Laura Vegas

It's the first Monday of the month, which means it's time for a new monthly project sheet layout to go up on the Bella Blvd blog. For this month, I was asked to focus on the Make It Merry collection. This is a smaller collection than most Bella collections, as it is meant to pair up with our Christmas Cheer collection from last year. I set out knowing that I could bring in a few other pieces if needed, but I ended up sticking to just the Make It Merry collection.

As for the handsome little boy, that's Zachary, my cousin's son and a cute kiddo that I also had the pleasure of taking care of for a few years when he was little. When I looked at this collection, these photos of him were the first ones that came to mind, and I knew they'd be perfect.

I also knew right away that I wanted to use white cardstock for the background of my page, so that the reds and greens of the patterned papers would really stand out. I just love how the black star Clear Cut transparency looked laid over the white cardstock, and it picked up the touches of black in the Santa patterned paper. I adhered the Clear Cut using glue dots along the top and bottom edges, and I also added a few glue dots to the center of the page, as I knew my photo/papers would cover that up.

I then added some strips of pattered paper and the scalloped border stickers along the top and bottom of the page, which covered up the glue dots along those edges. I machine stitched along the top and bottom as well, to really secure things.

I picked out three patterned papers – a green tone-on-tone print, a red with white triangles print, and the cute Santa print – and layered them one on top of the other, along with my photo collage. I printed my collage as a 5×7", so you could easily use a single 5×7" photo instead. I thought the little tab stickers worked really well tucked into the different layers of papers.

For my title, I used the white alpha stickers from the Treasures & Text sticker sheet, along with the red Amorie chipboard alphas. I was worried the white alpha stickers wouldn't show up that well, once I had my white background picked out. But since I partially layered them over the patterned papers, it worked out.

I love to distress the edges of my patterned papers on most of my layouts. It takes no time at all, and adds a lot of texture to the page, so the papers don't appear so "flat". I also machine stitched around the edges of each patterned paper, before adhering the entire layered piece to the center of the page.

You can download and/or print a copy of this month's project sheet, complete with a full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.