Laura Vegas

I'm so glad it's Friday! We've been passing a not-so-lovely stomach bug around our family and daycare familes for the past week and a half. I am so ready for all of to be heathly and happy again. I have a TON of scrapping projects on my plate over the next few weeks and am desperately needing some time to focus on those as well. I am hoping this weekend is a productive one. Anyways. I have another layout to share from the Paper Crafters Library feature I did for Bella Blvd.

This lovely young woman is my neice, on Joe's side of the family. Seems like just yesterday, but it was almost three years ago when I took her Senior pictures for her.

I knew I was focusing on the feathers for this layout, so I picked out my feathers first, using the colors in the photo to make my choices. Then I picked out my patterned papers to match the feathers and the photo.

I started by securing the feathers in place by stapling the bottom ends of each feather directly to my page. Two little staples for each feather does the trick. I adhered a few crochet hearts across the bottom of the feathers, which helps cover up the staples.

Once I had my journaling strips printed out and trimmed (remembering to leave a bit of room on each end for the brads), I laid them over the feathers to make sure I knew where I wanted them to be. I did one strip at a time, piercing holes in both ends of the journaling strip, through the feathers and the layers of papers. I held the strip down and immediately pushed my brads through the layers, so as not to "lose" my place, so to speak.

I find that a lot of the Bella Blvd feathers stay in place perfectly, even if you only secure the ends. And some shift a little, if not secured at the top as well. The feathers on this layout were definitely more fluffier than others, which made them perfect for this little technique.

Bella
Blvd is excited to have a special spotlight feature on Paper
Crafter's Library today. We have chosen to feature our Feather
collection. I have created FOUR brand new layouts, sharing different ways
to use feathers on your layouts, how to adhere them, and how much interest they
can add to your pages. I thought I would share one of them here today.

This gorgeous photo taken by my good friend Krista Lund, of her neice Ashley, called out to be matched up with a handful of fluffy and colorful feathers!

I usually cluster 2-3 feathers together when I am using them on a layout. But sometimes, a photo or a layout just calls out for more and more feathers! I chose five feathers to use on this layout, matching the colors to Ashley's dress and jacket in the photo.

I've mentioned this before, but I find that the easiest way to adhere feathers to my projects is by stapling them directly to the page. I just plan on covering up those staples with something afterwards. You can see here that I simply laid out my feathers where I wanted them to be. I knew I would be placing a paper strip over the ends, so I didn't worry about leaving a gap between the photo and the feathers.

Then I added two staples to the end of each feather. When I'm stapling further into the page, where my stapler can't reach, I lay my page over one of those cushy mats used for paper piercing. I staple right into that mat, and then gently pull the page off the mat. When the page is flipped over, you'll see the ends of the staples sticking straight up. I just use my finger to bend all of the ends down. Easy to do.

I cut a strip of patterned paper to add between the feathers and the photo, which would cover up all of the staples. I did my machine stitching first and then adhered it to the page. I did add some of my regular adhesive, even though I know it won't be super secure on the feathers. But I also added a few glue dots to the ends of the paper strip, which were being adhered straight to cardstock, and also added a few staples for extra security.

I hand cut one of the large brown zig zag pieces from the chevron patterned paper, traced it onto the yellow patterned paper, and then layered them together.

Head
over to the Paper Crafter's Library to check out my other layouts (I will be sharing them here on my blog later on) and to learn more about working with this fun and trendy
new embellishment! Bella is also sponsoring a giveaway on their site as well, so
make sure to get your name in for a chance to win some of these gorgeous
feathers!

Our new monthly project sheet went up on the Bella Blvd blog yesterday.

For my April layout, I focused on the new Sand & Surf collection. Except that instead of using it for a beach or travel layout, I set out to use it for a regular summer layout. These photos were all taken at one of Sarah's birthday parties, a few years back. I wanted to pull out some of the photos of Joe's family from that day for this layout, since the majority of the photos of Sarah, her friends, and the actual party are already scrapped on other layouts.

You might notice that my two O's in "Pooside" are a little on the small side. I decided to use the inside's of the chipboard O's for two reasons. One being that I tend to run out of O's very quickly. I have plenty more packages that I could have opened, but figured I would save those for later. My second reason was that if I had used the actual O's in the package, my title wouldn't have fit. 

I try and do a fun technique of some kind on every project sheet layout that I create, and this month I decided to make a paper pieced sun element for the page. I used my trusty old circle cutter from Creative Memories to cut a large circle in the corner of my yellow patterned paper. Cutting it from the corner left me with two straight edges to line up on the aqua paper.

I also cut several strips of the yellow patterned paper, all about 3/4" wide. I misted all of the yellow pieces with water, scrunched them up into balls, flattened them back out and set them out to dry. This adds a ton of texture to your paper. You can see above that it almost looks like I adhered the large circle with pop dots. But I didn't. That's just how much texture I gained with the spritzing and scrunching.

After adhering the main part of the sun in the corner of the aqua wave patterned paper, I started adhering the sun rays. I tucked one end under the center of the sun, and then trimmed the other end to fit the design.

I had printed out a handful of 2"x3" photos to use on the page, before I really knew what the page was even going to look like. I didn't end up using all of them, but picked out five photos that summed up the afternoon. I adhered them all using pop dots, to add even more dimension to the page.

I sprinkled in a few threaded buttons, and added some stickers and chipboard pieces here and there.

You can download/print the project sheet, which has a complete supply list and full instructions, right HERE.