Laura Vegas

Today, over on the Bella Blvd blog, we are releasing our July project sheet, featuring the All American collection. If the layout looks familiar in any way, it's most likely because I have already scrapped these photos several times. Once was using this same collection, but for a layout I created for Kerri Bradford, and once was for a Bella project sheet two years ago, using a different collection.

It's just part of being a designer I guess, where oftentimes you re-scrap photos for the sake of an assignment. This happens to me a lot with holiday type projects. It's not like I take patriotic photos every year, and anything I have from when my girls were younger involve digging out negatives and getting reprints made, which is a huge hassle. So I re-scrapped 🙂

I decided to work with a grid design again for this month's project sheet layout. This could easily be done in an actual divided page protector as well. It would fit perfectly in the Design F page protectors by Becky Higgins. The only product that did not come from the All American collection was this 4×6 grey dot patterned paper piece, which is from the Scattered Sprinkles collection.

I picked out several patterned papers from the All American collection that I wanted to use, and cut 3×4" pieces from each one. I only added machine stitching around a few of them, as I figured it wouldn't show as well on some of the busier patterned papers.

I lined up my 4×6" title card, and two 3×4" patterned papers along the top of the page. I printed four 3×4" photos to line up across the center of the page. And then I lined up four more 3×4" patterned papers across the bottom of the page.

I embellished a few of the 3×4" patterned paper pieces with chipboard accents and flowers I fussy cut from the Cute Cuts patterned paper. I added a threaded button to each of the flowers, and for once I even included the green leaves, since I had a lot of green going on in my photos.

Speaking of photos. Want to hear a little "behind the scene" drama about this layout? Out of nowhere, my photo printed decided to start printing my photos with streaks in them, and the colors were really off. After trying twice to print my photos, I gave up and just used the ones with streaks on them. I knew I most likely won't even keep this layout, since I've already scrapped these photos, and I just didn't want to waste more of my good photo paper and expensive ink on trying for perfect photos.

So that meant I had to digitally drop my photos onto the layout after I photographed it. Which luckily was pretty easy on this particular layout. Of course, I did not even attempt to digitally add my photos to these detail shots, so if the photos look different, that's why.

And can you believe that I hand journaled on this page?!?! It's a very, very rare occurance to see me hand journal on anything. I'm not a huge fan of my handwriting most days. This might be because I actually write very little in my day-to-day life, so when I DO have to write something, I'm out of practice. But it was a heck of a lot quicker to just jot something down, pen to paper.

You can download our July project sheet, complete with supply list and step-by-step directions RIGHT HERE.