Loads of colour with Bella Blvd.

Hey Magpies! Welcome to May. This month (and next month too), I picked the fab new collection from Bella Blvd, Make your Mark. I LOVE this collection. As Niki said in her recent post, it’s got the colours of the Illustrated Faith lines without the religious stuff which is good if you are not religious. By the way, check out Niki’s post cause she did some gorgeous LO’s!
I bought most of the collection to work with, which is why I have done LO’s for my June post with it as well, I had so much! This month I’m showing you my more clean & simple style LO’s and next month get ready for a colour explosion, I went all out with patterned backgrounds and loads of colour! Not like me but the colours are so lush, I wanted to use them!
My first LO I really wanted to use the floral tag from the Gift It Tags pack. It’s so pretty, I love the floral! I also used 2 other tags from that pack and I cut them down to the same size as the floral one. I also cut my photo to the same size and just placed them in a line on the page. I seem to be obsessed with borders at the moment. I can’t do a LO without putting a border of some sort on it. It’s a bit of a change around for me cause I was a plain & simple cardstock background type for so long! Now there’s a border on everything. This one I backed with the full size floral paper, Magnifique. I gutted it of course, I wasn’t wasting a whole sheet lol! I also went old school and hand drew a border. I was inspired by one of the bits in the Die Cuts Pack and got the white pen out. It did take forever, it was a labour of love!
Under my line of tags I used the fantastic black & white striped, Break Rules Washi Tape and you definitely need this tape in your stash. It’s so versitile and I used it as the border on one of the LO’s I’ll show you next month, it worked so well! I dotted around some bits and bobs from the Paper Pieces Cardstock Die-Cuts pack. I used one puffy sticker from the Puffy Stickers pack, the pink ‘you can do this’ arrow and then added a multicoloured line of Nuvo Crystal Drops. I used 5 different colours, Apple Green, Caribbean Ocean, Dandelion Yellow, Red Berry and Rhubarb Crumble. I have gone mad with the Nuvo’s this month, I just love them so much, they’re so easy to use and you can make a whole page border with no worries about running out. I have gone through one bottle of Caribbean Blue now and I’m close to having to replace a couple more bottles too but they last for ages! Definitely something we all need in our stash!

Just a little close up of the details.


My next LO is pretty simple, the paper I’ve used adds the drama to this one. It’s just a sheet of the Paint Me paper from the 6×8″ Paper Pad and I just plonked it on a black background that’s 9×12″. I hand drew the black and white border around the edge and the bumpy borders above and below the paper. There’s a piece of Break Rules Washi Tape as well. My title is an old Heidi Swapp wood title I got in the shop but it is pretty old so it’s gone now. If you want to achieve the same kind of look, try this Vinyl Expressions sticker from American Crafts. I painted my title white and then put some Morning Dew (clear) Nuvo Crystal Drops on top. I also learned a lesson with the dots of Nuvo Crystal Drops I added on top of my white bumpy border above and below the paper. They didn’t stick! They all fell off and you can see one I missed on the bottom left, whoops! I had to stick them all back on again with Glossy Accents! So the Nuvo’s didn’t like sticking to white pen.

My LO is actually square, honestly! I found it really hard to photograph these LO’s with borders on them! It’s making my life harder lol! You have to try and take your photo so square on and I’m not very good at it, damn! Here’s a close up of my title. I don’t think the Nuvo Crystal Drops are the right product for getting a nice glossy top on a large area like this. I don’t mind the effect, but it isn’t flat and smooth, it’s more bumpy and has some cracks in it. As I say, I don’t mind it but if you want a perfect, smooth & glossy finish to something like this, definitely use Glossy Accents (also comes in a smaller bottle) because that will do that as it’s self levelling and very glossy. It’s also a glue as well, it’s a fab product. But I like the uneven, bumpy look that the Nuvo’s give, it adds a bit of texture and interest which sometimes you need.


This next LO is exactly the same design as the one above, but I’ve done it 12×12″ this time. I put a sheet of dotty paper from the 6×8″ Paper Pad from the Addison Line. I then put a border around with Amy tangerine, Fine Apple Paper. I wanted to do a border of Nuvo Crystal Drops but I did that so many times, I tried something different and used some thin checked ribbon from my stash. I haven’t used ribbon for so long! It makes a nice border. I’ve used the Break Rules Washi Tape again. My title this time is one of the Bella Blvd Acrylic Words, from the Play & Explore Pack. Because I wanted the gap between the L and O in the title to border the Pier in my postcard, I had to stick it off centre. So I cut out an arrow from red paper and stuck some extra arrow stickers on top. I also used the ‘impossible to forget’ sticker from the 12×12″ Cardstock Sticker sheet on some foam pads for dimension.
 

here’s a close up of some details.

In the Make Your Mark Collection, there’s some fantastic gold foiled papers. For this next LO I used the Believe Paper. I am not a big fan of writing on papers so I cut the writing off this paper. I put it on a black 9×13″ background and left a border where I added big fat dots of White Nuvo Crystal Drops. I layered up my photo on some of the 6×8″ Paper Pad. I Used old Shimelle Thickers for my title and then I dug through my Bella Blvd stash and found some bits from Oh My Stars to dot around, including the panda who makes no sense on this LO but hey, it’s cute, I liked it, I used it! I also used some of the new Puffy Stickers, Ice Mix Stars and some more Nuvo Crystal Drops in Midnight Blue and Navy Blue.
 

Some details.


With the offcuts I had left from cutting up the Believe Paper, I cut some squares and then trimmed a photo I had to the same size. Then I added in some of the reverse sides of the 6×8″ Paper Pad papers, they are solid colours that are all pretty lush. I added some Break Rules Washi Tape and lots of Nuvo Crystal Drops, this time I used Ebony Black, Bottle Green, Navy Blue and Midnight Blue. I used the yellow tag and the blue spotty banner from the Gift It Gift Tags and dotted around some of the Cardstock Die-Cuts and topped it all off with a Puffy Sticker heart.
 


Last LO and I’m sorry if 6 was a bit too much to look at…… I just couldn’t stop creating! I’ve already done 5 LO’s for June as well, so I was quite productive with this collection. This one is again, just a sheet from the 6×8″ Paper Pad. My picture of the Brighton Pavillion is a postcard cause seriously, I could never take a photo that good and with no people milling around! I just put my postcard on the paper and added some strips of my favourite washi tape again. I can’t believe I’ve used this washi tape so much, I was never very into it until I got the black & white stripes! I’ve used the black banner from the Gift It Gift Tags and the #amazing HLM Flair Badge. I needed something to fill some gaps and found some puffy phrase stiickers (I’ve no idea where they came from sorry) and the British flag is something I’ve had in my stash since like 2004! More Nuvo Crystal Drops, this time Daffodil Yellow as a border and some Midnight Blue as well and I was done.

 
So that is what I created for May. I can’t wait to show you the super colourful LO’s I’ve already made for June! The Make Your Mark collection is stunning and I found it so easy to work with. This is definitely a collection worth splurging on, go on Magpies, you deserve it! And look out on our FB Inspiration Group for challenges on National Scrapbooking Day this Saturday, you could win some HLM Points to use towards your shopping and who couldn’t use some free stash eh! See you there https://www.facebook.com/groups/1074181915950949/ join up if you haven’t already.