Bella Blvd Studio Blog: Challenge Week With Guest Designer Shannon Tidwell: Day Three

Hi, it's me, Shannon Tidwell, back again for another day of fun & scrapbooking.

Wednesday Challenge: Use Patterned Paper as an Embellishment

For me, patterned paper is the supply of supplies. The one thing I couldn't scrap without. Not only is it the most versatile supply, it's also the least expensive. Win win! So let's go big with some patterned paper and use it for the main embellishment on your page. It doesn't have to be something super complicated or time consuming, just interesting. Sometimes I like to challenge myself to use it in a different way, and sometimes I go to my bag of tricks. Do you have a bag of tricks? You should! They are just techniques that you've used in the past that worked! Stuck on a layout? Pull out one of your tricks to get your layout 'un-stuck' and before you know it you'll have something you love.

A few of my favorite tricks with patterned paper:

Grab your scissors and cut. Circles, stars, hearts. This is a great way to mix up a lot of papers on your page, too.
Have a paper with great elements, but it's a little busy for the page? Cut out the elements and use them on your page.
Strips. Wide, skinny, short, long. Create a background, a border, or a base for your title.
Make something. I love making pinwheels and rosettes ... fun and easy ways to add interest & dimension to your page. The bigger the better of course!

"Summer Swim Team", by Shannon Tidwell.

For my first layout today, I made a little party on my page. I love creating dimensional accents with patterned paper. They don't weigh the page down a ton....or make the $ value of the page skyrocket. I let the silly string in the photos inspire the accent. Curly-Q's are so simple to make. Just trim super skinny strips of paper and the wrap them around any round tool you've got. I left my curly-q's pretty tight, you can unroll them some to help loosen them up, or use a larger round tool to wrap them around.

Your first question might be, what are these going to look like in your book? The answer: still fun! I'll kind of arrange them as I put the page in the page protector. Instead of seeing the top of the curly-q's you'll see the side, which will still be fun. Go ahead, have a little party on your next page!

"Baby Love", by Shannon Tidwell.

And the technique I chose for my second layout, I grabbed my trusty fringe scissors. You could do this same technique with regular scissors, but the fringe ones make it go a lot faster ... and the cuts are more uniform. I love how the fringe scissors kind of curl the paper automatically. This adds a lovely bit of texture and dimension. And if a little fringe is good, a lot is great! (This is kind of my motto with everything in scrapbooking.)

To create the fringe border on this layout I cut several strips of patterned paper. I usually cut them about 3" wide and then I have plenty of room to fringe and overlap them. Plain strips of paper would have been okay, but the fringe makes the paper an embellishment.

Let's see what the Bella Blvd team has for you!

"My 2 Loves", by Nancy Damiano.

I love the eclectic look of mixing different patterns gives. I used the Silhouette to cut a little more than a dozen hearts out to adhere to the page. I chose both large and small patterns, as well as solid colored and multi-colored patterns to give the heart collage some pop. I adhered the hearts with a mix of buttons and mini-staples, as well as pop dots for a layered look. The entire collage was built on a square of vellum to ground it to the layout. The row of black and white photos of my husband and son through the years really stands out against the stark colors. This was such a fun and easy look to pull together. A little bit of this and a little bit of that - just how I like my pages!

Supplies:
Sophisticates: Calendar, Petite Pieces, Miniatures; Winter Wonder: Blizzard, Icy; Spring Fling & Easter Things: Moms Bouquet, Alpha+Bits; Simply Simona Chipboard Alphas: Saltwater, McIntosh

"Pretty Tulips", by Becky Williams.

To create these flowers I simply cut narrow strips of patterned paper, added glue to the center and folded the ends to the middle. I then layered the strips and added a button with strong liquid adhesive.

Supplies:
Sophisticates: Sprinkles and Lace Oyster, McIntosh; High Five Alphabet Stickers: Black/White; Spring Flings and Easter Things: Egg Hunt; Designer Tape: Red Dot, Pickle Juice Dot; Button Market: Snowflakes, Zebra, Bursts

"Wipeout", by Melissa Stinson.
{A Winter CHA Layout}

I'm just going to gloss over the fact that my husband and I were crazy enough to use our kayak as a sled (we hardly ever have snow here, so our existence is a sledless one) and skip straight to the techniques. I'd been wanting to try Marcy Penner's chevron tutorial for a while, and these photos of my husband falling out of the-kayak-I-shall-not-mention just begged for the jagged edges of a set of vertical chevrons. It kinds of makes the whole layout say "ouch," don't you think? And, yes, there is video of us being insane on YouTube...somewhere. ;)

Supplies:
Winter Wonder: Blizzard, Toasty, Ski Slopes; Button Market: Snowflakes; Flags: Winter; Sophisticates: Blue High Five Alphabets

"Lara", by Sue Mylde.

As a teenager in Singapore, I took the bus to and from school. These buses had mini printout tickets which we teens like to 'create' something with. One of my favorite things is to create these paper origami hearts with them. And for this challenge I wanted to make these hearts for this layout too! While I used one of the hearts out by its lonesome, I've also clustered up some hearts together to create a flower and then layered it on top with another one of those cute blooms from the Bella collection! Cute, right? I love these Spring Flings & Easter Things collection - so bright and fun! It's not yet spring here in Calgary but I'm sure feeling the warmth of this page!

Supplies:
Spring Flings & Easter Things: Egg Hunt, Mom's Bouquet, Sunny Sunday, Borders, Cute Cuts, Alphas +Bits; Blooms-a-Bella

"Sending You Sunshine" card, by Gretchen McElveen.

For this card I cut a bunch of clouds out of the Happy Clouds patterned paper from the Sunshine and Happiness line. Cutting images out of patterned paper is one of my favorite "techniques"!! I used the clouds to embellish around the sunshine from the Cute Cuts sheet. I adhered a couple of the clouds with foam adhesive to add some dimension to the card. I thought this was a perfect card to use the "Sending you some sunshine" sticker from the Alpha+Bits sticker sheet. Challenge complete!

Supplies:
Sunshine & Happiness: Happy Clouds, Cute Cuts, Sunny Side Up, Juicy Good Time, Alpha+ Bits Sticker Sheet; Flags: Floral

"Congrats" card, by Gretchen McElveen.

I used my circle punch to punch some patterned paper from the Baby Boy line. I also punched kraft cardstock with a slightly larger circle punch. Then I added the patterned paper on top of the kraft and created a big circle border across the card. I cut a couple of tiny hearts out of the Borders sheet from the Baby Boy line and used them as small embellishments on the card. Fun!

Supplies:
Baby Boy: Alpha + Bits stickers, It's a Boy, Momma's Boy, Cute Cuts, Borders

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And now, we are going to ask you to play along with our challenge! This week, we will be featuring FIVE challenges. But it's not just about showing you what we came up with. We want to see your take on our challenges too. And we have a little extra incentive to get you creating and sharing.

We will be drawing one winner, to receive a prize package of $100+ worth of Bella Blvd products!

But this is different than our regular giveaways. You will have to participate in the challenges, in order to be entered in the drawing for that prize package. If you participate in one challenge, your name will be entered in one time. If you participate in three of the challenges, your name will be entered in three times. Make sense? And how about a bonus. If you participate in all five challenges, your name will be entered in not five times, but TEN times! We really hope you'll join in on the fun with us. Just click on the button below, to link us up to your completed projects. You have until Friday, March 2nd, to get your links added on. We will then announce a winner on Saturday, March 3rd.

I saw a few questions come up in the comment section, and wanted to answer them here:
1. Yes ... cards count the same as layouts!
2. You don't have to have a blog to participate. You can link us to your project on Flickr, Pinterest, or in an online gallery.