Bella Blvd Studio Blog

Sunshine layout by Lisa Fonseca

Hey friends,

it's Lisa back on the blog today and I'm sharing a new super fun and bright layout. 

The assignment this week was to include creative journaling into the layout. But, we'll talk about that later. Let's start at the beginning. 

For my background, I used my new gel press. It's 12x12 inched, so prefect to cover a whole sheet of cardstock. I used my Distress Oxydes and pressed all the rainbow colors onto my press. Then I spritzed some water over the colors and placed my sheet of cardstock on it, pressing it onto the press. That way, all the colors transferred to my page. I let them dry and started creating my sun.

I wanted to create a sun with rainbow colored sun bursts. So I cut out small stripes from almost all of the papers from the 6x6 Bella Besties paper pad. I also used a Bella cutfile (Chicks 301107) to create the two cute chicks. When I had all my pieces, I started placing and adhering the sun and sun bursts down. Then I pierced holes around them and hand-stitched everything with black thread. I didn't do the stitching exactly around my pieces of paper, I wanted to have this cool effect where the lines would be slightly off and I love how it turned out :)

Then I matted my photo with different patterned papers, adhered it next to the sun, using foam tape and then I adhered my chicks, using thick foam squares, to make them stand out the most. I drew some cute details next to the chicks with a black pen and used enamel dots at the end of each swirl. 

For my title, I wanted to use some more black to balance out the black of the stitching. I used the Florence alphas under the picture. I also wanted one part of the title to be bigger, so I tried to replicate the Florence font and cut it out from a black Bella Besties paper. I really like how it turned out. :) 

Back to the creative journaling. My first idea was to do the journaling on the sun bursts, but when I was done, I realized that it would be hard to write on the small spaces, plus it would maybe ruin the rainbow effect. So I chose to do my journaling around the page, as a frame. I wrote my journaling on a white scrap of paper, cut it into small strips and adhered the text all around.

To finish the layout, I splattered some pink ink, used some flower stickers from the Squeeze the Day collection, and I was done!

I really hope you enjoyed the process and like the layout.

See you very soon,

Sweet Spring Layout | Nathalie DeSousa

Hi there!

Nathalie with you today bringing you a bit of color in this dark times.   We are all facing a hard time, and crafting is a great way to bring a bit of a silver lining to your days.  So, what better way to add a bit of color to your Spring memories using the beautiful Squeeze the Day and Bella Besties collections.

 

I started by adding a bit of white paint on the White Graph/dot Bella Besties paper.  This will create a blank space for my background without losing all the paper designs.  While the paint dried, i used a cut file from HANDIPAPER to create the cut out.   This was cut twice from white cardstock, then staked and glued together to create a bit of dimension on the cut out.

 

 

The cut out was backed with papers from the 6x6 paper pads from both collections.  I chose to create a rainbow of flowers cascading on my page.  Trimming the edge of the background and then gluing it to the b-side of the Orange You Glad paper makes everything pop nicely on the layout.

 

 

I layered papers from the Squeeze the Day collection behind the pictures before setting them on  the layout.  A few pieces of ephemera and enamel stickers and acrylic shapes help to create the clusters at the corners of the pictures.

 

 

For the layout's title, i combined the So Sweet Acrylic word with a few Wonky Alpha puffy stickers and a piece of ephemera at the bottom of the pictures.  Just love the combination of textures in this little cluster.

 

Along the way, i added a few small clusters of ephemera, enamel shapes and sitckers  so that they help create the soft diagonal design on the page, and also guide your eye throughout the page.

 

 

I hope this inspires you to add a bit of rainbow magic to your next memory documenting.  The Squeeze the Day and Bella Besties do sure provide the color you need for your silver lining!

 

'Til next time,

 

FEATURED BELLA BLVD. SUPPLIES:

SQUEEZE THE DAY COLLECTION:  6x6 paper pad; Orange You Glad, Zesty, I Picked You papers; Ephemera: Icons, words; So Sweet Acrylic word; Bella Pops: Pearfect,  I Pick You; Epoxy shapes: Icons ; Acrylic pieces: Rainbow

WONKY ALPHA Punch

BELLA BESTIES: White Graph/dot paper, 6x6 paper pad

 

 

 

Oh sweet summer layout - Lisa Fonseca

Hi friends, 

it's Lisa back on the blog and today I'm sharing a fun summer layout.

I know it's not summer yet but the colors and style of the SQUEEZE THE DAY collection are just making me want to scrap all my summer photos :) I love the fruit bits in this collection and I knew I wanted to use lemons for a layout. I don't know if all of you know me yet and know my style, but I love to create paper-pieced critters and characters.

So for this layout, I drew a glass of lemonade and a lemon, cut the pieces out from different patterned papers from the collection and the Bella Besties papers and adhered them to white paper.

Then I stitched around the borders using matching thread. When I was done, I cut my characters out, leaving a white border. I set them aside and started with my background. I wanted some pink, orange and yellow washes and splatters of color in the center of the page. I used gesso on a white cardstock sheet, let it dry and then used my Distress Oxides to add some color. I simply pressed some color on some plastic packaging, added water and used the plastic to press and smoosh the color onto the paper. Then I added more water and turned the page in different directions to let the color spread over a bigger area. I repeated this with three colors.

I matted my picture with some scraps of paper, like I often like to do and then tried to find a good placement for my characters and my picture. When I had them how I liked, I started creating my title. I chose three papers from the 6x6 Bella Besties paper pad, wrote down the three words of my title in a fun font and cut them out. Then I added them to the page. I also drew some white highlight details on the letters.

To finish the layout, I used ephemera hearts and fruit, chipboard hearts and flowers, matte enamel dots and sprinkled some shimmery pink splatters in some spots.

I really love how it turned out and I hope you do too. If you've never tried paper-piecing and stitching, I really recommend it, it's so fun and pretty! :)

Thank you for being here with me, see you soon,

Lisa

 

Fabulous | Patricia

Hello Bella Blvd Fans and Friends!  This is Patricia to share my first post with you as a Creative Team Member!  I have been a fan of Stephanie's designs and use of color in her products.  The Bella Blvd products work perfectly with my eclectic and sometimes clean and simple style!  Although I love cards, mixed media, Bible Journaling, etc, my heart is memory keeper, and my most favorite ways to document have been in smaller formats.  I'm excited to share how the March Mood Board inspired this page in my Traveler's Notebook.  

Gorgeous and ready for Spring! The March Mood board inspired me in several ways:  color, repetition of texture and color, layers, Spring feel, and monochromatic.  I translated that inspiration in using watercolors, fringing pattern paper in shades of yellow, using tone on tone of layers of pattern papers and die cuts, and cutting up the Clear Cuts!  There really isn't a limit to working in a Traveler's Notebook.

I first punched 1" squares from Squeeze the Day Bananas For You and Fruit Salad pattern papers in yellow, cut them with fringe scissors, staggered four squares together and stitched together. I work both in and off of the pages in my Traveler's Notebook.  For this project, my pages in the album are thick enough that I applied watercolors directly to my white page using one of the negative squares from the pattern papers as a stencil to apply watercolors with a paint brush.

I typed my journaling on a separate piece of white cardstock, added more of the same black machine stitching to build on that reception from the stitched, fringed squares, then trimmed into strips.  I really love the Calendar Invisibles Clear Cut, so I used the same 1" square punch to punch out along the border, and then trimmed out the days of the week.  Once the watercoloring was dry, I adhered the fringes to the page, added a strip of Dotty Washi Tape, my journaling, one of the Clear Cut punched borders, and then added in Squeeze the Day Ephemera Words, icons, and Epoxy stickers.

With my left side having a lot of texture as well as color, I balanced it by keeping the right side more simplistic by using the Ice Besties pattern paper trimmed to fit inside my album, and then the reverse side of that same pattern paper as my photo mat.  I used more of the trimmed and punched pieces from the Clear Cuts at the top with Squeeze the Day Ephemera Words and Icons.  I trimmed just Thursday Friday Saturday from the Clear cuts and added stitching before adhering to my page.

And then balanced the yellow from the top and left side with just two layers of punched and fringed pattern paper, added the Dotty Washi tape and Squeeze the Day Ephemera Icon to finish at the bottom.

Whether you are new to Traveler's Notebook or not, I hope this gives you ideas and inspiration to see how creative you can get with your Bella Blvd products in a smaller format or to apply punching and fringing, watercoloring, cutting up those Clear Cuts, adding washi tape, stitching, tone on tone techniques to your next layout!  Thank you so much for letting me share my first project with you on the Bella Blvd blog!  Happy Creating and please tag #bellablvd on social medial so we can see your creations!

I must have flowers- mood board inspired layout | Lisa Fonseca

Hey scrappy friends,

it's Lisa Fonseca here on the Bella blog today. I'm so excited to share my very first Bella project with you and I'm so happy to start on this new design team. I hope you like what I came up with :)

The layout is inspired by this month's mooboard.

I chose to go with the vertical paint strokes and the flowers. :) 

To start, I chose four colors that would match the colors on the moodboard but also in the SQUEEZE THE DAY collection. I used some acrylics and mixed them with white paint to make them really pastel. Then I painted my four strokes and splattered some paint all over each stroke. 

While the background was drying, I chose a fun flower shape on google and used it as a cutfile to cut out a lot of flowers from four different patterned papers that matched the colors of my paint stripes and also some white ones. I used three patterned papers from the SQUEEZE THE DAY collection and one from the Bella Besties. Those Bella Besties papers are really the BEST. The colors are so pretty and I love simple but fun designs on both sides. :)

When the background was dry and the flowers were all cut, I started placing them on the layout, trying to find the perfect placement and create a cool design. I also matted my picture with a black and white patterned paper. The picture I chose I took in Tuscany last year and with all the sunflowers, it matched the layout perfectly.

I started gluing down all the flowers the way I liked it. I only glued the middle part though, because, I wanted the flowers to have dimension and to be able to play with the petals. I placed a matte enamel dot in the center of almost every flower. I also used heart stickers and enamel fruit and flower shapes, which I think look so cute!

As my title, I used some of the Florence alpha stickers and I hand-cut the letters to write the word "flower", out from a Bella Besties pink paper. 

I really hope you like the layout and are inspired to use the fun and bright colors from the amazing SQUEEZE THE DAY collection.

Thank you for stopping by,

Lisa

March Mood Board Inspired | Nathalie DeSousa

Hi there, 

Nathalie with you today with my first post as a Bella Blvd  Design Team member.  I am so blessed to be here, and want to thank Stephanie for the invitation.  I am a huge Bella Blvd fan, so it is an honor and privilege to work with their products.   

This week our projects are all inspired  by the  beautiful March Moodboard.  There are so many textures, colors and designs that caught my eye, but i was immediately drawn to the paint brushes, all the yellow and flowers (cause you never have enough flowers!).    So i mixed them all in one single page...

I started by adding a bit of teal acrylic paint to a piece of heavy cardstock -I used similar strokes to the ones in the moodboard-.  While the paint dried, i pulled papers from the Bella Besties collection and used the Sizzix Pretty Flower Thinlits die to cut flowers from the papers, focusing mostly on the White, Bell Pepper, Guacamole and Cotton Candy shades.

I used a knitting needle to lightly curl the edges of the flowers before gluing them together, and then added on of the Matte Enamel Stickers to the center of each flower.   These were all glued -to the background- around the paint application forming a crescent shape, and creating the perfect spot for the picture and embellishments.

My favorite color combination is black and white with a hint of rainbow, so i tend to use lots of black and white photography on my pages.  This helped with bringing all the colors together.  I pulled papers from the Squeeze the Day collection to back and layer behind the picture.  Before placing the picture on the page, i added a few pieces of the words and Icons ephemera into clusters around at the corners of the page.   The small cute clips are just so darling holding the tags together.

 

 

To finish the page, i first trimmed the left and right edges of the layout and backed it with the Fruity Hearts paper, and a small strip of Dotty Washi tape.   One of my favorite thing from each Bella collection are the acrylic words; this time i combined the "Adventure" and "Fabulous" ones to form the title for the page.  A few extra embellishments from the Squeeze the Day collection complete my page.

 

I hope this inspires you to pull your Bella Blvd. goodies and create a project of your own inspired by the mood board.   Remember to share the project, we love seeing how you use the collections. 

'Til next time!

 

 

Bella Blvd.SUPPLIES: 

Acrylic Words:  Fabulous, Adventure

Squeeze the Day collection: 6x6 paper pad, Matte Enamel Stickers - Fruity Mix, Epoxy Stickers - Heart icons, Washi Tape - Sweetness, Chipboard Stickers - Icons, Ephemera icons, Ephemera words, Patterned paper - Bananas for you, Fruity Heart, Daily Details.

Bella Besties collection: 6x6 paper pad, Patterned Paper: White, Guacamole, Cotton Candy, Bell Pepper

Cute clips:  baby girl 

My Heart Layout | Kat Bemjamin

Good morning everyone!  Kat here to share my layout for Thanksgiving week.  I decided to make a layout that focuses on what I'm grateful for...and one of the things I'm most grateful for is my daughter - she's my heart!

The Home Sweet Home collection was absolutely perfect for this layout, including the coordinating "My Heart" acrylic title.

I love all the fun patterns in the collection, so I used as many of them as possible.  I cut up a bunch of triangles and arranged them into a vertical element that ran the height of my page.  I then sprinkled around some word salad stickers, enamel hearts, ephemera and some mist.  The layout actually came together really quickly once I had all my triangles cut out!  Here's the whole thing:

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I hope you have a wonderful week!

Patterned Papers: Home Sweet Home: All My Love, Always Welcome, Home Sweet Home, Welcome Home; Acrylic Title: My Heart; Ephemera Icons: Home Sweet Home; Doohickey Stickers: Home Sweet Home; Word Salad Stickers; Illustrated Faith Enamel Hearts: Bless Her Heart Mix

Tips and tricks when using Mixed Media on a layout!

Hey there Bella Blvd friends! It is Leanne here today sharing a fun mixed media project. I love creating texture on my layouts and the best way to achieve this is with a little paint, ink and textured paste!

Today I want to share a few simple tips when looking at creating details with mixed media products. These items don't need to be expensive and quite often you can use tools you already have available to you. For this layout I started out by playing with textured paste.

After trimming my white cardstock to size, I used a small chevron stencil and layered textured paste directly to my background. I wanted it to be rough and uneven, to create the base for my messy watercolor application. The paste took 24 hours to dry properly and while it was drying, I weighted my cardstock down to try and make it flat again. Using mixed media products will warp and buckle cardstock and patterned papers during the creative process.

To layer paint onto the cardstock, it needs to be completed in stages. If multiple colors are added at the same time, they will mix and become muddy. Allowing drying time between each color on your page, will highlight focal points rather than distract from them.

For the larger bodies of paint, add a generous amount of watercolor paint to plastic packaging. Quickly apply the plastic packaging, face down, onto the cardstock. Gently rub the reverse side of the plastic to move the paint on the cardstock. Once again, allow the paint to dry between colous. Flicking or dropping paint onto the layout also adds to the overall messy mixed media technique.

Ink is another great way to add dimension to a layout that includes mixed media. After fussy cutting the reindeer and gingerbread people, I inked the edges with a complementary brown color to grunge them up a bit. Curl the edges of fussy cut pieces to make them appear like they are lifting from the page.

All of these techniques combined create a textured look for your layout. If you have the patience and you like to get messy, I highly recommend having a little paper play fun! Thanks for visiting the blog today.

 

 

Santa Squad: Ho Ho Ho patterned paper, Ephemera Icons, Epoxy Christmas Words; Freehand Graph & Dot: Bell Pepper Freehand Graph & Dot, Pony Freehand Graph & Dot; Florence Alphabet Stickers: Pony. Other - textured paste, watercolor paint, brown ink.