Hello! My name is Marcy Johnson and I am so happy to joining Bella Blvd this month as a guest designer, showing some new ways to use their digital products. Initially, I was hesitant to use any digital products because I like touching paper and stickers to create things but once I started, I was hooked. There are just so many possibilities! So, let me introduce myself and then let’s jump into the fun and inspiration!
I live in Wisconsin with my husband of 13 years, Britton (isn’t that an awesome name?), and our two girls. I have been crafty my entire life and remember receiving lots of kits and projects to work on as a kid because I loved it all! In high school, I discovered art classes in graphic design and was determined to make that my career because it was so fun. Speaking of high school, that’s when my mom went to a home party for Close to My Heart and that started a love of handmade cards which led to scrapbooking, hoarding patterned paper and all things papercrafty. Confession: I have patterned paper from every line Bella Blvd has ever made that I just can’t use yet!
Ok, enough about me, onto some fun projects! Let’s start off with something basic, like a 12” x 12” scrapbook layout. For this page, I’m showing my love of straight, clean lines and symmetry. I used the Illustrated Faith “Gratitude Documented” collection for this beauty:
Now, when I purchase digital products from Bella Blvd, I always buy the entire collection kit. You want every piece you can get and for the price, it’s worth it! And this is an example of why. That graphic in the middle that says “Friends I’m thankful for” is actually a tip-in from the collection, mostly used for bible journaling. But it looks perfectly at home as part of this page. I added the alphas to spell “you” but the rest was done for me, easy peasy!
The other thing I love about digital designing is the ability to manipulate photos right on my page. I can crop them, brighten them, or cut them out, like I did on this page. It can be a lot of fun to have your photo pop out of the frame! This wouldn’t look quite as natural using traditional paper and photos. I used Photoshop to cut out the tops of our heads and make it appear that we are coming out of the photo frame.
I added some journaling about these photos, some embellishment clusters on the photos and our names using a different collection’s alpha set but because every color matches within the Bella Blvd family, it looks great! I added drop shadows on the photos to give the page some depth and this is a wrap!
Now, onto something a little different. Have you noticed that a lot of party invites are not mailed out anymore but rather emailed? This is the perfect opportunity to design some fun digital party invitations for your event and then email them out to your friends and family! This is what I mean:
I created this baby shower invitation using the “Baby Girl” digital collection. The size is 5” x 7” and you could easily attach this invite to your email! It doesn’t take a lot of time and gives you a chance to make something personal.
Next up is a bridal shower invitation using the “Make Your Mark” collection. It just screamed girl’s night to me! Again, use a few embellishments and then add your text with the party information. It’s so easy the best part is that if anyone wanted to, they could print off the invite for themselves.
And here is a birthday party invite, inspired by my nephew, who just turned two. This was created using the “Zoo Crew” collection. Isn’t it just the cutest? I layered some papers to give it a zoo feeling and then placed the animals around. Someone seeing this in their email is going to be delighted!
And it doesn’t stop here, hint, hint. Come back on Friday to see how to take this one step further! You aren’t going to want to miss it!
Find Marcy:
You can purchase Bella's Digital Files here.
