Laura Vegas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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