Bella Blvd Studio Blog

Designer Challenge: "3 Wishes For You"

I'm loving the details on this layout. From the rolled up paper candles to the stitched birthday banner!

Morag tells us about the challenge layout:

We all have aspirations and dreams for our children and it’s a wonderful idea to document just what they are. Lauren had recently celebrated her fifth birthday and I took the opportunity to document the wishes that I have for her. I hope that she’ll look back one day and understand what she means to me.

The journaling is printed out on the computer using my own handwriting font! It only took a few minutes to make but is a sure-fire way to get neat handwriting.

I love to use strong shapes in my layouts and I’ve created several hand cut templates to make life easier.

The "candles" for each wish were made from a roll of paper.  The "flame" is hand cut from cardstock and topped off with a little glitter. Bunting adds a further touch of whimsy to the page.  Just cut out small triangles and machine stitch across their tops.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

***One more thing***

If you are local to the Waukesha, Wisconsin area be sure to stop by the Waukesha Expo Center for the Rubber Stamp & Scrapbook Expo this weekend. I have a feeling there will be some super cute Bella projects (make-n-takes) at more than 1 booth! hint hint! ;)

Bella Workshoppe + Designer Spotlight: Morag Cutts

Ciao Ciao! Hope you had a fabulous weekend! We have lots to share today! First of all, have you heard about this awesome event? Lucy and Scrap Etc. has invited Bella Blvd to be a part of the Artist Workshop during the event this weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. I am so excited to be traveling with Gail (Bella Artista), to teach a great make-n-take (we'll feature it soon on the blog!) and take classes by some of these awesome teachers!

Margie Romney-Aslett,

Jenni Bowlin,

Elizabeth Kartchner,

Melodee Langworthy,

Gretchen MacElveen and 

Jessica Sprague!

You can count on us keeping you in touch along the way! We look forward to a weekend of work, relaxation, scrapbooking and education! Can't wait! Oooh! One more thing....check out this super adorable necklace Gail created for us to wear at the event! So darling! I'm in love with it!

And last but definitely NOT least, allow me to introduce you to our fabulous Guest Artista of the week:

My name is Morag Cutts I live in the UK with my husband Peter and children Jacob and Lauren. Morag is a Gaelic name because my Dad was Scottish and he got to choose!

I am completely bonkers about scrapping and try to do something crafty every day. This mainly means sneaking off to my craft room after the kids are in bed and staying up way too late (hence the bags under my eyes).

I love the way that scrapping incorporates so many different skills and techniques to create something truly unique. But the best things about our hobby are the friends that I’ve found both here and on forums. I have found the most wonderful generous group of people you could ever wish to meet!

I am a frequent contributor to Scrapbook Inspirations (the UK’s leading scrapbook magazine). I also have the pleasure of designing for several stores both in the UK and the US. I am truly thrilled to be a guest Bella Artista!

Designer Spaces: Emily Jones

My scrap space is tiny! Hehe! Our house isn't super small, but the majority of the space is upstairs. With our three kids and us using up all three bedrooms, the only place left for me to scrap is the dining room! I dreaded it at first, with visions of the kids tearing through papers and using my five dollar embellishments on their artwork, but in reality, it has been awesome. I've been finding it so nice to scrapbook in the dining room, it is really nice to be able to be a part of the family goings on while scrapping. Before I was sequestered to my scrap room upstairs at our old house, I had to actually schedule time to scrap. Now I can pull out a few things here and there during nap time or a free moment throughout the day. 

I have been scrapping almost daily at the kitchen table for the last few months.  It has forced me to become a much cleaner scrapper too because I know I have to clean up every night so the kids can have breakfast at the table in the morning! 

So here is my little area! My shelving unit is the expedit from Ikea, which I adore! I have been coveting these for years, and finally got one last year! It holds EVERYTHING: paper, embellishments, alphas, stickers, minis, you name it, it's in here! 

These are my papers: I use the cropper hopper system and organize by manufacturer. This is definitely the system that works for me because I have a freakish photographic memory when it comes to my papers. I know if I need that one paper with the hearts I can go right to the correct manufacturer's file! My cardstock is sorted by manufacturer as well, DCWV, Bazzill and Close To My Heart.

The top row of the cubes I have my punches, pens, inks, sprays, stickles, ATC's, and flowers. In one of my rectangular tins I keep all of my misc. embellishments, things I am keeping for that one "special" project, things that are unique and things that I just plain love and want to see out and not stored away!

Here I keep my acrylic stamps.

(I used to be a demonstrator for Close To My Heart, so I have quite a few sets of these!) In this binder from Target I used Baseball Card Protectors to hold my single acrylic stamps. A lot of these came from various kit clubs or the dollar section at Michael's. They fit perfectly inside the baseball card protectors, and it's fun to flip through the binder when I need inspiration.

Up on top I keep my scrap ribbons by color and my collection of vintage lace!

Next to my expedit, I have a very simple set-up for my sewing machine and inspiration boards...just a tray table that houses the sewing machine, and nails to hold my clipboards under an altered canvas I made a few years ago.  

So this is it! My sweet little corner in my house that is all mine! I am so glad that I have a hubby who is more than willing to put up with papers strewn over the table any given night and is kind enough to get on his hands and knees to remove glue dots from our dining room floor! I many not have a giant and expensive room, but I honestly believe it's the art that you make, not where you make it!

And one last layout by Emily to share using Bella's Family Tree collection:

Designer Challenge: Emily Jones

"Once Upon A Time..."

When I hear "Once Upon A Time..." I immediately think of fairy tales, and I assume most people do too...but for this layout, I wanted to go the non-traditional route! I found this silly picture of me way back when I was about 5. I was giggling over how goofy I was in my awesome 80's outfit with my tongue sticking out, when I realized that most of the photos of me from when I was little were very much like this! I was and still am, very much a ham!  

I used kraft-colored cardstock for the base of my layout. To create the colorful frame around the edges, I used many different bright colored paints and swiped my paintbrush around the cardstock. I also machine stitched a lot of the elements to create a layered look.

Great Layout Emily! I love the artsy style of this layout. The layout has a lot of energy! Lastly, Emily went a little above and beyond and created an additional layout for us!

Designer Spotlight: Emily Jones.

Hi all!  My name is Emily Jones. Let's see, where to begin...I live in WA State with my super supportive hubby James, my three kiddos, Joey (5), Jake (3), Lily (1) and a big lazy black lab named Molly! I started scrapbooking when I was 12 on a whim! My mother loved to make cards, and one afternoon while we were at Michael's, I was wandering the paper crafting aisles when I laid eyes on scrapbooking products (of course, back then, all that was available were deco scissors, the neon brights, paste cardstock packs and a few books of cheesy papers)... but that's all it took because I fell in love! That summer I scrapped my first album, and I was HOOKED!

13 years, 3 kids and a hubby later, I still can't stop scrapbooking! I have come to realize that scrapbooking is a wonderful mixture of my favorite past times: writing, collage, and art all rolled into one!  There is nothing that feeds my creative soul like scrapbooking, I am definitely a scrapbooker for life!

For the mini, I wanted to showcase my daughter Lily's first birthday! Her party was bunny-themed with pink and yellow cupcakes. Much to my delight the Treats & Sweets paper had cupcakes that matched hers almost exactly! I am really happy with how this turned out because I was worried about the photos. I had a friend doing the pictures at her party, and when I got them back, realized how dark some were. The Sweet Celebration papers are so bright and cheery, and make even the dark photos in the book pop out! I love this line so much!

Where does Katherine create beautiful layouts like this? (Designer Spaces)

Three Great tips here:

1) Love how Katherine stitched the label sticker on with embroidery floss instead of putting a standard brad through the holes, and

2) the word "my" using the outside "scraps" of the alphabet letter sheet as a window and placed patterned paper behind them! Way to make that sticker sheet last longer!

3) Katherine painted the white sticker letters teal to spell s-q-u-i-r-t and then dazzled them up with Stickles or glitter (not quite sure which one)

She has also combined both Bella's Swing Into Spring and Sweet Celebration patterns for this super colorful layout!

So, Katherine, where do you scrap?

You could say I am a “bag lady” when it comes to scrapbooking. I scrapbook on the go much of the time whether that be at the local store, a weekend getaway, or in my home. Therefore, my rolling tote packed full of goodies is my ideal space when it comes to cropping. My scrapspace in my home….really not so dreamy and a work in progress.

I do claim various areas on many floors of our house as my space. I guess the main “storage area” would be in the TV room in the basement. Decorated with all hand-me-down supplies, ranging from the carpet to the shelving, it serves as a great little corner to store my stash of paper goods.

My favorite piece is the huge drafting table my husband snagged from a previous employer, and a shelf that hangs over it filled with an assortment of crafty stuff. Although the drafting table would be a great place to crop, most of the time it is stacked full of supplies. Thanks to the Bella Artista project I cleaned it off for the photo. And you know, even though the table is open for business, I still migrate to the main floor to work on projects.

For quick layouts, I like to take over the kitchen table, or pull out the bread board and plop down on the living room floor late at night. If I am doing a longer project I can’t resist setting up a table in the sunny bay area of my kitchen. This location is where the action is. At the same time that I am fixing dinner or helping the kids with homework I am able to tweak a page design. And my Basic Grey magnet board (another favorite) is almost always standing around somewhere in the kitchen with a layout waiting for judgment from the peeps. 

My computer and wishblade are on the 2^nd floor and not at all close to where I create. Maybe that is why I do a lot of hand written journaling. With my scrapspace occupying all three floors of my house and all the trips I travel up and down the stairs I like to think I have made scrapbooking somewhat of an aerobic activity.

Katherine's Designer Challenge:

***Use 10 Bella stickers. If you use alphabet stickers, they don't count!***

When I first read my designer challenge I thought “Yippee."  Making piles of little shapes and words on layouts is just my thing, and I knew the Bella sticker sheets have so many cute images to work with…10 stickers, no problem. 

Then I read that I was assigned to use the Pack Your Bags line for the challenge. Anxiety set in. Sorry to say, this girl does not travel far from home, so the challenge became finding a subject in which to use the stickers. After staring at the sticker sheet one evening, all the great words and phrases kept running through my head, so I decided to include them in my journaling. Because life is quite a trip around here, my subject became the 15 years my hubby and I have spent together. I wanted to  incorporate as many Bella words as I could, so I cut stickers apart, turned stickers upside down, and layered stickers on top of each other. And once I got going, I couldn’t stop stickering, (if that is even a verb) and I layered more stickers in a cluster around the photo to the side of my poem.

In the end it was a whole lot of fun. I highly recommend “stickering” with those Bella images to any scrapper out there!

(OMG, all the details. Love the hand-lettering, the texturing and ripped edges, doodling and more!)

(hand stitching!)

(Some stickers on popped up and some layered!)

Awesome job Katherine! And...for those of you wondering, she actually used 22 Bella stickers!

Online Chat Tonight!!

At Serendipity Scrapbooks.

Details:

* I will be joining the forum tonight for a chat at 9pm EST / 8pm Central.

* Ever wonder where the ideas come from for bright new papers? Or what it takes to start your own scrapbooking company? Or maybe there will be surprise information on new and upcoming product collections!

* You won't know unless you join in on the chat TONIGHT!

* Go to the website, and register for the forum. Wait for your email confirmation. Then the chat room is located in the upper right hand corner of the website. Click the chat button up next to the Gallery button!

Hope to "hear" your voice tonight!