Laura Vegas

Tackling Christmases Past: Holly Jolly Christmas & Merry Christmas

November 23, 2014

I'm back with a few more Christmas layouts, from my "Tackling Christmases Past" project. I shared my first two completed layouts HERE, and finally finished up a few more, after taking a small break for some fall themed projects. This first layout documents our family get-together, with my side of the family, from Christmas 2008.

I used the same collage template for both sides of the spread, but just flipped the template for the second page to mirror the template on the first page. This template is from Kerri Bradford's Storyboard #6 kit, and it's one that I have used many, many times.

I'm not one that feels locked into using typical holiday colors when it comes to scrapping holiday photos. Which is a good thing, since my family doesn't always dress in typical holiday colors. I let the colors in my photos guide me and ended up with a navy blue, red, an aqua color scheme.

My patterned papers are all from My Mind's Eye, both old and new. I've been pulling out my two favorite border punches quite a bit lately, one a basic scalloped border punch from Stampin Up, and one a fun scalloped border punch (seen here) from Fiskars. I punched my border strips on this layout from the same patterned paper as I was adhereing them to, which added a small subtle touch of interest.

I die cut my title using my Silhouette Cameo again, along with a few stars to add some simple embellishing to the pages. I actually went searching for some buttons or brads to add to the die cut stars, but the enamel dots were sitting there and were so quick and easy to add, so I used those.

An embellishment that I have a HUGE supply of, but don't use hardly at all lately is ribbon. Not sure why I never turn to it, but I decided to pull some out for this layout. It's just two simple pieces of navy blue polka dotted ribbon, but on a layout that is pretty much all photos and paper, it adds a little texture.

I really need to go back and add the years to these layouts, since I didn't do that on the first three. I stuck a post it note on this one, so I would know what album to put it in when I get around to putting layouts away in albums.

And here we have a layout documenting our family get-together, with my side of the family, from Christmas 2009. We almost always celebrate my side of the family at my parents house. However, they have a dog and Alyssa is highly allergic to dogs. So whenever we're over there, she usually feels pretty miserable. This was the one year that we celebrated at our house. I hardly took any photos, mostly because we were all so crowded in our small family room.

I used two different collage templates from Kerri Bradford's Picture That [Go Long] kit for this layout. They were both the same size, which made them easy to line up side by side, on the two pages of the spread.

All of the patterned papers, including the red glittered die cut paper, are from Little Yellow Bicycle. I was doing a purge of my patterned papers recently, and I almost got rid of these papers. I'm glad I didn't, since a lot of the ones I was going to get rid of, I've been using.

I die cut my title, along with a Christmas tree, using my Silhouette Cameo. And I pulled out my scalloped border punch, adding border strips to break up the photos and patterned paper on the pages.

I picked out a photo of each of the girls, and printed them as 3"x5" photos, so I could tuck them above the photo collage on the second page.

So, looking back at my original post on this project, I had photos and collages printed to complete 6 two page layouts and 3 single page layouts. I now have 4 of those two page layouts done, so I'm doing good so far.

I almost got hung on these layouts, when I realized how similiar to the first two layouts they looked. Paper strips on the bottom and sides, photo collages going across the two pages, title on top, etc. But then I remembered what I said about how I'm totally fine with these layouts looking similiar in design. That's the beauty of not feeling like I have to re-invent the wheel on all of these Christmas layouts. The entire point was to take something that I don't necessarily enjoy scrapping, and get-it-done. And that's exactly what I'm doing.
Scrapbook & Cards Today: They Are All Mine

November 19, 2014

I randomly came across this layout in my files and realized that I hadn't shared it yet, so I figured I would toss it up today. I created this for the fall issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today. If you haven't checked out the issue yet, you can view it for free, RIGHT HERE. And just a head's up. The winter issue will be available on December 5th!

I worked on the PageMaps sketch column for my layout. And just in case you saw the issue, and my layout, and thought to yourself "Laura sure doesn't know how to follow a sketch", I just wanted to mention that the wrong sketch got put next to my layout. Lol. This is the sketch that I worked with.

I got to work with the Me-ology collection from Fancy Pants for this assignment. I've always been a huge fan of Fancy Pants, and was excited to work with some of their newer stuff. I choose my patterned papers pretty quickly, as I was drawn to the black, orange, pink, and aqua color combo. I also love the corrugated paper that comes in the kit. Since I love to incorporate a good amount of white in so many of my layouts, I knew the white corrugated paper would work well in place of regular cardstock.

One of the things that I've always loved about Fancy Pants is that their collections have TONS of great embellishments to choose from. I wanted to use one of the fun envelopes, and this orange one was the perfect size to fit into the sketch.

Part of my assignment was creating a visual triangle on my page. The sketch has three clusters of embellishments, and I kept with the circle theme when creating my clusters. I knew I wanted to use the coordinating buttons that came with the collection, but needed them to fill up more space. So I used a few circle punches on the solid papers in the collection, and layered them together before adding a button, die cut, or badge to the centers.

I'm pretty sure this layout has more layers and pop dots on it than most of the layouts I've been making lately. I've noticed that I go back and forth between adding tons of texture and dimension, and keeping things simpler, and flatter. Kind of nice to switch things up I guess.
Kerri Bradford Studio: Give Thanks Tags

November 17, 2014

I have a new project up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. This month, Kerri asked us to focus on the theme of "gratefulness" for our projects. I really went back and forth on what I wanted to do, flipping between a layout, mini album, or some sort of altered project. The altered project finally won out, and I'm glad it did, because it turned out better than the layout I actually started and then tossed.

I think it's such a fun Thanksgiving tradition to have each member of the family write down what they're thankful for. The last time my family did this, however, was five years ago. I did create a layout with all of those hand written notes (created two years ago for another Kerri Bradford Studio project), which you can see HERE. And last week, for my Bella Blvd project sheet layout seen HERE, I showed another way to include those notes on a layout.

I thought I would do things a little differently this time, and create some fun tags for everyone to write on, jotting down some of the things that they're thankful for when we get together for Thanksgiving dinner.

I originally sized these tags so that they were roughly 3" x 4" in size, thinking that I could then simply slip them all into a divided page protector and stick it right into my family albums. I still really like that idea, as it would keep them all together, could go side by side next to a layout (if I had any photos from the day), and wouldn't take up my space.

But in the end, I wanted the tags to be larger in size. They ended up being 3.5" x 5.5", which isn't that much larger, but just felt a lot larger than the 3" x 4" ones that I tried.

To start, I cut a handful of tags, using Kerri's Holly Jolly Christmas kit, from kraft cardstock. I ran each tag thru a dotted embossing folder and then spritzed it with brown misting spray.

I machine stitched around the outside edges of the tags a few times, and then I also decided to draw some rough lines around the outer edges with a brown pen.

I picked out some fall patterned papers (all from Bella Blvd) and used a leaf cut from the This & That: Gratitude [Just Shapes] kit to cut leaves from both the patterned papers and some white cardstock. I ran the white cardstock leaves thru a woodgrain embossing folder, even though it ended up not being that noticeable once I layered the leaves together on the tag.

I also cut some little banners, taken from Kerri's Banners kit, from white cardstock, which I layered over the leaf on each tag. I was originally going to use brads to secure the folded ends of the banners together, but decided that some tiny staples, using my Tiny Attacher, were much quicker.

I used tiny alpha stickers from Jillibean Soup to add family member's names to each tag. Everyone will know exactly which tag is theirs, and they can write on the backside of the tag, listing the things they're thankful for this year.

I still need to create a few more tags, as I only started with twelve of them, and one got tossed in the process. We actually don't have set plans yet for Thanksgiving, so I'm not really sure who all will be around. But I have a good amount started.

I also wanted to have a place to store these tags, and came across this cute little burlap bag at the craft store. It was the perfect size (about 6" x 8") to slip all of my tags into. I cut a piece of kraft cardstock for the front of the bag, and used a few glue dots to lightly position it on the bag where I wanted it. I then hand stitched a button to each corner of the cardstock to secure it to the bag.

I don't plan on this being handled a lot, so having only the corners secured is ok with me. If I was worried about it staying in place, I would probably add some more hand stitching around the edges to really make sure it stayed in place.

I used the same patterned papers for the front of the bag that I had used for the leaves on the tags, so that everything coordinated. I pulled the "thanks" from Kerri's Giving Thanks kit, and cut it both from the navy blue woodgrain patterned paper and white cardstock.

I could have done the entire phrase "give thanks" from that kit, but I wanted to include a chunkier word along with the cursive word. So I used Kerri's Weathered Door Alpha kit to cut the word "give". I had an extra banner laying around, so I added that on there as well, along with the year.

And just a funny little backstory on these photos. I usually take the easy way out and photograph projects in my scraproom, plopped right on the table. I'm not big on staging photos, mainly because I just don't have the time or the space. I had to take these photos while the daycare kids were napping, which meant my only option for good natural light was to go outside. I have this piece of wood that I bought a while back and painted with black chalkboard paint, with the intention of using it to photograph cards. I knew it would work well to photograph this project.

But I also knew that I wanted some leaves in the photos. We don't get much "fall" around here, but I do have a few trees in my front yard that drop a good amount of leaves this time of year. My backyard, meanwhile, has NO leaves. I wasn't about to try and photograph this project in the front yard, as I live on a busy street and have some questionable neighbors (and a few very nice ones). So I scooped up a container of leaves from the front yard and dumped them on the grass in the backyard. All to get a few good photos. But I think it paid off, since it made my project look so much better than if it had been sitting on my boring black desk 🙂
Bella Blvd: Step-by-Step Monthly Project Sheet – Hello Autumn

November 11, 2014

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means that it's time for another step-by-step monthly project sheet to go up over on the Bella Blvd blog. This month, I focused on the new Hello Autumn collection and was asked to create a Thanksgiving Day themed layout.

We don't really take photos on Thanksgiving. Not sure why not. Might be because we're usually running in different directions, to different family get-togethers, with different sides of the family. That being said, a few years back I did take the time, during two different family get-togethers, to take photos of each family member, as well as have them all write down what they were thankful for.

The photos you see on this layout were from that same year, and I have already created a layout with them, as well as our handwritten notes. You can see that layout HERE. But I knew it would make for a great project sheet layout as well, and since I didn't have any newer photos to use, let's just imagine I created this for another year 🙂

Since I create single page layouts for the project sheets, I thought it would be fun to create a few smaller "pockets" on one side of the page that you could tuck your handwritten thankful notes into.

To create the pockets, I cut pieces of three different patterned papers. I then cut a small strip (the same width), folded it over the top of the larger piece, and adhered in place. I machine stitched across the smaller strip, to give the illusion of a pocket. When adhering these "pockets" to the page, I only added adhesive along the sides and bottom, which left the top part open for tucking things into.

I decided to include my immediate family members on this layout, which include Joe, myself, and the girls, as well as my parents, my brother, and his wife. It worked out to a nice even number of photos, otherwise I would have added my sister on there too (she lives out of state, so she's not with us every year at the holidays).

I printed the photos roughly 2.5" x 2.5" in size, and changed them all to black and white. I started with a strip of the blue woodgrain patterned paper (LOVE the woodgrain patterns in this collection!), and then arranged my photos in two rows, starting at the top of the page.

I knew this would leave me enough room across the bottom of the page for my title and some embellishments. The beige triangle patterned paper in the collection is a great neutral paper for backgrounds. I adhered a strip of that across the bottom of the page, that I first spritzed with a bit of tan misting spray. I used a combo of navy blue letter stickers and brown chipboard letters to create my title.

I have to admit that I don't always turn to the more "cutesy" chipboard pieces in some of the Bella collections. But I couldn't resist these little turkeys! They were too cute to not use.

There are several fun tags and journaling cards in the Paper Pieces die cut package that would be great for having family members write down what they're grateful for. You could also use small pieces of patterned paper or cardstock, cut into tag shapes. I also slipped a few feathers into the pockets, right along with the handwritten cards, just to add a fun touch.

I actually just wrote these out super quick (I did manage to convince Sarah to write one for me), just to give an idea of how they would look tucked into the pockets. If anyone were to pull these out in person, you'd find that only that top section is written on. The rest is blank. Lol.

To download the November project sheet, which includes a complete supply list and step-by-step directions, just head on over HERE.
Tackling Christmases Past: Hello Christmas and Christmas Love & Joy

November 5, 2014

I'm back to talk more about tackling Christmases past. If you haven't yet read my post from Monday, you might want to read that first, since it explains the why, what, and how about how this project started. You can check it out HERE.

I worked on my first two double page layouts last weekend, to share for my feature on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog today.

On this first layout, from our 2013 Christmas get-together with my side of the family, I got a total of 18 photos on my two page layout. I mentioned this in my previous post, but I really do aim to get the majority of my photos on the page. And I did just that here. I still had some photos left over that I didn't use, but most were duplicates or photos that looked very similiar.

When I have lots of photos to include, I will often create a 12×12” photo collage for one side of the two page spread. I then create a smaller collage to include on the opposite page of the spread, which still gives me room to include a bit of patterned paper, my title, journaling (if I feel it’s necessary), and a few simple embellishments.

***When I first started thinking about tackling this project, I had THIS layout in mind, as I just loved the overall design.

Knowing that I wasn’t going to have room to add a ton of product really helped narrow down my choices as far as what I wanted to include. I stuck to 3-4 patterned papers for each layout. I have picked up some Christmas papers here and there, and have some olders ones in my stash as well. I looked thru all of those first, and then if needed, will find everyday papers to fill in the gaps.

I picked out three patterned papers from Simple Stories for this layout, and you can see that they're really not themed papers, but more simple patterns. You'll also noticed that I hardly used any patterned paper at all. I only needed a few strips of patterned paper to add to the page, and then I did use the same patterned papers to die cut my title as well.

My first choice for my titles was to die cut them with my Silhouette Cameo. These layouts end up being pretty "flat", especially since one side of the spread is just a large photo collage. So the die cut title keeps with the look. Also, I just really, really love die cut titles! Although I am open to mixing in some stickers or chipboard alphas if I decide I need them.

When it came to embellishing, I knew I would keep it simple by using brads, buttons, and a few basic punches. I also have a small stash of Christmas themed embellishments, both old and new, that I may pull from if they coordinate. These tags are a great example. They're from My Mind's Eye, and I've had them for about two years. They matched the Simple Stories papers so well, it's like they were meant to be used together. Those came jus as you see them too. The layered tags, with the brads already there.

I pulled the 4×4" "Be Merry and Bright" die cut card from the Simple Stories collection as well, as it matched the cream/yellowish patterned paper that I used for my title. It also helped fill up the space on the left side of the page, since I wasn't going to add any journaling.

Journaling. I guess that's something I should mention. I almost always journal on my layouts, even if it's something short and sweet. But I don't necessarily feel like I need to journal on these Christmas layouts. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I should be writing something down. When you get down to it, our family Christmas get-togethers are a lot alike. We're usually at my parents house, it's the same family members (every few years, we get a few extra family members that visit from out of state), we do the same gift exchange game, and eat a lot of the same foods. I feel like if I were to journal on these pages, it would be the same thing every year.

Both of the photo templates that I used on this layout are from Kerri Bradford's Storyboard #7 kit. This smaller template isn't too tall in size, so that I still had plenty of room to groove at the top of the page. I did combine a few of the openings in the template, since it was originally set up for 8 photos, and I only used 6 photos.

This was mainly because of the orientation of my photos, and not being able to crop them all down small enough to fit the smaller openings. So I just combined two openings, in several different places, in order to fit a wider photo. I actually did a video tutorial on this a few years ago, which you can view HERE.

This is by far my favorite photo template to use when I want a full page collage. Like I said, it's from Kerri Bradford's Storyboard #7 kit. That kit has another full page template as well, but this one just seems to work really well for my photos, while not making all of the photos too teeny tiny.

I always adhere these full page photo collages to a sheet of cardstock, just to make them a bit more stable. I know they get slipped into an album, so it's not that they necessarily need the extra stability. But it definately helps when I'm trying to photograph them.

My second layout is from our 2012 Christmas get-together with my side of the family. I used the same 12×12” photo template as I used in the first layout, but I used a slightly different template for the smaller collage on the first page. I then added two individual 3×4" photos right above the smaller photo collage, for a total of 20 photos on this spread.

But that wasn’t enough, as I still had leftover photos that I wanted to include. Some years I take more photos than others. This was one of those years.

So I also created two 6×12” photo collages, using Kerri Bradford's Picture That: Go Long kit, which I am including in a 6×12” page protector that will be inserted between these two pages in my album, for a grand total of 29 photos. Kind of hard to see here, as the photos all blend together, but it's there.

I feel like the photo of my brother in the orange cone hat really clashes with the rest of the page. Lol. There's a story behind that. And it's not even a hat. It's been traveling around our family for years, and is sort of an inside joke 🙂

I used a mix of die cut words, using my Cameo, and chipboard alphas for the title on this layout. See that word "love" there? It's such a skinny little outline word, but I love it. I was running it thru my Xyron sticker maker thing, and it totally ate it up. It was a jumbled mess. But I really didn't want to re-cut it, since I had already put my Cameo away and really didn't want to set it all back up again, dragging my laptop back into my scraproom.

So I did the best I could to un-jumble the word and re-shape it, as most of the backside did end up with adhesive on it. It doesn't look perfect, but it's good enough for me. And I even told myself that "no one will ever know, except for when you tell them all about it on your blog". Lol.

The silver chipboard alphas were from the dollar section at Target last year. I’m pretty sure I bought about 14 packs of them, because silver was all the rage at the time, and because I loved the font. And because they were only a dollar. I know, I know. By buying so many packs, they soon became a $14 purchase, but you know you need several packs in order to spell out anything when you only get one of each letter in the pack. Lol. It felt nice to actually use a few of them!

Instead of adding a simple strip of the black text patterned paper along the top of the page, I used a scalloped edged banner punch to create the fun row of flags across the top of the page. I also wanted a bit more silver to tie in with the chipboard letters, so I used my scalloped border punch on a sheet of silver glittered paper to create a thin border strip to add along the side of the page.

Personally, I have no problem with having layouts that look very similar in my albums. Usually, these layouts don’t end up next to each other, so it’s not going to be super obvious that I used the same basic page design. This is especially true with Christmas layouts, since they’re a full year apart in the albums.

I figure if using the same basic design, some of the same elements, and even the same photo templates helps me tackle something that I’ve been avoiding, then it’s all good. I would rather create quick and easy pages and “get it done” … then to keep pushing these photos and memories aside, all because they’re subjects or themes that I either don’t enjoy doing, or am too overwhelmed to dig into.

I'm hoping to have a few more of these to share next week, if all goes as planned. Stay tuned.
Tackling Christmases Past

November 2, 2014

So. Christmas. I always feel terrible when I say this, but I honestly don't enjoy scrapping Christmas. I mean, I do create Christmas layouts here and there, but it's only when I'm forced too. I try and get out of it as much as I can, if I'm being honest. I have no idea why this is. There's no real explanation for why I avoid it, since I really, really do love Christmas.

I got this weird urge last week to work on getting all of our Christmases documented and in the albums. I started by simply going thru our family albums and seeing what Christmas layouts I actually have. I have dividers in our albums to seperate the years, so it was easy enough to go to the end of each year to look for Christmas and see if I had anything.

And what did I find? Well, I did find a few single page layouts that were Christmas related and that had meaning. A layout about how I decorate for the holidays, and a few layouts specifically about the girls. I also found quite a few layouts that I could totally do without. Most of these were created for assignments, and when you get right down to it, they didn't have any real meaning behind them. I mean, they weren't fake layouts or made up journaling. But they didn't really line up with how I would normally scrap the photos. If that makes any sense.

But what I was mainly looking for, were layouts that documented the actual holiday itself. Christmas morning with the girls, family get togethers, etc. Because that's really what the bulk of my Christmas photos revolved around. I found TWO layouts that actually documented a family get together. Both were two page layouts, with lots of photos.

Granted, I only went back to 2006, since that was when I went digital. I do have some Christmas layouts from earlier years, but I'll have to go back to those later and see if they did the job of documenting our holidays in the way I'd like them to be documented.

This is what I like to see. Because if I'm going to create Christmas layouts, I'm going to aim to get our entire Christmas celebration on the page. Like I said. I don't particularly enjoy scrapping Christmas. And I am not one to do a large number of layouts every Christmas, with a single photo, or maybe two or three photos on a page. If I'm going to take the time to scrap Christmas, I'm going to use ALL the photos at once, and "get it done". That just sort of goes in line with my style and how I like to scrap. I love to use lots of photos. As many as I need to tell the story, or document an event.

I decided to tackle Christmas, as I had a little break in my scrapbooking schedule and needed a new project to keep me busy. I started organizing our 2006-1013 Christmas family get-togethers and Christmas mornings with the girls. These were the years that were digital, so that's where my focus was.

The first thing I did was make sure I had even edited the photos I had taken. I had several years where I had edited a few random photos, so I finished editing all the rest. I had a few years where I had edited all the photos, but they needed to be re-edited (my editing has improved greatly over the years). And I had a few years that were edited and ready to go.

Then, I started creating photo collages. Lots and lots of photo collages. I had a plan to get all of these photos, from 8 different years, scrapped quickly and without much fuss. And that plan heavily revolved around photo collages. It's the best way to get LOTS of photos on your pages. And I know I say this all the time, but it's a great way to get LOTS of photos on your pages, in a neat and organized way. I like clean looking pages, and photo collages are great for just that.

Of course, creating photo collages can take quite a bit of time. For me, that's usually because I spend too much time trying to find the template I want to use, that's just perfect for fitting all of my photos into. I try to keep in mind the orientation of my photos when looking at templates, knowing if I have more verticle or horizontal photos, and also whether many of my photos can be cropped into squares (since squares can be very common in templates). My goal is usually to get ALL of the photos included. Unless I have some that are very similiar, and then I'll pick the best ones to use.

As for what templates I use, that's an easy one. My go-to collage templates are from Kerri Bradford Studio. Kerri has such a wide variety to chose from, and I can always find a template to fit my needs. I quickly realized that I had a few favorites, as I found myself using a few of the same ones over and over. They just seemed to fit what I had in mind well, and held a good amount of photos, which was my overall goal.

And here is what I ended up with after a few days work (not all day, just here and there). What you see here is 6 years worth of photos (2 more years are still in the works), which include 6 family get togethers and 3 Christmas mornings with the girls. I created 16 photo collages, which included a total of 143 photos. And from this, I will end up with 6 two page layouts and 3 single page layouts.

Boy, did it feel good to see these all printed out and ready to turn into layouts! I felt so accomplished just having the photo collages done. And as of today, 2 of those two page layouts are already completed. I'll be sharing them later this week. I'm determined to finish up the rest over the next week or two, as I don't have much scrapping stuff on my plate right now.

And I thought I would leave you with a quick photo collage printing tip. I can only really speak for ordering from Costco, since that's where I have my photos printed if I'm not printing at home. And seeing as I don't have a large format printer, I get all of my enlargements printed there, including my 12 x 12" prints. This may apply to other online printers as well, since I know a lot of them warn you that you will lose a slight amount of your photo in the printing process.

This is an example of a 12 x 12" photo collage, using one of Kerri's templates. The collage to the left shows what happens if I upload my collage as-is. I created it, sized it to 12 x 12", uploaded it, and printed it. It has a small white border going all the way around the outside edge. Well, that got chopped off entirely.

Which is why I always size my finished collage down a bit. For the 12 x 12", I resized it to 11.7 x 11.7", and then placed it onto a 12 x 12" canvas, flattened it, and then uploaded that to order. That guaranteed me a nice white border going around the outside edge of my collage.
Chickaniddy October Guest Designer: Thankful

October 27, 2014

I wanted to share my last layout I created as the October guest designer for Chickaniddy, using their new Scrumptious collection. I worked with their October sketch for this layout, which went up on their blog last week.

I love a good sketch, and this one worked so well with my style. Every now and then, I'll be given a sketch to work with, and my first thought is "what am I going to do with that?". Lol. It's always nice when a sketch goes hand in hand with your style.

I usually follow sketches pretty closely, since I love having the work done for me, but I like that they still give me the freedom to change it up a bit to fit my needs. I knew I wanted to include a larger focal point photo on my page, so I added in a 4×6" photo in the upper left corner and moved my title to the bottom right corner of the page. I also eliminated the tag, with the journaling, since I didn't want anything covering my main photo.

I am a big fan of using 2×3" photos on my pages, along with a larger photo, so I loved that this sketch had room for several smaller photos. I printed out four smaller photos, just like the sketch shows, but I really went back and forth on using them all, or just two or three of them.

I can't lie. I struggled with this layout for days. I kept pushing paper and photos around, trying to get something to "click". I had some flowers that I had die cut with my Silhouette, and tried really hard to work them onto the page. But in the end, I tossed them. I finally decided to create this little cluster of die cuts and stickers above the smaller photos, and was happy with how it turned out. And yes, the "No. 1127" is upside down, but the other side of that frame was white, and I wanted the aqua part to show 😉

While the Scrumptious collection might not have been my first pick to go with these photos I took of my cousin and his family, I love that the denim patterned paper in the collection really tied in with the photos. From there, it felt natural to incorporate the rest of the gorgeous colors in this collection, even though at first glance, they wouldn't have been something I'd have grabbed.

I want to thank Heidi and Pam again for inviting me to guest design for them this month. It was a true pleasure!
Bella Blvd: Spread Your Wings And Fly

October 23, 2014

Once a month, over on the Bella Blvd blog, we do a "Trends" feature where I choose something that's trending in paper crafting (scrapbooking, card making, etc) and a few of our design team members incorporate that trend into their projects. This month, I decided to focus on hand cut titles and/or sentiments (for my card designer).

I've been seeing a ton of hand cut titles lately, in all different shapes and sizes. I love the ones with the big, chunky letters, each cut from a different patterned paper. It adds such a fun feel to the page. I'm not sure how others go about cutting these letters. Just randomly cutting away with scissors? Drawing the letters first, and then cutting them out? Using a hand drawn alpha cut file and "cutting" them out with a die cut machine? All great ideas, I'm sure.

I know myself and I know that I cannot just randomly start cutting into paper and end up with cool looking letters. I have to plan things out. I had envisioned creating my entire title using hand cut letters, and using a variety of patterned papers. In the end, I decided to only use hand cut letters for one word of my title, and use chipboard alphas for the rest of the title.

Once I had my chipboard alphas all arranged on the page, I knew how much room I had left to fit in my hand cut letters. I knew I was cutting the word "wings", so I placed a sheet of tracing paper over the page, and simply wrote the word "wings" to get the sizing right. Then I used a pencil to sketch out the shape of each letter, erasing and re-sketching as needed.

Once I had them looking fairly decent, I cut each letter out from the tracing paper. I flipped them over and traced them onto the backside of my patterned paper. One reason being that I was using a dark brown woodgrain patterned paper, so it would have been hard to see my tracing. The other reason was that I didn't have to worry about cutting inside the lines, since when I flipped over my letters, any pencil marks left wouldn't show.

Since the base of my page is pretty simple (little bit of patterned paper, white cardstock background), I knew I needed to add a little something-something to the page to spruce it up. Bella's feathers are easy to add to projects, and don't add too much bulk, which is nice. And they definitely add some interest. It also felt like they just "fit" on the page, since my title involved wings and flying.

I tucked two feathers under my photo, so that just the ends were sticking out. I didn't want to overwhelm my title too much, so I just wanted the feathers to peek out a little. Once I added the feathers to the right side of the page, I felt like I needed to add some on the left side to balance it out. That was a little trickier, since I hadn't left myself much room to work with.

I ended up putting a good amount of adhesive along the edge of the cardstock and pressing my feathers in place really well. I put adhesive all along the patterned paper strip as well, and pressed that down on top of the feathers really well too. Then I trimmed off what was hanging off the edge. Not necessarily perfect, but it worked for the most part.

I finished off the page with some wooden buttons and a few enamel dots. Oh, and some journaling about my gorgeous girl. I actually had more that I wanted to say, but since I didn't really leave myself much room (journaling is almost always the last thing I think about), I kept it short and sweet.
Kerri Bradford Studio: Wicked Cute Dude

October 17, 2014

I have a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I had a pretty good idea that I was going to scrap these photos of Mateo for my next layout for Kerri. Whenever I'm printing photos at home, and have space left on the page, I just print out random photos that I think I might want to scrap at some point. And in between printing photos out for numerous other projects, and adding one of these photos each time, I finally ended up with three photos to use on a page.

But then Kerri came out with her new All About Fall kit, and I really wanted to use it, seeing as it's fall and all. Except that we don't really have "fall" here where I live (I'm positive that I've mentioned this 842 times before!). The kit has great words for pumpkin patch layouts and Halloween layouts, but I've scrapped my "good" pumpkin patch and Halloween photos to death. Any older ones that might still need scrapping are from the film days, and would involve seaching for negatives and having re-prints made. Too much work.

After looking at this kit a few times, the word "wicked" caught my eye. It dawned on me that I could use it along with the photos of Mateo. I came up with the title "wicked cute dude", which fits him perfectly. Because he is seriously the cutest little boy ever! We've been loving on his cuteness, since he first started coming to our daycare when he was just a few months old. And he's only gotten cuter and cuter as he's gotten older. I still can't believe he's going to be 3 years old in a few weeks!

I took the word "dude" from the Urban Dictionary kit, and used Kerri's Weathered Door Alphabet [All] kit to create the word "cute". The Weathered Door alphas are still a favorite of mine, since I can do my favorite combo of a script or hand drawn word and a chunky block font for my titles.

I wasn't really sure what I would do when it came time to pick out patterned papers, which is where I usually start my layouts. Two of the photos have a lot of color going on, since I took these photos looking down on Mateo, playing with our Little People toys. For whatever reason, I pulled out my Plus One collection from Amy Tan first, and decided that I loved the aqua, orange, grey and black color combo with the photos.

These star stickers came about very randomly. I've been doing a little purging in my scraproom lately, and just last week I cleaned out a few baskets of stickers and rub-ons. I have some super old stuff that I just can't seem to part with. But I also never think to use them, as I don't often take the time to dig thru my stash when sitting down to create layouts.

As I was cleaning, I came across these old Sassafrass stickers, and while most of the stickers on the sheet are ones I would never use, these two star stickers matched my papers, so I decided to use them. And if you look at the first detail shot I shared, you'll see I used a cloud sticker from the same sticker sheet. I didn't think it matched as well, but decided to use it anyways. I added a few black enamel dots to distract from the "tape" on the sticker that I felt was distracting.

I love that Kerri has a huge variety of kits loaded up with hand drawn words, script words, cursive words, as it's so easy to find just the mix you're looking for, for any given project. You can find the majority of her kits containing her handwritten words right HERE.
Bella Blvd: Step-by-Step Monthly Project Sheet – Halloween Magic

October 14, 2014

Our October project sheet went up on the Bella Blvd blog today, featuring our new Halloween Magic collection. I've been creating these monthly project sheet layouts for over three years now, so this is actually the forth Halloween project sheet layout I've done for Bella. Add in all of the Bella Halloween layouts I've created for CHA's, catalog work, and other promotions, and it's no wonder that you keep seeing the same Halloween photos on these layouts. Lol.

I created this layout right after working on a layout for another assignment (for something non-Bella), where I had used lots of small squares of photos and papers. I knew right away that I wanted to go with the same small squares in my design, which would be a great way to use lots of the fun patterned papers in this collection.

I added a 12" strip of the grey woodgrain patterned paper across the page, keeping it the same height as my small squares, to hold my title. The Chipboard Icons package has these colorful "Halloween" alphas, and then I used the black number stickers from the Treasures & Text sticker sheet.

I added some chipboard embellishments and stickers to some of the patterned paper squares. To add a little more interest to the squares, I added some random machine stitching to some of them, before adhering the embellishments.

I love the green and white against the black polka dotted background paper. I used my favorite scalloped border punch on the green star patterned paper to create four border strips. I trimmed them down so they were just a tad bit shorter than the width of my white cardstock, and then tucked them under the edges before machine stitcking around the outside edge of the white cardstock.

I think I need to retire these Halloween photos, since I'm pretty sure I've scrapped them 2009 times. I know, 2009 is the year I took them, but it still feels like I've used them one too many times. Only problem is that my girls don't dress up for Halloween anymore, and haven't for a few years now. So it's the last set of photos I have to pull from. I need to find new kids, I suppose 😉

To download our October step-by-step project sheet, with complete supply list and detailed instructions, click HERE.

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