Laura Vegas

Hey everyone! I've got two things to share with you today. First off, I have the second half of my guest blogger post up on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog today. On Monday, I had shared a layout inspired by a Pinterest image, and that layout included feathers. Today, I am sharing lots of tips and tricks to working with and adhering real feathers to your papercrafting projects. You can read more HERE!

And speaking of feathers, I realized that I never got around to sharing my last Winter CHA layout from Bella Blvd. Which is kind of strange, since it was actually the first layout I made of the bunch. It includes feathers, so it ties in well with what else I've been sharing this week.

I created this layout for the catalog, and I was asked to make a "awesome layout with as much of the new product as possibe". I love a good challenge! I started with these photos that I had taken of Holly, my good friend Deneen's daughter (one of four daughters). I knew they would be neutral enough with the colors to go with any product I picked out.

Then I started picking out patterned papers. I set out to pick at least one patterned paper from each of the four new collections. The green dot paper is from the Sand & Surf collection, the aqua chevron paper is from the Freestyle Sophisticates collection, the pink hearts paper and the black ruled paper are from the Love And Marriage collection, and the striped paper is from the Engaged At Last collection.

I cut strips of varying sizes from each patterned paper and pieced them together on a sheet of white cardstock. I added a strip of the new black chevron designer tape across the top of the page, and also used some torn strips of pink and aqua designer tapes on other areas of the layout. We didn't release any new buttons, but I knew I had to include a few of the fun black text buttons to help embellish the page.

I choose three of the new feathers to include on the page: black, green and aqua. I also picked out some of the new crochet hearts to use. I had only gotten a few color packs for my CHA work, so I decided to stick with all pink hearts, since they matched the best.

I layered the feathers together and stapled them in place. I used my tiny attacher on the ends of the feathers, since I knew I wanted those staples to show. I actually added some staples further up on the feathers to help secure them better, knowing that I was going to add this "I love you. The end" sticker (from the Love & Marriage collection) on top of the staples to cover them up. I adhered the sticker to a scrap of cardstock first and cut around it, which made it much easier to adhere the sticker with pop dots over the feathers.

For my title, I used a mix of the new green Sienna chipboard alphas, the new black alpha stickers from the Engaged At Last collection, and some new aqua High Five alpha stickers.

Oh, and I also snuck on a few of the new flags from the Engaged At Last collection. Almost forgot about those. I think I did a pretty good job at representing each of the new collections as well as each of the new embellishments.