a VERY small school, so there was no JV team for girls soccer), yet my freshman year was the only year I could find a soccer team photo for. That made me sad. Freshman year was also the year I got my varsity block, seen at the beginning of the post. 

  

And I would need to pull out my yearbook to be absolutely sure, but I think they changed the school colors at the end of my freshman year. Our colors had always been brown and orange. It was awful. We all hated wearing orange. Then it was randomly changed to maroon and gray. 

  

I had also taken piano lessons for years, and from what I could see, I started working that into school as well around the eight grade. So I had some piano awards, ribbons, and evaluations. The ribbons are just slipped in there, as they were snug enough that they're not going to move.

  

For a few of my high school years, I had two report cards. I didn't see one that showed grades for both semesters, so I just stapled both report cards together on the cardstock. 

  

All of these things, if they weren't 8.5x11" in size, were adhered to white cardstock before slipping into the page protectors. There's a few of these that open up, with more info inside, so I did those the same as the report cards, and stapled the inside part so you could still open them up and/or flip them over.  

  

So, here's a weird fact. We weren't allowed to dance at our school. They didn't believe in dancing, as they believed it led to things that shall not be talked about (what they taught should be saved for marriage, if you see where I'm going with that ;)). So we never had dances or proms. Yep. I have never been to a prom. Sad. 

But we did have JSB's, which were "junior-senior banquets". Where we got to dress up, had a nice dinner, and do something random like listen to a comedian. True story. Anyways. I had some wallet photos from friends of mine from the JSB, so I slipped them into a divided page protector. I love that we all used to write on the back of the photos to each other, before trading. I have some additional things to add in here, that are at the end of this post. 

  

Ummmmm. Yeah, I had big hair. What's it to you? Lol. The thing that makes this ok, is that we ALL had big hair, so I was in good company. It was just an 80's thing. 

  

For some reason, I couldn't find much for my senior year, as far as awards and certificates. Maybe I didn't do anything that year. I know I did more then just work on the yearbook (the one award I did have), but there's no proof to show here. 

I also had wallets for the JSB again, as well as senior photos from friends. So I included the ones that I could find in the divided page protectors. 

  

As for what's left to work into the album? I have an assortment of photos from eighth grade promotion. They're all different sizes, and some are good and some aren't. But I do want find a way to work them in. I might just collage them as best I can onto a sheet of cardstock and call it a day. We'll see. 

I also have JSB photos from both my junior and senior year. I have a 5x7" photo taken there, some candid shots taken before leaving the house, and a few photos with friends. I'll work these in somehow too. 

  

From senior year, I have quite a selection of photos from our senior trip, which was to Disneyland and Catalina Island. I have the program from Grad Night, as well as my ticket. I'm quite impressed that I saved those. I also have my senior announcement, programs from Baccalaureate and graduation, and some photos from graduation as well. All of these will get worked into the album in some way. 

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And I think that's it! All in all, this really didn't take me much time to put together once I had everything pulled together and organized. I spent a few hours last weekend getting it all put together and everything adhered and in place. It's a simple album when you get right down to it, but I just love that I have this album to look back on. All of those school memories in one place. A great reminder of why I take the time to keep my girls school albums organized, keeping all of the important things from each year and the things that I think they'll enjoy looking back on years from now. 

The Making Of My Own School Album

School albums. How many of you have dedicated albums, or some other set-up, to keep all of your kid's school memorabilia together and organized? I've done quite a few posts over the years sharing the school albums that I have put together for the girls (you can read all of those posts HERE). I set up all of the albums in 2009, and it's been so easy to keep up with them over the years and add to them a few times during each school year. 

But what about creating a school album for yourself? It's probably not something I would have though to do. That is, until I came across a good amount of memorabilia from my school days, forever and a day ago. I don't have much of anything from my younger years. My parents may have some stuff, but I don't. One thing I do have here is my baby book, and inside I came across all of my school report cards and some class photos. And way back in the day (like when I was in high school), I had "scrapbooked" all of my school awards I had received over the years. If by "scrapbooking", you mean taping them down on papers in a binder. 

  

About a year or so ago, I took all of those class photos, awards, certificates, and report cards, and sorted them out by grade into an 8.5x11" album. I literally just slipped things into page protectors, thinking that at some point, I would do a little something with it all. And a few weeks ago, I finally got the motivation to work on this album. 

To get myself started, I decided to die cut each grade with my Silhouette to create dividers in the album. I used the School Years kit and School Years: Add On kit from Kerri Bradford Studio for the grades and cut them all from black cardstock. For these cut files, you can also cut the actual year on it's own. Like "second" from "second grade". So I cut the actual year from white grid patterned paper, and layered them together. 

  

For my divider pages, I decided to use the Confetti Clear Cuts from Bella Blvd. They come in 14 colors, and I needed 13 (for Kindergarten thru Senior year), so I just took out the gold and used all of the other colors. I quickly learned that if you're making a divider page for an 8.5x11" album, you do NOT cut your transparency (or whatever you're using as a divider) down to 8.5x11". Duh. You want to measure your actual page protector and make it that same size. Once I had all of the Clear Cuts cut down to the right size, it was time to adhere my die cut grades to the transparencies. 

I debated on a few ways of adhering them, but finally decided that the easiest, and most secure way, would be to run them thru my Xyron machines. This covers the entire die cut with adhesive and it's my go-to way of adhering die cuts. You do tend to get a good amount of adhesive "boogers" once you remove the die cut from the backing and adhere them in place. What I usually do, is after I've adhered the die cut down, I go back and use this little erasure type thing to rub any excess adhesive - aka "boogers" - from around the edges of the die cut. 

I quickly learned that it doesn't work like that when you're adhering to a transparency. Those "boogers" don't wipe away. So I took the time to clean up all the edges of the die cut grades before removing them and adhering them. A little time consuming, but I like using the Xyron since I know my pieces will stay in place and not fall off. 

  

Once I had the dividers finished and added into the album, it was time to get to work on the rest of the album. I happen to call my mom, as I was hoping she had some photos from my 8th grade and high school graduation that I could add into the album. I ran over to her house and she pulled out a few albums for me to take home and go thru. I was thrilled to find all of my official school photos in those albums. You know, the ones taken at school that cost way too much. 

I started sorting my school "headshots" into the right years. Some didn't have the years or grade written on the back, so I would match them up to the class photo, as it usually includes the exact same photo. I even pulled out a few high school yearbooks to make sure I had the high school photos in the right years. I had a drawer in my scraproom that had some additional school years stuff, so I pulled all of that out as well. 

The photo up there on the right shows the basics that I had for each year. My school photo, a class photo, and a final report card. 

  

For most years, I also had some awards or certificates in there as well. For a few years, I also had a spring school photo and decided to use it, since those same years were my junior high years, where the class photos officially stopped. My high school years had a little more "stuff" to them, as I was a little more involved. OK, not really that involved, but I did some activities ;)

I'll be back in a day or two to share my completed album with you!

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - Valentina Collection

It's the first Monday of the month, which means we have a new monthly project sheet up on the Bella Blvd blog. This month, I was asked to work with the Valentina collection and to make a layout about someone I love. I'm not a huge lovey-dovey person, yet it seemed like the obvious choice to create a layout about Joe. 

I picked out a few patterned papers that I wanted to use, and cut four large squares to arrange in the center of the page. I was originally going to use one of the patterned papers as the base of the page, but once I ended up using it in the center of the page, I went with a gray cardstock instead. I rarely use cardstock, other than white, but I really love how it looked in the end. 

I layered the white cardstock onto the gray cardstock and machine stitched around the edges. For the four large squares of patterned paper, I did my machine stitching around the edges before adhering them to the page. 

I knew I wanted to use the new Chip Scripts chipboard words for my title, and picked out "love you always'. I cut a piece of the ombre patterned paper, focusing on the lighter pink parts of the paper. I sized it to fit my title, machine stitched around the outside edges before adhering the entire piece to the center of the page, slightly over lapping my photo.

I cut a few pieces of borders from the Borders patterned paper to add above and below the title piece, and also cut a few 2x2" and a 3x4" card from the Daily Details patterned paper to add above and below the little border strip pieces. I finished off the page with some white chipboard hearts, stickers, and red enamel dots. 

You can download the February project sheet, complete with a full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet - Bella Bows

I'm finally back with something new to share. The January step-by-step project sheet went up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For this month's layout, I was asked to focus on the Bella bows. If I'm being totally honest with you all (and I always try to be!), I'm really not a bow person. So I really haven't used the bows all that much, since they came out a year ago. 

 

So I ended up using them in a pretty simple way - by lining a handful of bows up across the page. Since I wasn't asked to use a specific collection, my patterned paper options were wide open. I have this little drawer where I store photos that I print for one reason or another, and then don't end up using. So I started out by just digging thru those photos to find one I could use for this page. The photos of Alyssa that I decided to use are some of my all-time favorite photos of her, and I liked that I could incorporate a lot of black and white into the page. 

I started with the white/black ruled patterned paper from the IF Whatever Is Lovely collection, as it makes a great background paper. I dug out a few green patterned papers, to play off the green in the photos, and then mixed in pink just because. The papers are a mix of IF Whatever Is Lovely, Fresh Market, Family Frenzy, and Valentina collections.

I already had the 5x7 photo printed, so I simply printed two more photos as 2x3's to add to the side of the page. I don't do layouts with just a single photo that often, so I try not to do it much for the project sheet layouts either. And by adding a few smaller photos, it also gave me a few more places to add some stickers for extra embellishments. 

I used the pink dotted alpha stickers from the Fresh Market collection for my title. Which I admit, I got the title from the sticker by the two smaller photos. 

I also added a piece of the pink confetti Clear Cut transparency along the bottom of the page, which added a fun touch, layered over the white/black ruled patterned paper. It helped bring in some more pink to the page in a light and fun way, instead of adding on a "heavy" strip of pink patterned paper. 

You can download the January project sheet, complete with full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.

Bella Blvd: CHA Winter 2016 Reveal Week - Chip Scripts

Today I wanted to share the layout I created for the Bella Blvd catalog, focusing on the new Chip Scripts. I mentioned in yesterday's post that I love working on the embellishment focused layouts for the catalog, since I get to mix patterned papers and other elements from all of the new collections, rather than focusing on just a single collection. This applied to this layout as well. I used quite a few patterned papers from the new IF She Blooms collection, and then added a patterned paper from the Sweet Baby Girl collection and the Sweet Sweet Spring collection.

I knew right away that I would use this black & white striped floral patterned paper from the She Blooms collection. I only had them print me half a sheet (I worked with mock up product for these), as my plan was to use it along the top of the page. I spritzed it with just a little bit of white misting spray as well, and added some black enamel dots to the centers of the flowers on the patterned paper.

I started playing around with some different options for my title, using the five sets of Chip Scripts, and came up with these two words to combine. I love the script font on "fabulous", mixed with the chunkier, block font of "memories". And when I laid them on the black & white striped floral patterned paper, they ended up looking perfect to me.

I also wanted to work in a few of the "love" chipboard words. I had a few different ideas in mind, but once I had printed out my 5x7" photo (of my gorgeous niece, Jovaughnna, from when I took her senior photos several years ago), I found that I could fit two of the "love" words along the side of the photo. By adding in a chipboard heart, they were the perfect fit.

And while you can certainly alter these chipboard words/letters to make them any color you want (and it was something that I thought I would end up doing), for this layout, I decided they looked just right in their natural state.

I layered a piece of the white chevron Clear Cut transparency over the yellow dotted paper, which I had first spritzed with some black misting spray. My favorite of all of the Clear Cuts are the white ones, as they add such a subtle look by simply layering them over a patterned paper.

I quickly realized that I should have asked for a full sheet of the black & white floral patterned paper, so that I could fussy cut a cluster of flowers to add to the bottom of the page. Luckily, one of the 3x4" journaling cards had a floral cluster on it. So I fussy cut that out, and made it work down in the corner, next to my photo.

Head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, HERE, to see the entire Chip Scripts reveal, piece by piece, and to enter the drawing for a chance to win-it-before-you-can-buy-it! The randomly chosen winners for ALL of the reveal giveaways will be announced on Saturday, January 9th.