Laura Vegas

Scrapbooking And A Little Bit Of Everyday Life

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Bella Blvd: Step-by-Step Monthly Project Sheet – Scattered Sprinkles & Summer Squeeze

August 13, 2014

It's the second week of the month, which means it's time for a new step-by-step project sheet over on the Bella Blvd blog! This new one went up Monday, but I'm just now getting around to sharing it. For the August project sheet, I was asked to use the Scattered Sprinkles collection and the Summer Squeeze collection together.

I picked out a few patterned papers from each collection to mix together. I used the yellow star patterned paper and the green lime patterned paper from the Summer Squeeze collection, and the aqua dot patterned paper and the black dot patterned paper from the Scattered Sprinkles collection. And as I often do, I added in some of the grid patterned paper to give myself some white to work with.

I used the black alpha stickers from the Scattered Sprinkles collection, along with some tiny red High Five alpha stickers, to create my title. The chipboard sun is from an older summer collection, and I pulled out some coordinating buttons as well.

I clustered several stickers together in the bottom right corner, pulling them from stickers sheets from both the Scattered Sprinkles collection and the Summer Squeeze collection. I even added a few pieces of designer tape in there, which I haven't been using as much lately for some reason.

I pop dotted the "Summer Checklist" sticker and then tucked a few label stickers along the top. I often add brads onto these stickers, to mark off the things that applied to the story. This time, I took the easy route and simply checked them off with a pen.

You can download our August project sheet, complete with supply list and step-by-step instructions, RIGHT HERE.
Kerri Bradford Studio: Framed Prints

August 10, 2014

When Kerri asked us to "think outside the box" for our projects this month, my mind immediately went to wall art. I have quite a few walls that need a little something to complete them, but I decided to focus on the kitchen instead. Well over four years ago, I re-did my kitchen, and I picked out a ton of picture frames to display in the area above my kitchen cabinets. It's taken me forever to actually fill those frames.

In fact, over a year ago, I did a post about the status of those frames, which you can read HERE. It's kind of funny, yet kind of pathetic, that so many of those frames remained totally emtpy for almost four full years. I'm so glad Kerri inspired me to work on getting them all filled up.

I put in a request to Kerri for a kitchen/food themed kit of her fabulous hand written, brush script words, and she came back a few days later with her new Tasty kit. I did come across some other words and phrases in other kits, and even some of her freebies, that would have worked for this project. But I really love the kit Kerri put together, so I stuck with that kit for my word choices.

Because these frames sit high up in the kitchen, I knew that I really didn't need to spend time cutting out the words and piecing paper products together to fill those frames, as no one would be seeing them up close. So I decided to make some digital prints, using the PNG files of her designs.

I love the chalkboard look that is so trendy right now, and knew that I could use the hand drawn brush script words to give that same sort of chalkboard look I was going for. I love adding in black and white prints, canvases, and photos in my home décor, since I have a lot of light oak furniture that I can't do much about right now. Adding in lots of black around my home has helped balance out those lighter items.

I pulled up two different black digital patterned papers to use as my backgrounds. I actually ended up using the same patterned paper for almost all of my prints, as it just worked really well and had a bit of a distressed look to it.

I created the "canvases" I'd be working on, depending on the size of the frames. To be honest, I did this step several times, as I looked up at the frames on top of the cabinets and just sort of eye-balled what size they were. And turns out, I eye-balled wrong on a few of them. I ended up with an 8×8" print, a 10×10" print, a 12×12" print, and a 10×13" print. For each of these, I pasted on the digital black patterned paper to fill the canvas.

I then added one of Kerri's overlays from her Magicalness kit to each canvas, placing it over the black digital patterned paper. I did lower the opacity to about 20% to make the overlay a bit more subtle, and so that my word would stand out more. I stuck with the polka dot overlay, the chevron overlay, the diagonal stripe overlay, and the heart overlay.

I then added my word of choice to the center of the canvas, changing the color overlay to white and adding a small drop shadow to the word as well. I sized my words as large as I could to fit the space. Once I was done, I flattened all my layers and uploaded my final prints to Costco and placed my order.

I also put together the "get in ma belly" print, which used the same basic design idea, but has a different look since it's not black. I pulled the yellow damask patterned paper from Kerri's Love: Every Little Thing kit, and added a digital ruled line overlay along with a heart overlay from the Magicalness kit.

I went with a little different look for this frame, which is on a little ledge by my countertop. I loved the "breakfast", "lunch", and "dinner" words from the Tasty kit and wanted to use them all together on a print. Btw, this was the one print that I used the second black digital patterned paper on. It had a bit of a paper bag look to it.

I added the little hand drawn boxes found in Kerri's Design Secrets Class Extras (if you haven't taken this class, you can purchase the kit thru today as part of her birthday celebration sale). I was debating putting something in those boxes, like a check mark or something, but in the end my family thought it looked good as-is. So I left it.

I love how simple and easy these were to complete. Because I stuck to the same basic idea, and used lots of the same elements (the same black digital patterned papers, the overlays, and hand drawn brush script words), I was able to create these in just minutes once I had the idea down.

I also created two BIG prints for my family room, using the exact same ideas. I went with two 18×24" prints, and I just love how they turned out. I pulled the "gotta love this" from Kerri's Something To Say kit, and the "be your self" from Kerri's Happy Stuff kit.

Knowing that you can use Kerri's cuts as digital files as well opens up a world of possibilities for creating your own wall art and home décor! I love what these have added to my home.

And don't forget that today is the last day of Kerri's 4th birthday celebration sale. She's offering 30% off the entire store on all orders over $15 – just use coupon code BIRTHDAY4 🙂
Scrapbook & Cards Today: First Day Freshman Year

August 6, 2014

Around these parts, today is back to school day. I know that might seem early to some of you, but we did finish the last school year right before Memorial Day. So the kid have had almost two and a half months off. I'm not going to lie. I'm excited to get back on a regular schedule, where we have more structure and purpose to our days. It's a bit different this year, since for the first time in eleven years (if I did my math right, which I'm not guaranteeing), I am only sending one kiddo to school.

I knew I was scheduled to do a post on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog today. Since my assigned day landed on the first day of school, I thought it would be a great time to scrap Sarah's photo from the first day of her freshman year of high school. After all, today she is enjoying her first day of her sophomore year of high school. It's nice to get the memories down from one year, before they get intermixed with the memories from the new year.

I usually document that first day of school photo at the beginning of the school year, which means my journaling is kept pretty simple, and most likely includes the standard “I think this will be a great year” phrase that I include on just about every back to school layout. Since I am just getting around to scrapping her first day of school photo now, at the end of the school year (give or take a few months!), this allowed me to journal specifically about how the last school year went for her.

The journaling was a first for me. In the fact that it was the very first thing I did for this layout. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might know that journaling is almost always the LAST thing I do on my layouts. I did have my photo printed already, but other than that, I hadn't picked out a single thing for this page, or even thought about how I wanted to lay everything out. I just typed it up and figured I would work the rest of the page around it.

It’s not often that I have this much to say on a layout. I really wanted to make this page about the photo and the journaling, so I kept the page pretty simple overall. It’s paper and stickers, and that’s about it. I thought about adding a few simple embellishments at the end, but decided that it was perfect for me just the way it was.

As for the patterned papers? I must have dug out about fifteen different patterned papers that I thought might look good with my photo. I focused on lots of blues, greens, and black. It's kind of strange how I ended up using the few patterns that I did, since I was looking for a darker, more navy blue to match Sarah's shirt and greens to match the greenery in the photo. I'm not even sure how I ended up using the cloud paper. I guess that's why it's good that I pull out SOOOO many papers sometimes, since I often end up using things that weren't my original choices.

You can read a bit more about my layout over on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog today, since I usually type up different things, depending on where it's posting.

Now I just need to get thru the next week and a half, which is when a few of the older daycare kids I've been watching this summer go back to school. After two+ months of having older kids (7 yrs) around that talk to me constantly and question my every move, I need to get back to just the babies and toddlers that I specialize in. Lol.
Bella Blvd: Pinterest Inspired Cards

July 31, 2014

Today is our Pinterest Inspired feature over on the Bella Blvd blog, and I played along by creating a few cards.

When I picked out this image for the designers to work with, I was immediately drawn to all the fabric filled hoops arranged on the wall. I love incorporating circles into my designs, which is why I most likely choose a similar circle design image for a Pinterest Inspired challenge back in June (this layout).

Image credit: Sweet Pickins. I also think I was drawn to this image because I love the look of the hoops on the wall and have always thought it would be fun to do somewhere in my house. Check out her blog post for all the details on how she did this. As I'm typing this, I'm actually looking around my downstairs for a wall where I could work this into 🙂

For my first card, I used a circle die cut card base (found in the Silhouette store) that I cut on my Cameo from white cardstock. I was going to incorporate some of the same colors in the Pinterest image with my patterned paper choices, and the very first paper I thought of was the tan dotted paper from a much older Bella collection. I then started randomly digging through my Bella patterned paper collection, and ended up not using any of the other colors I had in mind. I went with a tan, aqua, and pink color combo for this first card.

I like that it cuts as one piece, and is scored to fold in half. But to make backing some of the circles with patterned paper easier on myself, I simply cut off the front part of the card and discarded the backside. I then ran the entire die cut piece thru my Xyron machine, so that it was covered in adhesive. This made it easy to place the patterned paper circles where I wanted them, before sticking the entire piece onto a white card base.

The die cut card had a heart shape right where I have the button. I thought about adding a chipboard heart, but couldn't find one that felt right, so I went with a button instead. The colors of the patterned papers made me think of these "Bride & Groom" flags from the Love and Marriage collection, so I ended up with a wedding card when I was finished. You know, because I know SO many couples that get married. NOT.

For my second card, I went with a similar circle design, but used punches instead of die cuts. I picked out three of my smaller circle punches to use, and punched numerous circles from a few patterned papers. I knew I wanted to do a birthday card, since I have a daycare boy that's turning two today. I used the same tan dotted paper, along with some aqua, yellow, and green patterned papers.

I randomly adhered the circles to a white card base, overlapping them as needed. I then spritzed the entire card with a bit of navy blue misting spray.

I had picked out this green chipboard accent piece to use, since I knew I would be using a few flags again. To help it stand out against all those circles, I added a small strip of white cardstock matted onto a scalloped edged strip of navy blue cardstock. I tucked the two flags in and adhered the chipboard piece below them.

To check out a few layouts inspired by this same Pinterest image, head over to the Bella Blvd blog.
Making Of A Band Mini Album: The Supplies

July 29, 2014

I don't seem to have many projects to share lately, which means I haven't been blogging as much. It all seems to go hand-in-hand. It's like I need a finished project in order to blog. There is one project that I've been working on for a while though, and that's a mini album that I'm putting together containing all of Alyssa's band photos from her four years of high school. I thought I would do a few posts, spread out over the next week or two (or three, depending on how life goes), on the process of creating this project and getting it all assembled.

The first thing I thought I would share is the supplies. I choose to use a 6×8" Sn@p binder album from Simple Stories for this project. I love these albums. They're sturdier than a few other 6×8" albums that I've seen, I love the dividers that come inside, and they have a great mix of divided page protectors available to add in. I choose the green album, since our school color is green. A darker green, but this still works.

Now for the divided page protectors. I used all Simple Stories page protectors. I made sure to have at least one package of each configuration on hand when I started this project back in May. I quickly learned which were my favorites and which ones I didn't seem to use that often. I had to stock up on some of the designs that I was using the most of.

I used one of these two configurations for the start and end of each "section" in the album. More on the photos later, but I had basically seperated the years, and then seperated all of the events within each school year as well. So each time I was switching to a new event, or a new concert, I used one of these page protectors to start that section. I liked that I could highlight a favorite photo as a 4×6" photo, and then use one of the 2×3" pockets or a 4×6" pocket to add in the name and date of the event.

These two configurations were also favorites to use. About 98% of the photos for this album all came from Alyssa's iPod, older cell phone, or her iPhone. And a huge majority of those photos worked well as squares. I thought I would use the full sheet of 2×2" pockets more than I actually did use it. I mainly ended up using that configuration for the photos from the football games and marching band, since I had SO many photos to fit in.

These were also configurations that I used quite a bit. I loved that the first one has all square spots as well, and I actually ended up cutting that page protector down a few times, and just using the two 4×4" pockets. Kind of fun to have a different sized page protector mixed in here and there. I ended up printing just a few photos as 6×8" prints, but I also used this second page protector to hold a sheet of paper with horizontal photos adhered down.

These three configurations hardly got used. I thought for sure I would use the third one more, with the four 3×4" pockets, but turns out that all of the photos that I wanted to print as 3×4" prints were horizontal, and not vertical.

And that, my friends, was the biggest issue I ran into with these divided page protectors. Not having very many options for incorporating horizontal photos, other than the 4×6" size, was very limiting. A huge majority of Alyssa's photos were all horizontal, and while a lot of them could be easily cropped into squares, a lot of them could not. I hardly came across any vertical photos, otherwise, it would have made things a lot easier. My main option on the horizontal photos was to print them as 2×3's, and put them into the square pockets, leaving room to fill with patterned paper or something. Which is fine, and easy enough to do. But not as easy as if they could fit perfectly into a pocket.

I also had some digital templates that I thought I would incorporate into the album. I had come across the Quick Fix 6×8 Templates over at Pixels & Company quite a while ago, and knew it would be perfect for using in these albums. I can't find that item in their store at all anymore, or I would link you to it.

But you all know I love Kerri Bradford's storyboard templates. With this project in mind, I had put in a request for some 6×8 templates, and Kerri whipped up the Half Pints #1 kit. I feel bad that I never put them to use in this project. But I have another album that I'd like to do at some point, and I will definitely put those to good use.

I'll be back in a few days to share the process of collecting, organizing, and printing four years worth of photos!
Bella Blvd: Halloween Cutie

July 25, 2014

I have another Halloween layout to share today, using the new Halloween Magic collection from Bella Blvd. We have four new collections that we recently revealed, but I only worked with the Halloween collection for the catalog. My second layout features a photo taken by my talented photographer/friend, Krista Lund, of her oldest daughter. She made an adorable witch!

I'm not a huge Halloween person, but I always love the colors of Bella's Halloween collections. I'm also a huge fan of Bella's tone-on-tone patterns, and you'll find me using the B sides of the patterned papers way more than I use the front sides. This layout shows exactly that. Lots of great tone-on-tone patterns, and every patterned paper on here is a B sided pattern.

I cut two inch strips from five of the patterned papers (cutting two strips from the black polka dot), and adhered them across the page. I also added in a few coordinating scalloped border stickers, just for a little additional interest. I machine stitched along all of the papers before misting the entire base of the page with white misting spray.

While the star patterned paper does have a bit of a busier pattern to it, it was still subtle enough to add my photos, title, and embellishments too. I added a larger orange star die cut from the Paper Pieces, and pulled lots of star stickers from the sticker sheets.

That purple star up there is actually from the Daily Details patterned paper, and was part of a 4×4" block. I hand cut the star away from the green paper around it, since I wanted another large star to add to the page. I love the new font of the Treasures & Text alpha stickers too. I actually worked with mock-up product for these layouts, so I had to fussy cut out all those letters from paper. Now that I have the real deal sticker sheets, I love them even more!
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Friends Forever

July 20, 2014

Sorry it's been so quiet here on this blog. Summer is getting the best of me, and I have just accepted the fact that I will never have the same time to be creative as I do when we're deep in the routine of school, sports, etc. I do have a layout to share today, and one later this week. So I can at least guarantee two new posts this week!

Have you had a chance to download and browse thru the Summer issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today yet? It's completely free to view the digital issue, so there's no reason not too. Plus, it's filled with some gorgeous projects and awesome articles and features.

I wanted to share the layout I created for the summer issue. I've been working on the "What's Next" feature for the last several issues, so I'm always creating a season ahead. For the summer issue, I created more of a fallish layout. The editors know that I don't have much of a "fall" season where I live, so they thought I could create a friendship themed page, using some "fallish" products.

I chose the Now & Then: Mildred collection from My Mind's Eye to work with. I thought it had a great mix of fall colors and I've always been a fan of My Mind's Eye products. I went looking for photos to use for this layout, and was kind of shocked to realize I didn't have many photos that would work well for this layout.

The girls have plenty of photos that they've taken themselves with their friends, but none that would really work well with these papers. I ended up digging up a few photos of the girls with Amanda, one of my previous daycare kiddos and one of their best friends growing up. I had printed four photos that I had intended to use, but along the way, I only ended up with room for two of them.

I die cut a 12×12" heart background from white cardstock using my Cameo and adhered it to another sheet of white cardstock for the base of my layout. I love the subtle look of a white-on-white background. I lightly spritzed the background with some navy blue misting spray and started picking out my patterned papers to use.

I adhered a strip of solid navy blue and a strip of the diagonal stripe patterned paper along the top and bottom of the page and machine stitched along the strips. I picked out several patterned papers that I wanted to incorporate into the page design, and cut pieces from each in varying sizes that I could layer across the page. I machine stitched around the edges of each paper, and distressed the edges, before arranging them and adhering them down.

I picked a few cuts from my Silhouette library to combine for my title. I cut the inside part of "friends" from an aqua-ish solid paper and spritzed it with white misting spray, and then layered over the outline of "friends" with I cut from the navy blue solid paper. I used that same navy blue paper to cut "forever" from.

All of the chipboard pieces, chipboard buttons, brads, buttons, and enamel dots are from My Mind's Eye too. I love when manufacturers have so many embellishments that coordinate with their collections, making it super easy to create well put together layouts.
Kerri Bradford Studio: Thank My Lucky Stars

July 14, 2014

I have a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. For my last three projects that I've created for Kerri, I've done two page layouts. I know some scrappers dread two page layouts, but I really do enjoy making them. But after doing so many of them in a row, I really needed to keep my layout this month fairly simple. It's been busy around here, and I needed to think of my sanity and that meant a one page layout this time.

I knew I wanted to use Kerri's Thank My Lucky Stars kit for this layout, as I already had some photos in mind. I knew I would have a photo collage, which would take up a good portion of the page, and this kit would provide not only my title, but my embellishments as well with the stars. Having all of my pieces in one cut saved me time, so I wasn't digging around in my library all night for different shapes to use.

I had picked out several patterned papers that I wanted to use, based off the colors in my photos. The blue star, green dot, orange diagonal stripe, and brown woodgrain patterned papers are all from Echo Park, and the text patterned paper is from October Afternoon.

I had the base of the page all laid out, and I knew I wanted to cut the word "lucky" from the brown woodgrain patterned paper. But I couldn't decide which paper to use for the rest of the title. So I just cut it from three different papers, along with an assortment of stars. In the end, I decided to just layer all three colors together.

I took these photos of our favorite daycare kiddo, Mateo, and the girls just a month or so after I started watching him. Which was over two years ago now. They're such cute photos and I'm not sure why I hadn't scrapped them yet. I created my collage using a template from Kerri's Storyboard #6 kit.

I added the die cut stars on the top of the page, spending WAY too much time deciding on the perfect placement of each and every star. I embellished a few of the stars in coordinating enamel dots. I love pages like this, that are simple in design and come together so easily.
Bella Blvd Summer 2014: Halloween Magic Collection Reveal & A Layout Share

July 10, 2014

This week, on the Bella Blvd blog, we are revealing our new Summer 2014 collections. There are FOUR new collections that Stephanie has been hard at work on and we're excited to show them off to you.

Today we are revealing the new Halloween Magic collection. Even though I don't scrap Halloween much anymore (that happens when your kids turn into teens, I guess), I am still drawn to Bella's Halloween collections. I love that Stephanie includes colors like aqua, purple, green, and yellow, making it much more use-able than a collection heavy in black and orange. And this year's new collection doesn't disappoint.

I created a few layouts using the new Halloween Magic collection for the catalog, and I'm sharing one of those today. These photos of Alyssa have most likely appeared on a layout or two already, but since I'm tapped out on Halloween photos, I decided to use them again.

I printed out a few 3×4" photos, to go along with one of the 3×4" cards from the Daily Details patterned paper and a 3×4" piece of the fun floral patterned paper. For the base of my page, I used a large piece of the orange diamond patterned paper for half, and a large piece of the grey woodgrain for the other half, adding a black border sticker in between the two.

This white tag from the Paper Pieces die cuts had two cute little "spooky" friends on it, but they didn't quite go with my page design. I still wanted to use the tag, so I cut a small piece of green star patterned paper to cover the friends, and added a few pieces of an orange scalloped border sticker.

And here's a little behind-the-scenes secret. Every now and then we have to work with mock-up products, when the real product isn't quite ready. So this cute little cupcake, along with the grey cloud and black "October fun" seen in the photo above, will be chipboard pieces. They may look like paper here, which they are. But they will be fun little chipboard pieces, with lots more dimension to them.

The "Halloween" 3×4" card is from the Daily Details patterned paper, which I matted to a piece of the aqua diamond patterned paper using pop dots. I added a cut little "trick or treat" sticker right over the "o" in Halloween.

Here's those words that I fussy cut out of the full sheet of patterned paper. Aren't they so cool cut out like that? I'm not a huge fan of fussy cutting at all, but these don't take that long at all. I pop dotted a few of the words for added interest.

Over on the Bella blog, we are also doing a win-it-before-you-can-buy-it giveaway! To be entered, head over HERE and leave a comment on that post for a chance to win the entire Halloween Magic collection (does not include collection kit). We will announce all winners for the week on Sunday.
Bella Blvd: Step-by-Step Monthly Project Sheet – All American

July 4, 2014

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.