Laura Vegas

Bella Blvd: Sneak Peek Week – Birthday Girl Collection

July 11, 2012

It's day three of our Sneak Peek week over on the Bella Blvd blog, and we're revealing our third new collection for CHA Summer. Monday, we introduced you to the Birthday Boy collection. You might have guessed that this next collection was on it's way as well 🙂

Birthday Girl is a fun, totally girly, collection. Lots of pink and purple, and touches of yellows, greens, and teal. The new Designer Tapes that coordinate with this collection are amazing! You'll see lots of chevron, polka dots, and stripes in the tapes, and they're fun, bright colors. I love that there are also new flags, and new buttons to match each of our new collections.

I dug quite deep for these photos from Sarah's 2nd birthday. I have plenty of birthday's that I haven't gotten around to scrapping yet. But the majority of our birthday parties have been swimming parties, where all of my photos are of wet little girls in swimsuits. Lol. I knew I wanted some really cute photos for this layout, and these photos were perfect.

Loving the music note paper! We're huge music lovers in this house, and I already have lots of ideas for this paper. I think my girls might too 😉 The other side of the paper is a tone-on-tone pink music note pattern.

I used a few torn pieces of designer tape on either side of my smaller photo, and added a tiny staple to each one to secure it. It's just a fun and different way to use designer tapes.

I was spreading out my pack of chipboard alphas over a lot of projects, so I had to be choosey with the letters i used on this layout. So I used a mix of letter stickers and the chipboard alphas for my title.

I cut quite a few flowers from the Cute Cuts paper, and did a little random machine stitching in the center of each flower. I adhered them all using pop dots, and then bent up the petals on the flowers to add a little interest to them. I embellished the flower with stickers and buttons.

Now, head on over to the Bella Blvd blog, where you can see the Birthday Girl collection in full, piece by piece. Don't forget to leave a comment on the Bella blog today, where we are giving one lucky reader a chance to win the Birthday Girl collection before you can even buy it! Check on back here tomorrow, along with the Bella blog, where we will be showing off the newest embellishments, along with more catalog layouts ;)
Bella Blvd: Sneak Peek Week – Thankful Collection

July 10, 2012

Soooooo. What did you think about the Birthday Boy collection we revealed yesterday on the Bella Blvd blog? Are you ready for our next collection? Let's get to it!

Thankful is Bella's newest fall collection. I have always loved fall collections, because I'm a huge fan of fall colors. Greens, aquas, yellows, reds, browns. These are the colors that fill my home. These are the colors I love to wear. So I am just naturally drawn to these gorgeous pattern papers.

I wanted to use a family photo on this layout, but the most recent one I had wouldn't have matched the papers. Note to self: take new family photo soon. So I pulled up a photo of each of us, looking for ones that matched nicely. If I line all our photos up, side by side, and add some designer tape to hold the photos together … it's almost like it's a big family photo, right 😉

Loving the new chipboard alphas that coordinate with each collection. Especially these, with the text print on them. So cute. I adhered my title to one of the journaling stickers and adhered it with pop dots.

The sun was hand cut from the Cute Cuts paper, and embellished with a threaded button the center, and a cute little flag on the side.

The fun little cloud with the text on it, along with the "There is no place like home" piece, was also hand cut from the Cute Cuts paper. I machine stitched back and forth along the center of the cloud, and then added a few of the new buttons to embellish it. The cloud on the top is from the new Chipboard Icons.

I wanted to use so many of the different patterned paper that I couldn't narrow down my choices. So I cut small banner pieces from a bunch of the papers and arranged them across the bottom of the page, overlapping them as I went. I adhered a scalloped punched border strip on either side of the houses border strip, and adhered it above the banner pieces.
Bella Blvd: Patriotic Project Sheet

July 4, 2012

Today, we have our new monthly project sheet up over on the Bella Blvd blog. For our July project sheet, I was challenged to create a patriotic layout, using a mix of Bella's products.

You can view and download the July project sheet HERE.

Even though Bella doesn't have an actual "Patriotic" collection, it's really not that hard to find some great red, white, and blue products to work with.

I pulled out a little Family Dynamix, a little Sophisticates, a little Winter Wonder, and a little Mr Boy pattern papers to use for this layout.

And then I added some Winter Wonder stickers, Sophisticates chipboard and alpha stickers, flags, and star buttons. Put them all together, and you have a fun patriotic looking layout.

Hope you all have a great 4th of July today!
Kerri Bradford Studio: Summer Escape

July 3, 2012

I finally had a layout up yesterday, over at Kerri Bradford Studio. I say "finally" because my Silhouette Studio software stopped working for a full week. My laptop was having issues too, so I knew it was somehow related. Got the laptop back up and cleaned up, but the software still wouldn't work. Finally, the fine folks at Tech Support got me back in business, and I was finally able to work on this layout.

About two weeks ago, Joe and Alyssa's dad took the girls, our two neices, and one of Sarah's friends to Great America for the day. They were both on vacation, so it worked out perfectly. Sadly, I had to stay home and work. Bummer. Anyways. The girls all took photos with their iPod Touch's, so I made sure they sent me all of the photos.

Because the photos from the iPod aren't the best quality for printing, I printed all of the photos at 2×3 inches. I really didn't have a plan for how I was going to arrange them on my layout. I just started with some white cardstock for the base of my pages, and lightly misted the pages.

Next, I laid out the photos, in a semi-collaged way. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I adhered all of the photos down. Then I went about adding my pattern papers, die cut pieces, and embellishments around the photos.

All of the pattern papers are from My Mind's Eye. I originally picked up that ticket stub paper to scrap some photos from a trip to the county fair a few years ago. But it just seemed to go with these photos. I die cut the sun from Kerri's This & That Summertime kit, and layered it with a punched pattern paper circle and a large button.

I really went looking thru Kerri's kits to find shapes that I could use on this layout. I knew I was looking more for words/expressions, rather than fun little shapes, just because of the theme of the layout. I choose this "summer escape" title from the Escape kit. I'm always a fan of titles that have the different fonts, and where I can mix different papers together.

I randomly came across the fun quotes from the Say What #2 kit, and thought they would be fun to incorporate along with my journaling.

I typed up the journaling from the girls point of view, so it looked like I was quoting them.

I also cut the word "park" from Kerri's new Summer Lovin' kit, and added the year with a shape from the twentyTWELVE kit.

These 5 girls had a great day together, and I love that I was able to capture the day through their eyes/lenses, and with their journaling.
Layouts, Layouts, and Fixing Layouts

July 2, 2012

When I'm done creating layouts, I usually add them to a stack on the scrap island. They sit there until I have a good sized stack, and then I take them upstairs to where all of my albums are. We have two of the large Expedit shelves, from Ikea, up in the loft, and all of my albums are kept there. They then go into more stacks. I shove them into the shelves, resting on top of other things, like baskets of DVD's and CD's. Once I have a huge amount, then I will take the time to sort them out and put them all into the albums they belong in, in chronological order.

I was clearing off my scrap island a few weeks ago, making room for all of my CHA projects, and took some layouts upstairs. I had no idea I had THAT MANY layouts, waiting to be put into albums. I had them shoved in about 5 different cubbies on the shelves.

When I have these quieter weeks on the blog, and don't have much to share, I get that feeling that I'm not really scrapping that much. But then I see a stack of layouts like this, and realize that I'm getting a lot of scrapping done! This hasn't been piling up for a year or anything. It's probably closer to four months worth.

And it never fails. While going through layouts, and putting them into albums, I come across layouts that need a little TLC. While I do try and adhere everything down really well when making my layouts, sometimes things just don't stick like they should.

Kind of like my accordian pinwheel flowers. This is how I found my layout. With a few of the pinwheels, you can see how the ends came apart, and they fanned out. And then a few just didn't stay flattened, and were popping up. Seriously. If that striped pinwheel pops up any more, I'll have to bake a cupcake in it 😉

When I typed up my tutorial a while back, about how I made my pinwheels, I mentioned that I used glue dots to adhere these all together, saying "they hold pretty well". I need to retract that statement. They do NOT hold very well. Lol.

I think I'll either hot glue these together, and then adhere them to the layout. Or I will staple the ends of each pinwheel together (I have done this on a few, using my Tiny Attacher, and the staples don't really show), and find a stronger adhesive to adhere them to the layout.

But for now, these two layouts have now moved to a brand new stack. On my Ikea shelf in my scraproom. Where eventually (meaning, within a few months ;)), they will get fixed. And that huge stack of layouts I showed you? Still waiting for me to put them all away. One of these days I'll have time to work on that.
Through Their Lens

June 28, 2012

Lately, I have been turning to my girls for photos. I admit to being really, really lazy with my camera for the last year or so. I just don't take photos like I used too. I would give anything for a cool iPhone, or any cell phone that takes good photos on it, so that I could snap pictures at any given moment, no matter where I was. Instead of lugging out the huge camera, with the heavy lens.

Luckily, the girls have their iPod Touch's (4th Generation, which has the camera). They may not have the best quality images, but they're not half bad either. I'm constantly checking out their Instagram's, and telling them "Hey, email me THIS picture", and "Hey, email me THAT picture".

I have a few of these photos already printed out and am working them onto some layouts. They even captured their day at Great America last week on their iPod Touch's, and those photos filled up a two page layout that I'll be sharing soon. Alyssa is also doing the Photo-A-Day challenges, and posts her picture every night on Instagram. Lovin' it!
Sarah’s Turning Thirteen

June 20, 2012

Someone is turning THIRTEEN years old today!!! That's right. My little Sarah Bear isn't so little anymore. She has magically turned into a full-grown, just-about-taller-than-her-mom-and-dad, teenager.

I thought it would be fun to take a peek at her through the years. I wish I would have thought about this earlier, so that I could have dug out photos from the few missing years in this group. I can't exactly pull out old albums at 1:00am, to take photos of older pics taken before the digital days.

{2001 – 2 years old}

{2003 – 4 years old}

{2004 – 5 years old}

{2005 – 6 years old}

{2006 – 7 years old}

{2007 – 8 years old}

{2008 – 9 years old}

{2009 – 10 years old}

{2010 – 11 years old}

{2011 – 12 years old, taken from sarah's camera}

{2012 – 13 years old}

Happy, happy birthday Sarah Bear! I feel like you've already been in "teenager" mode for a while now. You might have accidently skipped right over "tween", and went straight to teen. LOL. You are so much like me, it's scary. Which is why we end up butting heads on a daily basis. But we are also both wildly funny and have a great sense of humor. We fight hard, but we love and laugh even more. Our dad and I cannot be prouder of you, and we love you to pieces!
Two Families

June 18, 2012

The last few weekends have been filled with family. My family and Joe's family. Our families got together for completely different reasons.

For my family, it was a visit from my sister, who lives out-of-state. She doesn't make it out here that often, so it's always nice when we get to see her. We spent two full days hanging out, BBQ'ing, swimming, catching up, and even golfing (I'm the only member of the family that hasn't been sucked into this "golfing" craze!).

For Joe's family, it was a family loss that brought us all together this past weekend. Sadly, and very tragically, we lost Joe's middle brother and also his uncle, within weeks of each other. Family and friends, near and far, came together to celebrate the lives of those we lost, and to re-live the memories and stories we have about them. While there was lots of tears and sadness this weekend, there was also lots of laughter and love at the same time.

Two weekends. Two different reasons to get together. Two weekends that will be remembered and not forgotten. Two amazing families that we are all so grateful to have in our lives.
Bella Blvd: Sunshine & Happiness Project Sheet Layout

June 11, 2012

Today, we have our new monthly project sheet up over on the Bella Blvd blog. For our June project sheet, I worked with the Sunshine & Happiness collection.

You can view and download Bella's Sunshine & Happiness project sheet RIGHT HERE.

I had a ton of fun creating this layout. I've shared a few projects recently, that had accordian pinwheel flowers on them. But the ones on this layout were actually the first ones I had ever made. Which makes sense, because I do these layouts a month ahead of when we release the project sheets.

The patterned papers in the Sunshine & Happiness collection are so bright and colorful. I wanted them to really stand out on the layout, so I used my favorite grid paper, from the Family Dynamix collection, as the base of my page. Once I had a good idea of where my photos, title, and flowers would be, I sprayed a bit of orange mist to the top left corner of my page and the bottom right corner, just to add a little splash of color.

It's kind of hard to see, but I added some pink paint around the edges of my photos. I haven't done that in ages. Because I left a white border around my photos, after printing them, I wanted to help them stand out a bit against the white grid background paper. I just used my finger to swipe the paint around the edges, and I didn't try to make it neat and perfect.

I also took a few torn pieces of designer tape, folded them over the sides of the "on a summer afternoon" sticker and also my journaling strips, and then stapled them to secure the pieces.

Then there was the flowers. Like I mentioned, this was my first time making these, so I tried a few different widths on my paper strips, because I wasn't sure how big the flowers would be. I ended up using a fun mix of different size flowers.

After I made all of the flowers, I arranged them in the bottome left corner of the page, overlapping them as needed. I used lots of glue dots and pop dots to adhere them. Then I dug out a mix of stickers and chipboard pieces to add to the centers of each flower. If you happen to notice that I left the date off of that chipboard piece, just pretend that it's really there. I forgot to write the date on there, before taking these photos 😉

One thing I love to do when using the stickers from these collections, is to adhere them to scraps of cardstock and cut around them with scissors. I love to add stickers to my projects using pop dots, and this is an easy way to hide the stickines of the "sticker", and turn it into a die cut of sorts.

If you missed my little tutorial from a few weeks ago, you can find out how I created the accordian pinwheel flowers in THIS POST.
I’m Diving In

June 8, 2012

It bugs me a bit when I get skimpy on the blog. I wish I had projects to share, but I don't. I take that back. I do have ONE layout to share, that will be up on Monday. And it's one that I really, really love.

{Photo unrelated to this blog post. But I happen to think my girls are too cute, so I had to share}

But I can't promise that I'll have much else to share for the next week. Hopefully, I can find something to blog about, until I do have some projects to share. Not sure what. If any of you have any great ideas for something you'd like to see me talk about, feel free to let me know in the comments. Questions. Topics. Whatever.

In the meantime, I am diving into a box of brand spankin new Bella Blvd product! I just got all of the new collections and embellishments that will be released at Summer CHA in July. Yep, it's time for CHA madness again. That's one of the things that's been keeping me busy lately, is all of the planning. I have a TON of projects to make, and I cannot wait to get started. It's such fun stuff! I'm in love with the colors on these collections! On top of CHA work, I have some projects to make for a fun team-up feature we have coming on the Bella blog. Lots of Bella stuff going on around here these days and I LOVE it!

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