Laura Vegas

The Happiest Place On Earth

October 16, 2012

Yep. That's where my girls are for a few days this week. At the happiest place on earth!

They have the week off school, for some sort of break. It's the end of their first quarter, so I'm guessing that's why. Alyssa's dad was on vacation this week, so him and his mom (Alyssa's grandma) decided to take the girls to Disneyland for a few days.

I wish Joe and I were there too, but we're both working. It's nice that they get to do something fun this week, so that they weren't stuck with me and the daycare kids all week. They love those kids and are a huge help to me. But they also get bored with it pretty quickly.

I love that I can pull up Instagram throughout the day and find photo updates from the girls. That I then take screenshots of on my iPod touch, and email to myself so that I can then pull them up on my computer. They're not always the best quality, but I'll take low quality pics over no pics any day.

I'm extremely grateful that Alyssa's dad's family always includes Sarah in what they do. I also LOVE grandparents that aren't scared to do the crazy stuff, like go on roller coasters (that's Alyssa's grandma behind Sarah). We have a few grandparents like that in our families.

They are showing off how wet their tushies got, after going on Splash Mountain. Which was fine with them, since it was super hot out. I think they're in the mid 90's all week.

I'm using my free evenings to work on some new projects, with Bella Blvd's new mid-release, which we will be revealing tomorrow! Stop by tomorrow to see the collection in full, and then I will be sharing all new projects the rest of the week!
Bella Blvd: Re-Introduction

October 12, 2012

For the last two weeks, on the Bella Blvd blog, we have been introducing and getting to know each member of our new Design Team. If you haven't checked our blog in a while, you should. I'm excited about the designers I'll be working with over the next year.

Today, Stephanie and I are both re-introducing ourselves, and sharing a little bit about ourselves. You can check it out HERE, and find out what's going on in the photo above. Just a little insight into what I actually work on during the majority of my "Bella" work time hours.
Love Them – A Layout Share

October 11, 2012

I have been trying to find something to share and blog about for the last few days, and I very randomly remembered this layout that I havn't shared yet. I created this for Create: Stamping, which came out not too long ago.

I knew I was doing some stamping on stickers for this layout, so that's where I started. By picking out some letter stickers. I went with the aqua, and then started picking out my patterned papers to coordinate. I chose a aqua, navy blue, orange, and brown color scheme. Once I had my Fancy Pants patterned papers picked out, and my fun scalloped border from Heidi Swapp, I added some designer tapes and buttons, and I was all set.

I decided on these alpha stickers from Bella Blvd. They were a good size, and not super skinny, so that the stamping showed up nicely Then I decided on a woodgrain stamp and I knew I wanted to use brown ink. So I dug out all of my brown ink pads, at which point, I realized I have a LOT of brown ink pads to choose from.

I tried out several different kinds of ink on some extra letter stickers until I found one that worked well and didn't smear. For these stickers, I found that the chalk ink worked the best. But I would definately try this technique out on whatever stickers you're using, since all stickers are made differently.

I printed out all of my photos in black and white, since there was a wide variety of colors going on in each photo. When pulling photos from different dates and times, with totally different colors and looks to them, I find that changing my photos to black and white unifies the photos and just helps tie them together.

Because I ended up with the cream calendar patterned paper behind my photos, I wanted them to stand out a bit more. I had left a white border around my photos when I trimmed them after printing, so I just used my finger to swipe some navy blue paint around the edges.

Let's just take a break from the scrappin talk for a minute, and talk about how completely adorable these little ones are! They kill me with their cuteness!
All. Day. Long.

I have to say that I really, really love this layout. It might have something to do with when I made this (months ago) or what was going on when I made this. But working on this layout came at a time when I needed to have fun with scrapbooking again. Not that I wasn't having fun with what I was doing at this particular time. There were just certain things going on that were holding me back. Vaque, I know. All I know is that I had fun with this layout, it came together so easily for me, I loved the finished layout, and it just made me happy. And that's the way scrapbooking should make us feel, right 🙂
Bella Blvd: Halloween Project Sheet

October 8, 2012

Yesterday we had our new Step-By-Step Project Sheet, for the month of October, go up on the Bella Blvd blog.

For this month's project sheet layout, I wanted to focus on lots and lots of layering. There are so many fun patterned papers in the Too Cute To Spook collection, and by layering pieces of each paper together, it makes it easy to use a wide variety of those papers without it overwhelming the page.

I used six different patterns on this page, and also cut some clouds out of a seventh paper. The backside of the Full Moon paper has "too cute to spook" written all over it, and made for a great background paper for the base of the page.

I roughed up the edges of all of my papers with an edge distressor, which adds a ton of texture to the papers. And then I got to layering those papers all together, adding the adorable photo on top (which I borrowed from my good friend Lynn) with lots of pop dots for even more dimension.

I used some black chipboard letters for my title, combined with the orange alpha stickers from the Too Cute To Spook collection.

You can view and download the project sheet, with a full supply list and complete instructions, HERE.
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Guest Blogger, Part 2

October 4, 2012

Yesterday the second part of my guest blog feature went up on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog. I did a simple little tutorial about using a paper crimper to create lots of texture on your projects.

See how I started with this.

And then took these.

And turned it into this super layered, and full of dimension, flower that was perfect for adding to a card for a special someone! You can check it all out HERE.
Kerri Bradford Studio: Altered Halloween Project

October 3, 2012

As part of the Halloween Extravaganza going on at Kerri Bradford Studio this week, I have a new altered Halloween project to share.

I have a confession. I don't go all out every Halloween and decorate my house top to bottom. I'm closer to the not-decorating-at-all side of the spectrum. Lol. I see photos everywhere I look of spooky, but really cute, Halloween decorations filling up every nook and cranny of homes, and I wish I could learn to incorporate it into my house in the same way. But I can't. So I limit my Halloween decor to the one small table by my front door. Which means I keep my decor items nice and simple, just like these paper mache "BOO" letters.

I picked up these 8" paper mache letters at the craft store a few weeks ago. I always enjoy working with paper mache letters and boxes for altered projects. They're so easy to paint and cover with papers.

I knew I wanted to use the diamond background shape from the Foundations: Trick or Treat kit on the front of each letter, so I cut 3 seperate pieces from some Bella Blvd Halloween patterned paper. The other side of this paper is orange, which was what I was originally going to use. But I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't want to re-cut any pieces, so I just flipped it over and used the backside.

I also re-sized the tree from the This & That: Halloween [Just Shapes] kit to the same height as my letters (8 inches), and cut it from black cardstock, along with some bats from the new This & That: All Hallows Eve kit.

I thought about painting the letters, but I just couldn't settle on a good color. Some sort of cream seemed to be the right choice, but I'm not a cream kind of girl. I thought some text tissue paper might be fun to decoupage on, and I thought for sure I had some. But I didn't. What I did find was some cream washi tape with black dots from 7 Gypsies. So I simply covered the front of each letter with torn strips of tape.

I wasn't too neat about it, and I didn't even worry about how much tape was folded over the edges of the letters. I then painted on some black acrylic paint around the edges of the letters. Once again, I wasn't neat about it at all, and just made sure the paint went up to the edge of the tape.

I spritzed on some white misting spray over the taped/painted letters. That part didn't work quite as planned, since the ink never did dry. I'm guessing it was because of the texture of the tape. I didn't stress about it smearing, and just covered the entire letters with Mod Podge.

After that dried, I then adhered the diamond paper pieces to the letters, using glue dots. I used my scissors to cut off the excess from around the edges of the letters and the insides of each letter. I added just a few layered bats to the letters, and called it "done".

And don't forget to check out Kerri's Halloween Extravaganza sale going on this week. It's a great time to stock up on Halloween and Fall kits!
Kerri Bradford Studio: Enjoy Card

October 1, 2012

Over the weekend, I had a card go up over at Kerri Bradford Studio.

I am constantly in need of birthday cards, and never seem to have enough on hand when I need them. So I thought I would whip up some quick and easy cards to have on hand. I know I've said this exactly same thing before, and made more birthday cards. But I seem to have gone through all of those already. So I'm on a mission again, to restock my card drawer.

I've been wanting to try out the confetti trend that is so popular these days, and thought it would be fun to add to the top of a cupcake. I used the cupcake from Kerri's This & That: Love [just shapes] kit. I cut the bottom part of the cupcake from patterned paper, and the top part from vellum. My intention was to put the punched confetti under the vellum and sew around the edges, but it didn't work out so well for me.

So I ran the vellum part of the cupcake through my Xyron, so that the entire piece was covered in adhesive. Then I sprinkled punched confetti over it, and pushed it all down to cover the piece. The word "enjoy", from Kerri's Pack Your Bags kit, was perfect for my sentiment.

Speaking of Kerri, she's having a Halloween Extravaganza this week on her blog. All Halloween kits, with the exception of the new All Hallow's Eve kit, are on sale for 30% off. She's also sharing Halloween projects all week long, starting with a gorgeous, detailed canvas by Nichol Magouirk. I put together a little something as well, that will be up later this week.
Scrapbook & Cards Today: Guest Blogger

October 1, 2012

I'm excited to be guest blogging over on the Srapbook & Cards Today blog this week. I have a post up today, and then I'll be back on Wednesday with a quick tutorial based off today's project share.

I'm talking this week about inspiration, and how we can use inspiration images to spark our creativity when we are in a rut, or just running low on ideas when it comes to our scrapping.

Here's a little peek at the layout I created, based off of that inspiration piece. You can see the entire layout and read more about how I was inspired HERE.
A Birthday Girl & A Birthday Layout

September 27, 2012

I had a birthday layout up on the Bella Blvd blog on Tuesday, and it seemed fitting to share it here today. How about the layout first.

This was another one of my layouts for CHA, using the new Birthday Girl collection. If I'm being honest, it wasn't one of my favorites that I made. But it was also the second to last of about 24 projects that I made for CHA, so I was at the bottom of my creative well, so to speak. Lol. I dug out some older photos of Alyssa from her 10th birthday party, since I knew the colors would work well with the papers. Most of our birthday parties are swim parties, but I wanted more traditional "birthday" pics for a booth layout.

I took the "happy" chipboard letters from the Birthday Girl chipboard icons, and then added "b-day" with some Sienna chipboard alphas.

A few of the chipboard accents that I wanted to use were banner shaped, so I thought it would be fun to create an entire border across the page of banners. This was a great way to use up a lot of the scraps of patterned paper I had from my other projects, since I only needed small pieces of paper.

I just trimmed them into strips of varying widths, and roughly the same height, and cut banner notches at the bottom of each piece. I also added in some stickers here and there. I adhered them across the page, "hanging" off of a few strips of designer tape that I had layered together. On either end of the border, I added some fun embellishments. Buttons, chipboard pieces, a crochet flower, and some flags.

My journaling says "So hard to believe you turned 10 years old this year". Which was so true at the time. I think we say that just about every year, right? Every birthday I think "how are you another year older already???". Just like every school year, I say "how are you another grade higher already???". And before you know it, this happens:

Your daugher, that in your head is still just your baby, goes and turns SIXTEEN YEARS OLD!!! Seriously, how did this happen? How has it been sixteen years since she made her way into our lives, taking her sweet, sweet time to come into the world? I am so very proud of the young lady she's becoming, and she amazes me more and more every single day. Happy birthday Alyssa!
Kerri Bradford Studio: Monday Thru Friday

September 25, 2012

I have a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. When Kerri came out with her Today kit a while ago, I knew right away one of the layouts that I wanted to make with it.

I thought it would be fun to cut out the days of the week, and use them on a layout about my work week with the daycare kids. My Monday thru Friday week with them. It's really kind of a monotonous job, if I'm being honest. Every day is different, and yet every day is the same. What makes it different is what kids are here with me, what time they come and go, who's in a good mood and who's in a grouchy mood, whether they make it a good nap day or a bad nap day. Those kinds of things.

What makes it the same is that when you get right down to it, my day is really about diapers, bottles and sippy cups, and lots and lots of toys. I'm constantly changing diapers, making and washing bottles, filling sippy cups and dishing out meals, and picking up the same exact toys over and over that I have been picking up for the last 11 years. Pull out any given toy, and I can mimic the sounds it makes or the song it plays. I have no idea what movie "Just smile and wave boys. Smile and wave." and "Progress report" comes from, but I can say it exactly like that little penquin toy 😉

Don't get me wrong though. There's lots of fun things about this job too. Seeing the kids grow and learn is a perk. I have one that's just about 11 months old, and is trying out the whole walking thing this past week. I'm sure he'll be chasing us all around soon. Another one is going to be 3 in a few months, and it's ridiculous what a fun personality he has. He carries on full conversations with me, and I think that's super cool. I get the advantage of enjoying the different ages, and then conveniently sending them home in the evening, so I can get some peace and quiet.

First, I have to tell you that this layout ended up looking NOTHING like the one I had in my head. Lol. I had this vision of the days of the week going all down one side of the page, and creating a photo collage to go on the other side. But once I cut the days out, I ended up arranging them in a more random way on my page.

I used the Note To Self collection from Echo Park for this page. To cut my days of the week out, I used the 6×6 paper pad, since the patterns are on a smaller scale and would look better with the thin design of the words. I just eyeballed the size of my days, so they're all a bit different in size.

Since there wasn't room for a photo collage anymore, I cut a few frames from Kerri's This & That: Family kit, and sized my photos to fit behind the frames. I adhered the photos down first, and then adhered the frames using some pop dots.

I used some alpha stickers from a sticker sheet, included in the collection pack, to add a description of each photo onto the frames. And yes, diapers are very important!

I thought the "it's a good day" viewfinder sticker would be fun to add to the center of a clock, cut from Kerri's This & That: School kit. It's got the same look as the numbers on a clock, right? Remember those old viewmaster's? That's one toy that I don't have here.

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