Laura Vegas

Scrapbooking And A Little Bit Of Everyday Life

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Bella Blvd: Loving Life With Them By My Side

June 23, 2016

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 8×12" 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 8×12" photo ended up being more of a 6.5×12" photo.

I printed five more photos to include, all 3×4" 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

June 13, 2016

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

June 6, 2016

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 3×4" 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

May 26, 2016

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 3×4" photo. I printed the majority of the photos for this layout as 3×4's, and kept the two main photos as 4×6'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 2×2" cards (or even the 3×4" and/or 4×4" 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 4×6" 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 3×4" 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!
Christmas Card Album

May 17, 2016

It's May and I'm here to share about Christmas cards. Go figure. I've been saving the Christmas cards we receive from family and friends for years, always with with the intention of finding a cool way to store/document them. I've seen several ways that intrigued me, but never one particular way that really, really spoke to me.



I had to dig these two phone photos up from my external hard drive, so I can verify that I started my plan back in January of 2015. For years, I had simply shoved all of our cards into Ziploc bags and scribbled the year on the front with a pen. At some point, I came across some 6×12" envelope pages from Becky Higgins and I realized what a simple solution they would be to storing the cards. I simply slipped all of the Christmas cards from a single year into an envelope page and POOF, I was done.



The envelope pages had a little pocket on the front for labeling. I believe they're about 3×4" in size. I created some 3×4" digital cards in Photoshop, using several different designs from Kerri Bradford Studio. I could probably tell you exactly what I used if you really wanted to know, but I made these well over a year ago, so it would take a little digging for me to figure that part out.

Well, this past weekend, I was putting finished layouts away in albums, and I came across all of the completed envelopes. I know my intention was to add them into our family albums for each year, right along with the Christmas layouts. That was my plan all along. I guess I just never got around to that part.



While that plan could still totally work, I realized that adding these into my albums would add quite a bit of bulk to albums that aren't really that bulky to begin with. That's when I came up with a new plan. I could put them all into a 6×12" album. A Christmas card album, you could call it. Since that's what it would be 😉 I am fairly certain that there are a few 6×12" albums out there, but for the life of me, I couldn't find them. I didn't spend too much time searching though, once I remembered that I have a large stash of 12×12" Modern albums from American Crafts.

And being that these albums are chipboard, they're super easy to cut down to whatever size you need. Earlier this year, I had my mom cut one down to make a 9×12" album for my Project Life album (which I should really share soon). To figure out where to cut them, you just want to add in the page protectors (or for this project, the envelope pages), and mark with a ruler where you want to cut it. Make sure to give yourself an extra quarter to a half inch of wiggle room, and not cut directly to the edge of the protectors/envelopes.

As for how to cut them? Well, my mom has a table saw and they were done in about 10 seconds flat. So if you have access to a table saw, it's the perfect and easiest way to do it. You could also use a hand saw or even a knife of some sort.



And there's my completed 6×12" album. I had my mom cut down two green albums, which hold seven years of cards already and still has plenty of room for at least 3-4 more years. At some point, I'll label the spines of the album, so that I know what they are on the shelf. But it felt really good to get this project done in about 15 minutes (had to drive a few blocks to my parent's house after all), and get all of those loose envelopes corralled and in a home.
Bella Blvd: Positively Love Watching Her Play

May 12, 2016

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

May 7, 2016

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!
Kerri Bradford Studio: {inter} National Scrapbook Day

May 6, 2016

This coming Saturday is {inter} National Scrapbook Day, and all this week there's been fun stuff going on at Kerri Bradford Studio, leading up to the big day. She's got something different on sale each day this week, as well as announcing a few new items! Kerri's design team has been sharing new inspiration all week long, and today I've got a new layout up!

A week ago today, I had one of my favorite daycare dudes, Mateo, leave me as he moves on to preschool. He's been with me since he was just 4 months old, and is now an awesome 4 1/2 year old. I made sure to get a good photo of him last week, as I was preparing an album full of photos for him to take with him on his last day. I loved seeing one of the first photos I took of him alongside the last photo I took of him, and knew that I needed to create a layout using both of them.

I wanted to create a white on white background for this layout, and I knew that I wanted to incorporate lots of stars. I used one of Kerri's basic star cut files to fill an entire page of stars to cut from my white cardstock. I ended up cutting two full sheets of stars, and only had a few leftover.

I adhered the stars in rows on another sheet of white cardstock, adding the adhesive to the center of the stars only so that they weren't fully adhered to the page and had some dimension and lift to them. Once I had all of the stars adhered, I spritzed the entire page with navy blue and green misting spray.

When I went to pick out some patterned papers for this layout, I had a few specific papers in mind from Pebbles. I didn't find the ones I was thinking about in my stash, but I did find these super old patterned papers from boy collection that I had always loved. So all of the papers on here are from Pebbles, but nothing that you'd be able to find these days (unless they're hiding in your stash as well!).

I cut a few tabs from the Simplicities: Best Thing Ever kit to tuck under each photo, so that I could add the year and Mateo's age to go along with the photos. I dug thru a lot of my alpha stickers for adding the year and age, but was having a hard time finding stickers that were small enough for the allowed space. Good thing I still have a ton of Making Memories stickers on hand, as they're always perfect for little spaces like this.

I had a few title options in the works, and kept playing around with them to see what stuck with me the most. I actually had a totally different design in mind for this layout when I started, but once I finally decided on my title, it changed up my plans a bit. I settled on using the "forever" from the Grateful kit and "always" from the This & That: Family kit, adding in a few letter stickers (from Jillibean Soup) to complete the title.

I wasn't sure how I was going to print my journaling, until I remembered that I had created another layout with a punched star background a few years ago (seen HERE). I went to see how I had added my journaling to that layout, and realized my go-to journaling strips would be perfect.

Mateo has been gone for just one week, and I miss him something awful. He really was the life of this house, in so many ways. And not just with the daycare kids. Even within our little family. He was part of our family in a sense, as he was here so much. It's been a long time since I've had a main kiddo leave me, especially one I was so attached too. But he's doing good, and that's what matters. It's part of the job. You spend so much time with them, helping raise them into little persons. And then you send them out into the big world of preschool and kindergarten, and hope that they remember you years from now. But my little Tator Tot had better come back to visit me or else 😉
Bella Blvd: Step-By-Step Project Sheet – The Zoo Crew Collection

May 2, 2016

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 3×4" 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

April 29, 2016

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.