Bella Blvd Studio Blog

Gratitude

Good morning everyone!!

Sarah here this morning sharing a new layout made with the oh so beautiful Make your mark collection!  I was to create a layout about someone that made a big impact in my life and this layout covers two people that made and are still making a huge impact in my life!! My mom and my sister!

I wanted my layout to be focused towards the bottom of the page and I knew I wanted to use papers that had gold foiling on them and to be honest I have a hard time taking pictures of foiled papers and embellishments. I went threw the collection and pulled all kinds of bits and pieces that I thought I might want to use, I already had my title chosen and went to work.

I started by adding quite a few paper layers behind my photo, till I got them just how I wanted and then moved on to adding a few paper layers to the bottom of my layout so that the major focus was there with my photo. I also thought using the black foiled paper would also draw your eye to the bottom of the layout and keep the focus there. I cut a few paper strips off the boarder paper and tucked them along the diagonal as well, placed my photo where I wanted it and moved on to embellishing!

I jumped back to all those bits and pieces I had pulled out in the beginning and started playing with them around my layout. I added a few words to the top of my photo with things that both of these amazing women have taught me and moved to the lower right of the photo. I added some florals, hearts and a tag. I made sure that everything was adhered down to where I could slide my journaling tag in behind it all.

 I moved to adding my title, I used one of the acrylic words, Gratitude. I thought the top of my layout looked a little bare so I decided to use some of the little bits that were left over from the things I pulled in the beginning. All the things in this collection have such positive saying and are all things that mom and sister have told me and taught me to be, so they were perfect. I added a tag along with a few of the sayings and die cuts. Once I was done with that I went for some of the puffy stickers and word stickers and placed them around my layout, added a few black splatters and my layout was finished! 

Make your mark Collection; Real deal paper, Boarders paper, Daily details paper, 6x8 paper pad, Fundamentals sitcker sheet, Designer clips, Paper pieces, Gift tags, Puffy stickers

Acrylic Word-Gratitude, Puffy hearts; Milk white, Punch mix

Illustrated Faith Basics Words- Cardstock sticker booklet

 

Tips & How To's for Digital Designing with Sabrina

Hello! This is Sabrina for the digital Bella Blvd team. I wanted to share two projects that have big impact in commemorating Memorial Day. They are both 5x7 pieces that have quotes on them and then decorated with digital products. You could even print them to have as DIY Decor. Let's get started.

The first step is opening two 5x7 canvases. After that you want to select the 'U' command on a PC or the Command Shape tool. You need to scroll down and select the stars. Click on that and draw a star design on your 5x7 canvas. On this screenshot you can see I've drawn some star shapes with them focused in the corner.

 

 

I also used the 'E' or Eraser Tool to erase some of the stars in the middle to get a smaller cluster of stars. You can see this in the second screenshot where I took a close up shot of the bottom right corner. I used the erase tool to delete most of the custom shape of stars to get just a small cluster of stars.

 Once you have all the stars clusters you want you can add in papers by clipping them to the star layers. This command is called 'ctrl + g' on a PC. The papers clipped to the stars will look like this screenshot seen below.

 You can now decorate the quote page with some stars if you want or other embellishment. Here is the finished 5x7 quote page. It is a wonderful way to commemorate on Memorial Day and also just honor anyone who sacrifices so much in our armed forces.

 

 

Here is second 5x7 page I did the same process as the first page.

 

I hope this inspires you to create some digital pages with quotes that can be used for DIY Decor or just pages to showcase your favorite quotes. Thank you for reading!

 

Oh My Stars Designer Papers, Puffy Stars, Spooktacular Alphas and Border, Sports Basketball Border

HONORING OUR MILITARY | CORRI GARZA

Hi everyone, Corri here today sharing a couple of Patriotic themed cards in honor of Memorial Day.  I used paper from the Oh My Stars Collection mixed with a few elements from the All American Collection.  This is an older collection and I am so happy I had a few pieces left to use on my cards. 

 

 

For my USA card, I trimmed a 3 x 4 card off the Borders & Bits page from the All American collection.  I created my "Stars and Stripes" background by trimming a border from the All American Collection and adding it to a piece of the Blueberry Stars pattern paper from the Oh My Stars Collection .  A cute clip, some puffy stars and a tab from the Soccer Ephemera pack are the perfect finishing touches on this cute card.  This would be perfect for a service member returning from deployment. 

 

 

For my second card, I trimmed pieces of the star pattern paper in McIntosh, Scallop & Blueberry and then added some elements  trimmed from the All American Collection along with some star die cuts from the Soccer Ephemera pack. I used foam tape to mount the stars and sentiment strip to give my card added dimension .  Finally, I added a trio of puffy stars on either side of my sentiment.  

 

 

One of my favorite things about Bella Blvd Collections is how all the lines are color coordinated.  Even if you don't have a patriotic themed collection, you can easily pull pieces from various paper packs to create your own red, white and blue themed projects. 

 

Oh My Stars Collection, All American Collection, Cute Clips, Puffy Stickers

 

 

Tips & How To's for Digital Designing with Sabrina

Hi. This is Sabrina for the Digital Creative Team for Bella Blvd. I wanted to give you two ideas for documenting your child's sports, in particular soccer.

This first page is a 6x8 spread where I complied several photos throughout the soccer season to make the spread. You can take your favorite shots of the season and combine them to tell the story of the season. Its a fun way to see the whole season.

Here is the page and I also made some paint splatters to match the theme of dirt, mess and mud.

 

 The second idea for documenting your child's sport is a then and now layout. In this layout I took two photos of my son and put them on a layout to show a comparison. They are photos 3 years apart so the difference is striking. I decided to keep the current 'now' photo at 4x6 size and the 'then' photo is 3x4. I then added in a blue photo mat, star multi colored patterned paper and a fundamental sticker of a scallop border to both photos to add consistency to the design.

Using the Soccer Collection with all the fun fundamentals and ephemera, I was able to add lots of words pieces and die cuts to the layout that really capture the different aspects of the sport. The big and bold title takes up two sections just the photos to add emphasize to the photos and reinforce the theme of then and now.

Here is the layout of my son! So awesome (and a little sad) to see how much my kiddo grew in 3 years.

 

Thank you for stopping by! Hope you have fun trying out these tips to document your child's sports.

Bella Blvd Digital: Soccer Collection Bundle

Baseball and Fun

Good morning everyone!

Sarah back again to share with you a layout I made using the Baseball collection this week.

This layout really didn't go the way I planned.  I started my layout with everything going across the middle of the layout, and a whole different picture picked out, but I dropped my phone in water a little over two weeks ago and lost all of my pictures on it!! I was so sad!  Thats what I get for never backing my photos up anywhere! I will from now on, I promise you that!

Like I said I started my layout with everything towards the top of my layout, going all the way across from side to side. I didn't have my picture printed yet, but knew what size I wanted it to be so I created a layered photo mat, with a little dimension, placed it where I wanted it and went to adding some more color to the sides of my layout.

I added some brighter pops of color/patterned papers to the sides, I distressed the edges of my of my papers to add a little more dimension to them too. I pulled out the sticker sheet and the ephemera pack and started to tuck things in here and there on my layout. I have a love for all the tabs as you can probably tell!

I popped a baseball here in there on some dimensional foam, added a few stars and some more tabs along with baseball mitts and then my title. 

Once I had the title on I thought I was going to be done with this layout, but when I looked at it again, I thought there was to much white space at the bottom of my layout. So I decided to add a few uneven paper strips.  I used a border punch from my stash for one of them and tucked another tab and that cute foam finger in. 

At this point I knew I was done and just needed my photo, then that whole thing with my phone happened :(

 

Well, I liked my layout so I went in to my pictures and found this picture of my son doing some batting practice. We had went to a local park, his sister was using the tee stand and he was being pitched to. He loves to practice and he loves baseball so I thought the title still worked too.

 

Baseball collection: 

Patterned papers; Play ball, Boarders&Details, Hit it, America's Pastime, Ephemera pack, Fundamentals

Ciao Chips;Amorie McIntosh 

Happy Mail for Mom

Lydia here with you today to share the piece of happy mail I sent out to honor the moms in my life!  I actually spent several years of my life solely dedicated to creating happy mail because it just made me so darn happy to send and receive pretty packages in the mail.  I imagine it's no different for the lovely ladies in your lives!

I created a fold out envelope with a slot for a gift card.  I couldn't imagine using any other collection than the Mom Life collection for obvious reasons!  I just love the tones of orange, navy, and pink! 

 

I wanted the outside of my card to be exciting, so using some tulle I sewed on a layer of sequins for a shaker effort!  I then adhered two buttons to the backside, so that I could string the envelope closed.  All that was left was to decorate the inside with Mom Life goodies!

 

Thank you so much for joining me today!  I hope you all have a blessed celebration with your loved ones, honoring the women in our lives who care so fondly for us! xo Lydia

  Bella Blvd Mom Life Collection 12x12 Papers, Sticky Mix, & Ephemera, Bella Blvd Wonky Alphas in Milk White, Illustrated Faith Tiny Alpha Booklet, Illustrated Faith You Are Loved Clear Stamps, Bella Blvd Enamel Dots

COMING SOON | 7th ANNUAL BELLA BLVD WAREHOUSE BOX SALE

Mark your calendars for this Wednesday, May 9th at 9 am CST!  Click for here questions and answers.  

Welcome Back! | Guest Designer | Savannah O'Gwynn

Hello, friends! I’m super thrilled to be posting again and joining the Bella Blvd team this month as a guest designer.

On Monday, May 1st, I shared several cards that I created using a combination of Bella Blvd’s papers, stickers, and ephemera pieces. Click HERE for more details.

 

 

Today I’m sharing three different Bible Journaling pages that I created using the same techniques from  my previous post.

First up is a tip-in about God’s grace. I call this a tip-in because it does in fact flip up for more journaling space; however, I might call this a scrapbook Bible Journaling page because the way I created it is very similar to scrapbooking- lots of layers, little details, and some journaling.

I sometimes take God’s grace for granted. It’s always there. It’s more than enough to get me through daily/hard situations. And sometimes (if I’m being real honest) I don’t give grace out because I feel like those that need it from me don’t deserve it... but I’m the one that doesn’t deserve God’s grace! That’s why I should give it out more freely than I do! I pray that I would remember that while I don’t deserve His grace He gave it to me, a sinner deserving of wrath. May this reminder help me to share and give grace to those who have hurt me or those who are hard to love. [Luke 6:27-36]

My second Bible Journaling page was so easy to create- I used the Illustrated Faith Basics Olive You Mix Crosses in addition to some IF Tiny Colorful Alphas, Fruit of the Spirit Say It Loud stickers/ephemera, and Faith>Fear ephemera **I’m mixing and matching for this super cute Bible Journaling page!

 

Fear tends to creep into my heart more than it should. When I was designing this page, I looked at the back of the ephemera pieces for a verse that would jump start my idea, which ended up being Isaiah 35:4. Sometimes Bible Journaling isn’t always writing out a whole bunch of details, prayers, etc. Many times I like to just add a statement and underline the scriptures that I want to meditate on/remember.

My final Bible Journaling page is probably my favorite of the three. I think this is like a scrapbooking page just like my first design! I love adding tip-ins (small and large) so that I have more space for journaling or adding details/lessons/etc to my previous notes. On this page, you will see that I cut out another title page name as part of the embellishments! I also love to cut up my tabs or stickers or ephemera to stretch their use as well. I was able to use the word “Holy Spirit” from one of my Illustrated Faith Fruit of the Spirit Say It Loud stickers for my journaling, and the rest of the tab can be used on another project!

 

 

I’ve been thinking of eternal rewards and the fruit that I am producing in my life. I really want to see more fruit and that comes with obeying the Spirit and walking with Him. The Holy Spirit already dwells in me, and producing fruit is a continuous action (making it a habit and lifestyle; Gr. verb “walk” translated in these verses. This thought actually goes well with the IF Fruit of the Spirit ephemera piece “Work In Progress”! LOL!). When I submit to the Spirit’s promptings/control, I am growing in my spiritual life. The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence of this growth! I pray that I will remember this and continue to seek God, obeying Him, and walking with the Spirit!

That’s it for me today! Thanks so much for stopping by today and for checking out my Bible Journaling pages!

And a HUGE THANK YOU to Bella Blvd for inviting me to join the team and share my creations using their Bella Blvd and Illustrated Faith collections! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Be blessed <3 Savannah

If you would like to see more of my work, you can find me on:

Blog | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | Pinterest

 

 

Guest Designer | Savannah O'Gwynn

Hello, friends! I’m beyond excited to be joining Bella Blvd this month as a guest designer.

My name is Savannah O’Gwynn- I’m originally from Indiana but now l live in Florida and call it home! I have been blessed and happily married to my husband, Travis, for almost 12 years. We have a Catahoula Leopard pup named Olsen Bebo. I love to serve on the worship team with my husband, as well as cook elaborate meals for friends and family.

I’ve always been drawn to all sorts of arts and crafts. I started making cards using regular and construction paper back in high school- nothing fancy, just folded up papers with drawings. In college, I got a bit more detailed with my creations by hand cutting out each piece from colored cardstock to create images and layering them on my card bases. And then I found a craft store that introduced me to patterned papers, die cuts, stamps, inks, gems, paints, and more scrapbooking/crafty items. The rest is history! I’ve been creating custom cards since 2009, and recently have enjoyed making bible journaling entries, party decorations, and more!

I thought I would share some cards with you today (as well as some of my favorite cardmaking techniques) and some bible journaling pages later this week. In my heart, I’m a cardmaker first- I find that I can envision a card design quickly after purchasing some papers, alphas and embellishments, or even from just a stamp set. That’s exactly what happened when I received my Bella Blvd package!

Some of my favorite techniques for my projects include mixing and matching items or paper collections. I did that for my first card using Bella Blvd’s Popsicles & Pandas stickers with the Illustrated Faith’s Faith>Fear ephemera.

 

Another technique I love to use on my cards is layering a whole bunch of embellishments and stickers as the main element. Plus, this next card features a small Bella Blvd Popsicles & Pandas journaling card that I cut from the 12x12 Daily Details patterned paper.

Tip: another technique I like to use for my creations is to stretch my supplies. The way I’ve done that on this card is to take the sticker “leftovers” from the orange heart [Bella Blvd Popsicles & Pandas Fundamental Stickers] and fussy cut around it to create another sticker design. You can do this to pretty much any sticker image or alpha and create MORE stickers/images to use for your projects!

Here’s another card with more layering using the Bella Blvd Mom Life Ephemera. This card also highlights another favorite technique of mine: fussy cutting. I’ve fussy cut out the large blue flower from the Bella Blvd Mom Life 12x12 Daily Details paper, in addition to the sentiment.

 

And if you look closely... the small flowers around the bunch in the center are actually the flowers in the title line of the paper. I’ve fussy cut six of these flowers and have used them as part of the card design!

I have two more cards to share- see!?? I told you I’m a cardmaker first:) This next card features sewing/stitching as part of the main element. I knew I wanted to use that large heart from the Bella Blvd Mom’s Life 12x12 Daily Details patterned paper as my backdrop for some layered stickers. The only problem was that it needed to be a “plain” heart. So I customized it using a kraft knife cutting around the image, placing another patterned paper behind this new piece, and then stitching around the heart several times with a sewing machine and white thread. Stitching on projects can be functional (like holding these papers together) and is a great way to add dimension and detail!

That’s it for me today! I have soooooo many more ideas that I want to create using these beautiful papers and goodies! You’ll have to stop by my blog for more projects and details 

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for checking out my cards! Don’t forget to join me later this week as I feature three different bible journaling entries! Be blessed <3 Savannah

If you would like to see more of my work, you can find me on

Blog | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | Pinterest