I’m so excited to bring you to this week’s Featured Company: Bella Blvd. In today’s spotlight you’ll learn more about Bella Blvd, see a fantastic project by one of their designers and have the opportunity to win a collection their beautiful feathers shown below (details at the end of this post).
About Bella Blvd
Bella Blvd began its journey back when owner and founder, Stephanie Hunt, was in high school, she just didn’t know it. When her passion for scrapbooking was born so were her dreams. After completing her very first scrapbook album, she realized that designing such paper products would be a dream come true.
When trying to decide on a company name, Stephanie wanted it to resemble some of her other passions: family and travel. Her Italian family heritage has shaped her life and traditions, and traveling was always encouraged to learn new cultures and gain experience. While studying abroad in Italy during college, the phrase “ Ciao Bella!” echoed the cobblestone streets. That was it! Literally meaning, hello beautiful, ciao bella was the perfect combination of her Italian family roots and her dreams for the products. Beautiful designs, beautiful colors, beautiful brand. Bella Blvd was born in June 2008.
Bella’s product pride is its versatility, quality, and affordability. Paper and stickers are the essentials in creating a single scrapbooking layout or card. Consumers can now find and purchase Bella Blvd worldwide. Our product line and embellishments continue to expand with leading industry and fashion trends, all the while creating excitement daily through our social media outlets and daily Studio Blog.
http://www.bellablvd.typepad.com/
http://www.bellablvd.net/
Special Bella Blvd Guest Designer
Hi there! I’m Laura Vegas, from Northern California, where I live with my husband Joe, and my two gorgeous daughters, Alyssa (16) and Sarah (13). I have been scrapbooking for over 18 years now. I started shortly before my first daughter was born, and have not slowed down since. I scrapbook mostly about my girls and our family, but like to mix it up now and then by scrapping photos and stories about my daycare kids and family friends as well. I have been fortunate enough to design for Lil’ Davis, Making Memories, Jillibean Soup and Pebbles, and was proudly a member of the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Creating Keepsakes Dream Team. I am currently serving as the Design Team Coordinator for Bella Blvd, designing for Kerri Bradford Studio, and am a member of the 2013 Scrapbook & Cards Today design team. I have been published in Scrapbook & Cards Today, Creating Keepsakes, Scrapbooks Etc, Scrapbook Trends, Cards, Create, Paper Trends, Papercrafts, and PaperKuts magazines.
Designer Project:
Hey everyone! Laura here today to share a few layouts with you featuring one of Bella Blvd’s newest embellishments … feathers! These lightweight embellishments come in a wide variety of bright and fun colors and they add a ton of texture and dimension to your paper projects. One of the biggest questions about the feathers is how to adhere them. I’m going to share a few of my favorite ways of adhering feathers with you today.
One of the easiest and quickest ways to adhere feathers is to staple them directly to your layout or card, and it’s the “adhesive” of choice that I use the most when it comes to working with real feathers.
Simply position the feathers were you want them to lay and staple the bottom ends of the feathers to secure them in place. In most of the projects that I have used feathers on, I knew that I would be placing something over the ends of my feathers, which would cover up the staples.
In the example above, I stapled five feathers to my layout, and then adhered a strip of machine stitched patterned paper directly over the ends of the feathers, hiding the staples in the process.
Another way to attach the feathers to your projects is to stitch them in place. You can either hand stitch just the feathers themselves, adding a few small cross stitches down the length of the feather, or you can stitch an embellishment on top of the feather to help hold it in place.
In the examples above, I have arranged three feathers across my page, and picked out some coordinating buttons to layer on top of each feather. I added a few small glue dots under each feather to lightly hold them in place before stitching.
I held each button over the center part of the feathers, making sure to bring my thread up one side of the feather and down on the other side. This way, the threaded button “grabbed” the feather and held it down in place.
In the example above, I secured my feathers to my layout in two different ways. First, I stapled the bottom of each feather directly to the page. I added three crochet hearts along the bottom of the feathers, so they helped hide the staples.
I also used my journaling strips to add some extra security to my feathers. I did not use any adhesive on my journaling strips, but adhered them to the page using a tiny brad on either end of each strip.
Adding my journaling directly on top of my feathers allowed me to use the brads to grab onto the feathers and adhere them down a bit more, and the journaling strips also helped to keep the top of the feathers in place so that they don’t shift around.
In my last layout, I got a little more creative with my feathers, letting them peek out from behind the circle cut outs on the page. I started by using a circle cutter to cut out four circles of varying sizes on my white cardstock background paper.
I placed the paper with the cut outs on top of another sheet of white cardstock and traced my circles onto the bottom sheet with a pencil. Once I knew where on the page my circles would go, I arranged a few feathers over those traced circles (on the full sheet of cardstock) and stapled the ends in place.
Then I adhered my original sheet of cardstock (with the cut out circles) directly over the paper with the feathers attached. This gives the feathers a bit of a peek-a-boo look, as they are all peeking out from behind the circles.
We really hope you have enjoyed today’s feature. We also want to extend a sincere thank you to Laura Vegas for her fabulous project and Bella Blvd for sharing their company with us. Be sure to visit Bella Blvd to see more of their great products.
In order to enter the give-away to win a pack of the Bella Blvd feathers, shown above, please leave us a comment in the comments section of this post. Winner will be announced next Wednesday on the Paper Crafter’s Library blog!
Thank you for the inspiration on using feathers. I would never have thought of all these! Gorgeous layouts!
I love this idea and will definitely use these in future projects.
I love feathers, thanks for sharing those beautiful projects.
Love the feathers and beautiful projects!!
Great lay-outs and beautiful feathers! I love these. Thank you for sharing.
Wow…These layouts are amazing. I am so inspired by the idea’s of using feathers.
Thank you for the inspiration, so many great ideas. I use feathers often, and I hope I am the lycky one.
Oh my gosh, who would have thought of all these ways to use feathers!! The samples are gorgeous — love the feather colors and ways to “adhere.” Outstanding post!!!
Love these layouts and the creative use of feathers.
The feathers look really cute. They are so “in” right now. I also love the crocheted hearts.
What a cute layout. I like all of your bright colors.
Very creative use of the feathers. I love the colors and thanks for all the tips on how to attach them.
Really great ideas for the feathers. I have never thought of using staples.
The feathers are so pretty and add so
much to the projects. I haven’t used
real feathers before, but they look so
nice, I’d love to win some and try them
out!
Carla from Utah
Laura Vegas is amazing! The feathers are gorgeous and the layouts are wonderful. I am heading to a crop with my girlfriends this weekend. I will definitely try her suggestions for adhering the feathers.
I’ve started seeing the feathers in a lot of projects lately. I love the texture that they add to product and the fact that you can get them in virtually any color to work with your layout or card, project etc. Thanks to Laura for some great inspiration and thanks as well for the chance to win.
I am inspired by the feathers! Thank you fora chance to win them!
Absolutely beautiful, great inspiration and love what you have done with feathers. Would love to win. Thanks for the chance.
WOW!! These are all gorgeous!! Totally pinning that last one!!!
I love these feathers! What a great way to add texture and color to a project!
LOVE LOVE LOVE what you’ve done with those feathers. Can’t wait to see more of this line. Congratulations.
I really liked the feathers with the buttons. The match is just perfect. Who makes the buttons? The circle idea was inspiring.
Love the feathers with the buttons and the ones peeking out from behind. Thank you, Laura, for showing us some great ways to use feathers and how to keep them in place.
I darn near swooned the first time I saw these fathers.I use feathers every chance I get-they are a big go to with me.These are gorgeous.Thank you for such wonderful inspiration on new ways to use the,
Great use of the feathers on the layout. I especially liked how you put the buttons on the feathers to hold them down and add extra interest. Very cool.
These feathers are gorgeous! Lovely!
Oh wow! Not a big feather fan, but these layouts are gorgeous! Love Bella Blvd!! Thanks for the giveaway!
wow!!! These feathers are fun, elegant, and beautiful all in one! I love them! beautiful work too!
I love the look of feathers. They add texture and help fill empty spaces. Beautiful work done by Laura V. I like how she added buttons over the feathers.
Thanks for the tips on how to attach feathers to layouts and cards!
Wow, these are lovely examples of how to use feathers.
LOVE the use of feathers … I will definitely be incorporating this in some of my work. Thanks for the inspiration.
Ooooh, I LOVE feathers and having this kind of texture on a layout is sweet! TFS!
Love the texture feathers give and I’m happy to see designers using them as I need ideas.
All the projects are just so lovely! The feathers add such a light and fun quality! Thanks so much for sharing!!!
Laura, your ideas were amazing.
I love Bella but I especially love Laura’s eye for design. She has a style that is distinctly hers. Love the variety of ideas for using the feathers. My fav is the one with circles with the feathers inside them.
Awesome layouts! Love how you added the same colored buttons over the feathers and I REALLY love how you used them to fill the negative space in the circle layout. 🙂
The feathers are used in such unusual ways – peaking out behind paper, visible in cutouts. Very good ideas.
Love the feathers highlighted with the buttons. Great projects.
Look at all those pretty feather thanks for the inspiration with all these great ideas 🙂
Love the different ways of using feathers..never thought of it as an embellishment.
So many beautiful ways to use feathers! I especially love the cut outs.
Oh…..these would look so cute on my little chicks, chickens, blue jays, blue birds, cardinals heads and bodies. Thanks for the opportunity.,
What a unique way to use Feathers!
Thanks for sharing this product. It will be a great addition to scrapbooking and card making.
Gorgeous. I especially like the circle layout!!
What an awesome use of feathers. I have so many ideas now.
Thank you for the opportunity to win.
-Thank you for sharing these creative ideas to use feathers in your crafty projects. They certainly add a touch of beauty to any project.
Been wanting to try using feathers. Thanks for the chance to win some.
the feathers are simply gorgeous and add so much dimension to the sample layouts!
I love the added texture of the feathers without the bulk! Love how she added the buttons to the feathers- what a neat idea!
I love the texture of feathers. I never thought to see if they were available in colors. Wow! BTW, I’ve been known to save the feathers that come out of my down pillow. {sigh}
Feathers are a unique idea, adds a touch of softness to the layouts, very nice indeed. Im inspired.
What I love about the projects shown is the variety of beautiful colors. I also enjoy the form of those feathers. I am a feather fan and my pseudo “Plume” litterally means “feather” in french. That’s why I try to incorporate them to a majority of my creatios. Recently I even did a page with feathers on a clothes line. I also made a canvas with feathers and angel wings on a clothesline! You see I really love feathers and I had not seen any like yours before! I wich to win some!
Wow, these feathers would really be cool on a page or one of my greeting cards. Thanks for the
chance to win this beautiful collection.
What fabulous projects. I love using feathers, they add such great texture and whimsy to a layout.
Kym
Love the feathers on the scrapbook pages….just so much fun and terrific colors, too!!! Love it!
Wow wow wow!! These are all gorgeous!! LOVING the use of those beautiful feathers!!!!!
Wow! These los are AWESOME!!