Another Happy Spring card

Thought I would pop in and share another card that I made a while back. 

This one uses a couple Bella Blvd collections:  Flirty and Birthday Boy.

The flowers are are a combination of ones that were fussy cut from one of the Flirty papers, as well as some stamped images.  For the stamped images, the flowers were stamped numerous times so that I could fussy cut the different layers to add dimension to the card.

The alphas/Happy sticker are from the Birthday Boy collection. 

Hope that you're having a great weekend!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - White Daisy; Bella Blvd - Flirty
Stamps:  Bella Blvd - Flirty stamps
Ink:  Hero Arts - Butterbar and Bubble Gum
Other:  Bella Blvd - Birthday boy stickers; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; 3L - Large and Small Dodz Adhesives; CM - Corner Rounder

Easy Bella Cards

Hey everyone, just a couple quick and easy cards to share tonight.

These were created using Bella Blvd's Birthday Boy collection.

I love the mix of patterns and colors that you get in each Bella Blvd collection, and these are really easy cards to put together, which is why today's post is going to be so short. 

 

I just wanted to say hi and share a little eye candy before heading off to bed.  Please come back tomorrow, I've got some layouts to share from the Punky Sprouts/My Little Shoebox swap that I'm really excited about.

 

Have a great evening!

 

Supplies Used

Paper/Cardstock/Stickers - Bella Blvd - Birthday Boy (small strip of stars on the first card is from Super Stud); Bazzill Card Shoppe - Whirlypop cardstock

Other:  Little Yellow Bicycle - Hello Spring Sparkle; CTMH - Dimensional Foam Tape; Tombow Mono Adhesive

Shoveling Ice

This is the companion layout to one I did last month for Carina.

I'm still using Bella Blvd's Winter Wonder papers. Lots of fussy cutting on this one. The row of trees at the top were cut from one of Bella's patterned papers and then I ran them through my Xyron 1".

I also fussy cut the large snowflakes from the Cute Cuts sheet, and incorporated some of the stickers too...the tall one with the shovel was just perfect.



We've got a busy weekend ahead, but I hoping to get some projects done, so stay tuned!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock: Bella Blvd - Winter Wonder Collection Papers; CTMH - White Daisy
Other: Bella Blvd - Winter Wonder Collection Alpha and and stickers; Xyron - 1" Sticker Maker; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Creative Memories - Photo Splits

Not Snow, Not Ice, SNICE

A quick layout I pulled together for the current PageMaps sketch. Here's what the sketch looks like, as you can see, I rotated it counter clockwise 90 degrees.



This was the extent of the 'snow' we got this year. Kind of pitiful, but Ellie insisted she wanted to go out and 'shovel', so out we went. Ellie actually 'shoveled' for a while, although Carina quickly got bored and started to wander around.

This layout uses Bella Blvd's Winter Wonder collection exclusively. I'm a big fan of Bella Blvd. I love their papers, I think the motifs and combinations are great, and they always translate well into kid layouts. This collection is near and dear to my heart since it's the first Bella collection I owned. While I love being able to spread out and mix and match collections on layouts, sometimes it's nice to just pull out a collection and put together a layout in just a couple hours.

I did some stitching on this layout - the bottom blue snowflake piece and pink piece are zigzag stitched together, and I also stitched the trees on along their trunks.



I also took advantage of the sticker sheet, using a bunch of the stickers, including those long border strips.

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock: Bella Blvd - Winter Wonder collection; CTMH - White Daisy cardstock
Other: Bella Blvd - Winter Wonder collection stickers; Tombow Mono Adhesive; Creative Memories Photo Spilts; EK Success Black Zig Marker; Sewing Machine

Exploring the Solar System Layout

One more layout for Bella Blvd's challenge week. This one was to use circle punches, and as you can see, I went a little punch crazy.

The photos are from a playdate we had with some of Ellie's preschool friends at a nearby park. There's a sprayground there (which wasn't on as we were there in October). It's modeled after the solar system, and there are these big planets sprinkled around the area.

I thought it was a perfect event to scrap for this challenge since some of the photos lent themselves to being 'rounded'.

My punches are Creative Memories shape makers. I have both the large and small ones, so the circles range from 3/4" to 1 1/2". I also used CM's custom cutting system circles on the photos/mats in the bottom corners. The large partial circle shape at the top of the page was made by tracing a plate on the cardstock.

The letters were cut using the Wild Card Cricut cartridge. I really like the script font from that cartridge. The letters were run through my Xyron (in retrospect I should have run all the punched circles through there too).

This layout was a lot of fun to do, and I've been kind of re-energized in my scrapbooking this week, and I'm enjoying these one pagers. I've even got my next one all planned out.

I was thinking about how I don't normally do scrapbook challenges, and was wondering why since I had so much fun with these last two. I think that a lot of it is that most of the scrapbooking challenges out there are sketch challenges, and while I LOVE card sketches, I'm not a huge fan of scrapbook ones. I feel like they're often just so impractical. I don't have the luxury of owning a printer and home and being able to print photos in any size/configuration I want. I work almost exclusively with 4x6 photos which I print every couple of months from Shutterfly in large batches. Plus, I dont' think I've ever scrapped only one photo on a page, I think three is the 'minimum', and I generally like to have at least four.

I think that's why I enjoyed these challenges so much. It was more a technique/product challenge that allows you to scrapbook in the way you normally do, and the two week time limit made it a lot easier to complete some projects. I had a great time, and I hope that Bella does it again. And, I'll be on the lookout for some more scrapbooking challenges of this type.

Looking forward to a weekend with no sick kids!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock: Bella Blvd - Winter Wonder Blizzard and Toasty papers; CTMH - Hollyhock and White Daisy cardstock
Other: Cricut Wild Card cartridge; CM - Large and small circle makers; custom cutting system circles, Zig black marker, Xyron 5" creative station

Pumpkin Decorating Layout

This is another project for the Bella Blvd challenges that are currently going on.

The challenge was to use patterned paper as an embellishment.

I had a great time putting this together. I used two different Bella papers from the Winter Wonder collection. The first is that yellow chevron paper. It's an allover pattern, and I just cut it after one 'zig', and then into smaller pieces. Similarly the second paper with the blue stripes was cut vertically where the pattern is offset.



I took four of the chevron pieces that I cut and put them together to create those flower/burst elements which kind of remind me of a quilt. I thought about putting an embellishment in the middle, and tried a couple things, but in the end I like seeing the color underneath peeking through.



The gingham strips are Love My Tapes fabric tape...SO easy to use and it adds some great texture and pattern to the page.

I 'gulp' did the title free hand using Zig chalk markers and a white gel pen. I want to try doing more of my titles freehand, and working on lettering. This method is quite forgiving. I used the chalk marker first, and then traced around it using the gel pen. This lets you fix some things...make certain areas a little lower/wider, etc.

This is the darkest background I've ever used for a layout, but I really like how the embellishments, photos, and text stand out. Definitely something I'll be doing again!

Hope you are enjoying your extra day!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock: Bella Blvd - Winter Wonder Icy and Ski Slopes papers; CTMH - Chocolate cardstock
Other: Zig Yellow Chalk marker, Love My Tapes Yellow Gingham Fabric Tape, White Gel Pen, CTMH Bonding Memories Glue

i heart u card for Bella Blvd and RCC42

Bella Blvd is hosting a series of challenges on their blog right now. I was so fortunate to have received a Winter Wonder collection pack a while back, and put together this card to play along.

This is for Thursday's challenge which was to use border strip papers in your project.

I really liked the border strip with the Christmas/pine trees on it. This card is 4x6, so once I cut the piece for the card, I still had 6" left. To create dimension/depth on the card, I cut out some of the tree shapes from the 6" strip I wasn't using to layer over the base piece.

Since I'm a crafter on a budget, I've got to make choices. Most of the time I go for papers and stamps, so my adhesive supply is pretty minimal. I have my Tombow, Bonding Memories Liquid Adhesive, and dimensional foam tape. I wanted the trees to pop up, but not too much. I thought the foam would be too high, plus it's hard to cut really itty bitty pieces like I needed for some of the trees.

Instead, I cut tiny pieces of cardstock - smaller than the shape I was adhering, and then sandwiched those between the base layer and the cut out. I actually did this in two levels, so some of the trees have just one layer of cardstock, and some have two layers so that stand up a bit higher.



I really liked the mesh border strip also. To stretch it a bit, after cutting it in two 6" strips, I cut one along the center to create two thinner pieces. The thinner ones went above and below the tree border strip, and the other balances that element at the bottom of the card.

There's one more border strip on this card. Can you spot it? It's the red polka dot paper. I freehand cut a heart from it, layering it over another heart cut from chocolate cardstock to use as part of the sentiment.

I loved that pop of red, but I felt like the card needed a little more red to balance it. As so often is the case, a little bit of twine was just the right touch. I added some above and below the tree border strip. I also tied a little around the u, stringing it through that cute little xoxo sticker tag from the miniatures sheet. Just perfect, and it allows me to enter it into this week's Ribbon Carousel Challenge (RCC42 Anything Goes) too. Providential!



Hope you like it. I have at least one more Bella challenge entry up my sleeve....maybe more....

Supplies Used:
Cardstock: CTMH - White Daisy, Olive, Chocolate
Paper: Bella Blvd Winter Wonder Border Strips
Other: Bella Blvd - Ciao Chip Alphabet in Simply Simona Brownie, Winter Wonder Miniatures, Twinery - Maraschino Twine