Laura Vegas

Bella Blvd: CHA Summer Reveal – Play Date Collection

July 16, 2013

Today we are up with our second full collection reveal for CHA Summer on the Bella Blvd blog! If you missed yesterday's reveal, keep scrolling down to see the new Snapshots collection, which I am hearing lots and lots of people raving about. And hopefully, this second collection gets just as warm a welcome as the first.

{Photos courtesy of Krista Lund, friend and photographer}

I started this layout with an adorable photo of my friend Krista's youngest daughter playing outside, and two of the 4×6 cards from the Daily Details paper (the aqua chevron and the yellow "let your light shine" cards). I arranged those on the page, and just started trimming some of the tone-on-tone patterned papers to fill in the holes.

I knew the aqua clouds would go along the top of the page, along with my title. I used the white text chipboard alphas for half of my title, and some aqua alpha stickers for the other half. I also added an aqua scalloped border sticker along the very top of the page, machine stitched it in place, and then curled up the scallops with my fingers to add some texture.

I did trim down the yellow 4×6 card a bit on one side so that it fit next to my photo. My goal on this layout was to keep it pretty monocramatic. So I added some green phrase stickers to the green patterned paper, and a yellow chipboard sun to the yellow "let your light shine" card.

The aqua chevron card actually says "together" in the center of it. But since the photo is of just little Emily, I thought it would be best to cover that up. I adhered a white feather diagonally across the 4×6 card, and adhered an aqua chipboard heart over the center (which also covered up the staples securing my feather).

I added coordinating crochet hearts and buttons to the green and pink patterned papers on either side of the bottom of the page, along with my journaling strips. I finished it off by adding some scalloped punched borders from white cardstock in between the papers, and machine stitching as well.
Bella Blvd: CHA Summer Reveal – Snapshots Collection

July 15, 2013

Finally!!! Today is the day that we start our full collection reveals for CHA Summer on the Bella Blvd blog! CHA opens up a week from today in Las Vegas, and I have spend the last month working with these new collections and organizing all of the booth projects with our CHA designers. It's always hard to keep these things secret, when all you want to do is tell everyone about the fun new designs and show off what you've made with them. But the wait is now over, and we are revealing our first collection today!

{Photos courtesy of Krista Lund, friend and photographer}

I created this layout for the CHA Summer 2013 Supplement Catalog, using the Snapshots collection. While I have scrapped these photos of my friend Krista's daughter before, I just knew they would be perfect for this collection.

There's that cute camera paper! For me personally, sometimes the easiest way for me to use the busier patterned papers is to use them in small pieces. I also love using the Borders patterned paper, mixing in the borders with the border stickers from the Alpha+Bits sticker sheets.

I wanted to mix in a few of our more recent embellishments, so I slipped a light pink feather under the main photo and added a crochet heart to the center of the black die cut star.

I ended up using three of the 3×4 cards from the Daily Details paper on this layout. They fit perfectly into my clean and linear style.

I used a scalloped border punch on some white and black cardstock scraps to add between the photos and the papers along the sides of the layout.

I have another layout and a couple of cards with this collection as well that I will share next week.
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Design Team Fun

July 10, 2013

For the past week or so, over on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog, they have been having a little design team fun. Each of us on the design team have been sharing one of our current designt tips, along with some new projects, and also sharing a little something about us that you might now know. And today is my day to be featured!

I am talking a bit about re-discovering those tools or products that we buy, collect, and become addicted to using. Only to forget about them somewhere along the way, as they get pushed to the back of drawers, closets, and storage areas. For me, it's my embossing folders.

When I first got my Cuttlebug, the only reason I purchased it was so that I could use all of the great embossing folders that I saw others using. Mainly the Swiss Dot folder, which quickly became my most used and favorite folder of them all. I used to use in everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. This was probably a good 4-5 years ago. Just guessing there, since I honestly have no clue when it was 😉

In the past few months, I have purchased a few new embossing folders. I ordered a chevron folder and a honeycomb folder from Stampin' Up, and I found a another chevron folder, a fun star folder, and a woodgrain folder at a scrapbook convention a while back. I haven't really used them much, and decided to make a point to put them to good use for this layout.

I pulled out some new papers that I had just picked up, by Allison Kreft for Websters Pages. Totally random tidbit. I thought about buying these papers when they first came out, but then I didn't for whatever reason. When I was teaching at CKU last month, they tossed her paper collection at me, along with a trimmer, and asked me to make some banners to help decorate the photobooth area. I'm glad they did that, because I realized how much I liked the collection.

I decided to go with the tone-on-tone patterns, in the green, aqua, yellow, and pink. I love good tone-on-tone papers, and it makes for easier embossing when you don't have an overwhelming pattern going on. I think so, at least. I cut random sized pieces of each paper, and embossed them with one of four different embossing folders. I then lightly rubbed some sandpaper over each paper, to help define the embossed areas. I love the texture it adds to the page.

I embellished the page with some coordinating buttons, crochet hearts, and stickers from the coordinating sticker sheet that came with the paper collection. A title cut on my Cameo finished off the page.

You can read a bit more from me, and also find out if I'm a messy scrapper or a neat scrapper (for those that may not know this about me), on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog. Also read back over the last week, and check back during the next few days, to learn more about the rest of the design team. They're a fun and talented group of ladies!
Bella Blvd: Monthly Project Sheet – Designer Tapes

July 9, 2013

I'm getting this post up much later than planned. We took a family day on Monday and spend the day in Santa Cruz. Got home too late to work on anything that night, and today was a blur of work, kids, and craziness. Finally sitting down tonight to work on some blog stuff. Anyways. Today, our new monthly project sheet for July went up on the Bella Blvd blog.

For the July project sheet, my focus was on Bella's Designer Tapes. I knew from the start that I wanted to create a background with the tapes. And I knew I would then add my photos, title, and anything else to the center of the page.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I had no idea what photos I was going to add to this page when I started, or even when I choose the colors of the tapes. I work backwards sometimes, I know. And I randomly came across these photos when I went searching for pics to use, and they were already conviently in this collage that I had created forever ago, when I had intended to use them for a different layout. I loved that they were already ready to print in the collage, and they matched, so it made this layout even quicker. Quick is good sometimes!

I picked out six tapes that I thought would make a fun color combination, and cut twenty 2×2" squares from white cardstock. I covered each square with strips of tape, using one design/color of tape for each square. I simply tore off pieces roughly 2" in length, and stacked them onto the square of cardstock. Once it was covered, I trimmed off any excess tape from the edges.

Then I took a sheet of cardstock, and started arranging and adhereing the squares around the outside edges of the page. I adhered some squares with the tapes going side to side, and some with the tapes going up and down. And I definately spent WAY too much time deciding in what order to put the squares in, making sure to spread out the colors and patterns in a pleasing way.

At the last minute, I decided to add a little extra embellishing with some coordinating buttons. I threaded them and adhered them with glue dots around the page.

You can view and download our free July project sheet, complete with supply list and step-by-step instructions, right HERE.
Happy Birthday Cards

June 17, 2013

I think we all have those certain months where there seems to be an abundance of birthdays, all at once. For us, it's May thru July, with June being the busiest month. Last week was my birthday, along with two of the grandmas and a few cousins. This week is Sarah's birthday and a few family friends. Add in May birthdays and July birthdays, and I need a lot of birthday cards to hand out.

I sat down this weekend and whipped up a few simple cards, and then duplicated them to make life easy. A while back, I had put in a small order from Stampin' Up from a local friend. I choose 4 colors of cardstock, 4 rolls of coordinating ribbon, a few embossing folders, and a few packs of buttons. Figured I might as well break into them, since they've been sitting around for a while.

This first card was inspired by a card in the Stampin' Up catalog. The basic design is the same, with the embossed background paper the large banner with the punched out circle and the star. I only used one large star, since my stamp collection is rather small and I was also keeping things simple.

I backed my punched out circle with a piece of silver glittered paper, and then pop dotted the entire piece over the embossed background paper. I stapled a small piece of the green ribbon for some extra color, and stamped my star with some green ink. The sentiment is an older rub-on from Pebbles. I have tons of those, and they're great for quick cards.

I pulled out the green and pink cardstock for this second card, and used the chevron embossing folder this time. I used a punch for the little pink banner piece, and added them below the blue ribbon.

I went to pull out some older paper flowers, and came across this fun fabric flower that had a lot of pink and blue. I'm sure I've been holding onto that flower for 6-7 years, at least. It felt perfect for this card, and I love the metal button (from Stampin' Up). Once again, I used the rub-on sentiment, and then sprinkled on the tiny little metal accent pieces.

I haven't made cards in quite a while, and it was fun to create these little pieces in no time at all. I might need to do this more often.
Bella Blvd: Monthly Project Sheet – All American

June 12, 2013

Our new monthly project sheet for June went up on the Bella Blvd blog last week. I have been trying to blog this layout for over a week, and just can't seem to finish the post. I have the attention span of an ant 😉

I was asked to create a patriotic layout with the new All American collection for the June project sheet. I honestly don't take photos on the 4th of July that often, and I've already scrapped the one good set of photos from a Memorial Day celebration a few times. So I dug deep and found these photos from years ago.

I knew I wanted to include a lot of the differet patterned papers in this collection, but Ialso didn't want to overwhelm the layout with so many papers. So I decided to use small pieces of the papers, and create borders along the top and bottom of the page. I cut pieces from most of the papers, in varying sizes and distressed the edges of each piece.

I used the grey grid pattered paper from the Freestyle Sophisticates collection for the center of my page, and added either a border sticker or a border from the patterned papers at the top and bottom of the grid paper. I then started adhering all of the little pieces of paper, tucking them under the grid paper and overlapping them as I went.

I was also asked to use several of the new embellishments on my layout, so I created this fun little cluster on the right side of the page. Three feathers, since I like to add my feathers in groupings on my projects. The paper flowers are all hand cut from the Cute Cuts paper and adhered with pop dots at the bottom of the feathers.

I then adhered buttons and a crochet heart to the centers of each flower. And I tucked in a few of the stick pin flags to finish it off.

You can download the All American June project sheet, including a full supply list and detailed instructions, RIGHT HERE.
CKU San Diego

June 10, 2013

Carlie Robertson (Close To My Heart), Megan Hoeppner (Creating Keepsakes), Karen Burniston (Sizzix), Me (Bella Blvd), Linda Barber (Lawn Fawn), Kristine Widtfeldt (Close To My Heart), Annette Hardy (Creating Keepsakes)

I spend this past weekend teaching at CKU San Diego and had such a great time. It had been almost a year since the last time I've taught at a convention, and it really nice to get back out there in the classroom. Since I taught at CKU San Jose last year, it was really nice to see so many familiar faces.

Since this was the first time I was designing my own class, I ended up putting a lot of time and work into it over the last few weeks. Which is one of the reasons I've been more absent around here. But all that hard work paid off, as I heard from so many students saying how much they loved the class and the projects, and how they learned so many techniques and ideas that they were excited to try on other projects. If you were there and took my class, I thank you for spending that 90 minutes with me!

And they didn't just get those ideas from my class. We had a fabulous group of teachers (seen in the photo above), with a great range of projects. Two amazing album tracks to choose from, and four fun core classes that everyone took as well. These ladies were so much fun to hang out with and we had a great time re-visiting and catching up with each other (for those of us that already knew each other), or getting to know each other (for those of us meeting for the first time). There was so much laughter shared between us, and so many great stories that I know will make for great memories.

I had one of my closest friends, Deneen, come along with me. She was looking for a weekend away, and I had a room to share. She enjoyed some quiet downtime while I taught during the day, and joined us at the evening crops. She was even sweet enough to volunteer to help out taking down the bookstore and counting product that got packed up. It was nice to have more time to chat with each other, since we're usually doing little 5-10 minute phone chats inbetween working and family stuff. We stayed up WAY too late each night, and got WAY too little sleep!

And now I'm back home and trying to recover. I was so exhausted by the time I got home, and had to get straight to work on Bella Blvd stuff. Daycare kids were back today and luckily, they took it pretty easy on me, as I was still super tired and not quite my usual self.

There are still three more CKU's coming up, and I'll be teaching at all of them. CKU Louisville – August 8-10, CKU Stamford – September 5-7, and CKU Dallas/Fort Worth – October 10-12. You can get all of the details and register RIGHT HERE. I'd love to see you there, so let me know if you're going!
Kerri Bradford Studio: Seriously? Seriously.

June 4, 2013

I finally have a new layout to share. Seems like it's been a while since sharing a layout over at Kerri Bradford Studio, as I recently did a framed project, my kitchen backsplash project, and the sports album. Loved getting back to a 12×12 inch canvas.

Meet Devon. He's 10 months old now, and I've been watching him for the last six months. He's adorably cute, and has the most precious little face. On the flip side, he's super clingy and demands my constant attention. Meaning that if I'm not holding him, or sitting right smack next to him on the floor, he screams and cries non-stop. It's a little ridiculous, and it wears on me. I'm not sure he gets that I have other little ones here that need my attention too. Or maybe he gets it, but he is still under the assumption that the world revolves around him.

I am constantly finding myself saying "Seriously Devon? Seriously" to him, over and over. When I've been sitting on the floor with him for half an hour, and I simply stand up and walk a few feet away to get a drink or something, and he immediately starts screaming. All I can do is turn around, look at him, and say "Seriously???".

So when I decided to scrap a few recent photos I took of Devon, this is the first title that popped into my head. The "Seriously" title is from the Design Team Picks kit, from 2012. I used all My Mind's Eye patterned papers on this layout. Some of them older papers, and a few newer papers. I cut the title from a greyish paper first, and then from the yellow and red polka dot papers to layer on top.

I also knew that I wanted to use the cute little polaroid frames from the new Sliders kit. I was working with regular 4×6 photos that I trimmed down to fit, so I sized the frames to fit the photos once I cropped the photos down and focused on just having that adorable little face in the frame.

I went looking for some shapes to embellish the page with, and decided on using some arrows from the Need Directions? kit. The only other embellishments I added were a few stickers and a few simple silver brads.

While I love layouts filled with dimension and layers and texture, sometimes a simple design of paper and stickers is just what I need. I loved sitting down after a long work day and creating a layout in one short sitting, instead of spending so much time making decisions and digging for products that in the end, make for a longer layout design process.

And I have to give little Devon some props today. We've made a few adjustments on the schedule front, which means that I'm actually watching him a lot more than I was before. We're hoping I can tough-love him out of this clingy phase he's been in for over half his little life. And today was the first really good day we've had in months. I don't want to jinx it by saying more, so we'll just wait and see how tomorow goes. Positive thinking has me imagining tomorrow being a good day too.
High School Sports Album

May 29, 2013

I have an album project to share today that I spent the last week working on. It's also up over at Kerri Bradford Studio, since I used so many of her Silhouette designs throughout the album.

I recently got a call from a previous daycare parent, asking if I could do take on a sidejob for a friend of his. His friend was looking to put together an album as a graduation gift for his daughter who was graduating from high school last week. I remember talking to both of them, and hearing them both ask "is this something you do?". My first thought (in my head, of course) was "not really", since I don't often put together projects for other people.

But there were a few reasons that I couldn't say "no" to taking on this big project. The previous daycare parent that first asked was one of my absolute favorite familes to work with. If I had a third daughter, Amanda would be her name (their daugher). This graduating senior went to the same high school that Alyssa goes too, and they also went to the same elementary school. Alyssa and this senior played on the varsity soccer team together this past year, and I've watched this senior play in previous years while waiting for the junior varsity games to play. And this senior's dad had saved all of the newspaper clippings from her high school sports years and wanted to do something special with them, and I think that is pretty cool!

This album is almost all newspaper clippings from her years on the high school soccer team and volleyball team. There were only a few photos from "Senior Night" that he wanted to include. These were taken at the last soccer game of the year, where the seniors are recognized and walked out by their familes for their last game. This album is also ALL cardstock and patterned paper. No embellishments or bulky items of any kind. This helped keep the cost down for the parents.

Luckily, her dad was great about keeping all of the newpaper clippings organized by year, from freshman year through senior year. I simply went through and put them in order within each year, and trimmed up the chippings a bit more so they were all nice and neat.

I had decided on using lots of my favorite white grid patterned paper from Bella Blvd for the background pages. It's a great neutral background paper, and I happen to have a ton of it on hand. I lightly misted each grid paper with some tan misting spray. I also used kraft, green, and black cardstock for my background pages as well. Our school colors are green and black (or maybe it's technically green and white), and I wanted to stick with that color theme.

When I was laying out the newspaper clippings to get an idea of how many pages I would need, I got a good sense of how they would fit together on the pages. I decided to mix in some 6"x12" pages and some 8.5"x11" pages, as I keep those size page protectors on hand. In the end, I even ended up creating a few custom page protectors (using my sewing machine and then cutting them down to size), for 9"x12" pages, 10"x12" pages, etc.

I made four piles, one for each year of high school, and worked with those four seperate piles through out the entire process of working on this album.

I started by adhering all of the newspaper clippings to my background papers. I stuck with a sheet of white grid patterned paper on the left side of each spread, and then alternated using black, green, and kraft cardstock on the right side of the spreads.

I knew that the decision on where to place the newspaper clippings on each page would really be based off how they fit together, since most had 2 parts to each article (they're almost always continued on another page of the newspaper). I wasn't taking titles or accents into consideration at all at this point. Just adhering the clippings however they looked good on the page.

I then went through all of Kerri's kits, as well as my Silhouette library, pulling out any shapes (soccer ball, volley ball, and some stars), words, and phrases that I thought would fit in with the sports theme of the album. I created a folder in my Silhouette library for this project and dumped everything in there to work from.

Kerri's new Weathered Door Alphabet kit came at just the right time, as I was short on sports words and had planned on creating some of my own. I have to admit that I have never used regular fonts to make my own words. I love having things done for me, so I was glad to have this new kit to work with. I just love the chunkier font and slightly distressed look of the Weathered Door Alphas, and they have just the right look I was going for.

After collecting an assortment of shapes, I went page by page and choose words and phrases that fit in the space I had on that particular page. I set up four different sheets to work with in the Silhouette software: grid paper, black cardstock, green cardstock, and kraft cardstock. I knew that all of my cutting would be on those four papers.

As I chose a word or phrase, I would place in on the color I wanted to cut it from and size it to fit the space on the album page. I also kept notes (most of the time!) as to what cut went on what page, so that after I ran all four of the pages through my Cameo, I would know what shapes went where. Because believe me, it got really confusing.

Kerri's School Years: Add Ons kit came in really handy for the divider pages, to seperate the years in the album. I made the "freshman year", "sophomore year", "junior year", and "senior year" really big so that it filled up the page really well. I also cut out the actual years that that particular school year covered, by using the Decade 2000, twentyTEN, twentyELEVEN, twentyTWELVE, twentyTHIRTEEN kits.

I also used shapes from Kerri's Touchdown kit, The Ol' Ballgame kit, A Beautiful World kit, and her Graduation kit. I had shapes and phrases picked out from other kits as well, but didn't end up using them, most likely because they didn't fit the spaces I was working with.

Once I had my phrases and words down, I started adding in small strips of patterned paper. I stuck with just a few patterns from the Making The Team collection from Bella Blvd. I didn't want to make it too complicated, so I chose a few patterns to work with, and used just those and small strips of cardstock as well. I also took out just one border punch, and used that here and there on some of the strips.

I did sneak in some pink patterned paper, but only on 2 spreads in the album. This was for our "Kicking For A Cure" event, which our girls soccer team does each year to support cancer patients and research. The players all wear pink jerseys, and they paint a huge pink ribbon on the field. I thought it was a nice touch to add some pink in for those articles.

My only "embellishments" were the soccer balls, volley balls, and stars. I cut a ton of these shapes from all four of the main papers, and sprinkled them in throughout the album. I ended up cutting some small stars from a sheet of yellow star patterned paper, just to add a touch of additional color.

In the end, I think it ended up being 64 pages, or 32 front and back. That includes the handful of 6×12" pages, and 8.5×11" pages that were mixed in.

I was really happy with how this turned out. The parents were super happy with how it turned out. I don't think they really had any idea that this is the direction I was taking with it, and I love that it was such a fun surprise for them. And I hear that the graduating senior really loved the album as well.

Working on this project has me really wanting to make the time to get Alyssa and Sarah's school albums caught up. And maybe even tackle the 11 years of soccer photos that have piled up!
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Finally Doing The Crawl

May 27, 2013

I realized the other day that I had never gotten around to sharing this layout that I created for the spring issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today.

I was asked to create a layout with a "baby's first" theme. I had really wanted to do a layout about one of the girls, and one of their "firsts" moments. But that would have involved digging out negatives, getting reprints made, or peeling photos off of layouts I've already made. I decided to go an easier route and use some photos of little Zachary that I had taken when he first started crawling. I have scrapped these photos before, but this way I can give one of the layouts to his parents and keep the other one.

Since this was a baby layout, I knew Bella Blvd's Baby Boy collection would be the perfect match for these photos. I added in a few things from other manufacturers, like these chipboard banner pieces from Fancy Pants.

I used my Cameo to die cut the circle background piece from the measuring tape patterned paper (from Bella's We're Expecting collection), which added some subtle interest to the page. I used a mix of alpha stickers, chipboard alphas, and corrugated cardboard alphas directly over the die cut paper to create my title.

I remember when I used to be completely addicted to my embossing folders. And then I just sort of forgot about them. Funny how I went right back to my favorite style (dots, dots, and more dots) when I finally pulled them out again for this layout.

With as many babies as I have come through my daycare, you'd think I'd have a good idea of when all the big milestones should happen. And yet, I seem to forget all the time. Reading the journaling here, and seeing that Zachary didn't crawl until he was 9 months old, makes me realize he did get a later start than most. Based off the fact that two of my little ones that I watch rigtht now are 9 months and 10 month, and they've both been crawling for quite a while now. Just a random tidbit that popped into my head as I'm blogging tonight.

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