Designer Showcase - Robbie Herring

Hi everyone! I'm Robbie Herring. I have been designing with Bo Bunny for around 2 years now and I'm lovin' it! For those of you who don't know me yet, I'll give you a bit of an over-view.

I've been married to my wonderful husband for 25 years. We just celebrated our silver anniversary last week! I'm so lucky that he is supportive of this fun hobby that I came to love. We have been blessed with 2 children. Our daughter is 24 and our son is 22. We couldn't be any prouder of them! Our daughter is out of college and living about 3 hours from us and our son is a senior at Texas A&M. Whoop!

As those of you with older children know, it is harder to get recent pictures of your kids when they aren't living at home. Thank goodness for Facebook! Without it, I would probably only have Christmas and other holiday pictures. The layout that I am sharing today is a lift off of my daughter's facebook. Even though she has a camera, she usually just uses her phone to take pictures. Some of them won't make it to the page, but some of them end up looking really great and way more fun than the perfect pictures I'm always trying to get. 

 I used the gorgeous new Serenade Collection to make this one. I chose to really play up the yellows in the collection to go with her photo. Between her yellow top and the extra saturated picture, it was a perfect match!

 When I'm putting together a page, I like to add lots of little details. Because I tend to be drawn to EVERYTHING when it comes to embellishments, I always try to ask myself if I see the pictures. It is important to me to have my photos take center stage.

This close-up shows some of the details that I love to do for my pages. Stitching almost always shows up on my pages and I love clustering and shaped papers and stickers. Keeping it to the edges of my phot with just a bit of overlapping helps to keep all this from overwhelming my photo.

 More clustering and a touch of fussy cutting make a showing on the bottom of the page. I couldn't help but make leaves out of the patterned paper. Of course, if you are familiar with my work, you will now that a ribbon or bow almost always ends up being added. If you haven't tried the Double Dot ribbon, you need to! I LOVE how it has the dots on both sides to make tying bows and knots a snap!

Bo Bunny Supplies:

Patterned Paper:  Serenade Dot, Serenade Garden, Serenade Pendant, Serenade Sunrise, Serendade Trellis

Double Dot 6x6 Paper Pads: Bold and Bright

Stickers: Serenade Combo

Chipboard: Serenade 12x12 and Serenade Layered

Buttons: Serenade

Brads: Serenade

Trinkets: Serenade

Petals Serenade

Recently, I was looking through my computer at all the Bo Bunny projects and pages that I have done over the last 2 years. It's funny, but I don't always go back and look at my pages from the past. Taking a stroll through my Bo Bunny files was almost like looking through my scrapbooks. It gave me the idea to share a few of my favorites here.

First, I wanted to share the first page that I did for Bo Bunny. It's appropriate to this time of year that it's a first day of school page. This is my son on his first day of 1st Grade. Where did the time go? The collection is Learning Curve. I'm still hoarding some of this!

 Quick Tip: I used a real wooden ruler on this page. I cut down the ruler to make it fit better. I used Tim Holtz sissors to do it. Be sure that your ruler doesn't have a metal strip to get this look.

Next up, is a Halloween Altered project that I made using the Whooligans Collection. What an adorable collection! I still have this and pull it out during Halloween. Would you believe that the candy still looks great? Wouldn't want to eat it though!

 This is a little place setting that I came up with for the Kid's Table at Christmas. It is one of my favorite projects because I had such a great time making it!

 Summer is such a fun time for having fun and spending time of the water. I chose this one because I love the picture so much! My daughter made such great friends in college and I think the picture really gives the feeling of a perfect summer day. It was made with the Barefoot and Bliss Collection.

 Finally, a more recent collection. This is the Little Miss Collection and I can't get enough of it! Add a wonderful picture of a baby's first day at home and it's perfection. As I mentioned earlier, my kids are grown, so it's especially great to have friends and relatives that share their pictures.

Hopefully, I haven't gone on tooooo long!

Working with Bo Bunny for the last 2 years has been such a fantastic experience! I like to say that I don't have a style and haven't met an embellishment that I don't love. Bo Bunny fits me perfectly! They do it all and do it so very beautifully!

FAB Photo tips!

Hi friends, it's Gabrielle here with a few photo tips!

One of my favourite things to do while I'm editing my photos is to create a soft faded edge. I find it helps frame the photo and create a layer of it's own even before matting. I use Photosuite photo editing software (It comes with Roxio Home Creator)....for me it's a really easy to use editing software.

A fun effect I stumbled upon a couple years back is this sheer looking frame design. I had printed off the same photo in 4x6 and 5x7 because sometimes I'm not sure what size I'm going to want for a given layout. I had stacked the 4x6 on the 5x7 and thought, HEY! that looks pretty cool! Here is a photo I recently layered in this way for an upcoming Bo Bunny blog layout (you can see the full layout on the 11th)

 Here are a few photo-taking tips I have for taking portrait style photos....

~ I always prefer to take my photo's outdoors on overcast days, you don't  want harsh shadow so ...bright sunny days are not good for this.
~ try to take your photo's from a slight upper angle, so many of us have a bit of a double chin 

taking a photo from a higher angle hides this and also gives you more of an open eye.
~ Want a more glamorous looking photo, try changing the photo to a black & white and bring up the brightness and contrast, this bleaches out minor wrinkles and blemishes and focuses on the eyes and lips only. This is what I did for the photo below....

 Here is one more tip! Don't have photo editing software and want to give your photos interesting edges? Look for free photo editing sites! One of my favorites is Pixlr-o-matic http://pixlr.com/o-matic/ ...All you do is choose a photo from your computer, then you can choose all sorts of frames and effects to add to your photo. Here is a photo of my nephew and his bride on which I added a sanded looking edge with the Pixlr-o-matic site.....

 Here is another one I made up using their software that 

gives an extreme aged look...

You can add very subtle design elements to your photos or very extreme, it all depends on the look you are going for in your layout. Hopefully implimenting some of these tips in your photo-taking and editing will help in bring a nice focus on your photos. Give it a try.

Sept Blog Class - Week One

Hi friends!

Today we are going to do a picture tutorial for our layout class.

Our class this month was designed by our guest design team member

Lynn Shokoples. Click on her name to find out more about her.

I love her technique and would always get so excited when she would post

on our facebook page and just had to invite her to come play with us.

 This is the original layout made by Lynn. Her cute boy is enjoying the sun...

It doesn't say on the layout, but it looks a lot like Costa Maya.

I've recreated the layout and changed very little, but I'll let you know as we go along.

The sizes for all the papers have been included on your supply sheet.

(That's the one in the top right corner of the blog.)

I used an edge distresser on each piece of this layout.

Lynn used the distresser on some and black ink on other pieces.

Adhere 'Stripe' piece to base.

Fold top left corner of  'Globe Trotting' and sew onto layout.

(See the next 2 photos for samples of the sewing)

Cut out the tags you want to use on your layout and attach brads, stickers and jewels.

Notice, Lynn left her tags doubled when she cut them.

(You'll see what I'm talking about when you look at the cut out)

I actually cut the top tag out.  I like it both ways, we just wanted to give you options.

I also used foam squares on my sticker word strips.

Adhere tags to page as shown.

On this pocket, Lynn tilted her Henry Miller quote cut out piece and adhered all her pieces down.

On the same piece... I only adhere on the sides and bottom to form a pocket. and then tucked the 

travel noteworthy and the map journal cut out piece inside the pocket for journaling.

After adhering pocket, adhere 2- 12" strips across the bottom of page as shown.

Because I like the added dimension, I used foam squares on the strip that says 'one way.'

 Now all that's left is adding the 'You are here' noteworthy. (I foam squared it)

The layered chipboard arrow.

The 'travel' chipboard. (I foam squared it)

The suitcase trinket. If you have some extra twine laying around... tie it onto the luggage.

Now add your photo/photos and write up some journaling and you have a FABULOUS layout

your family will love to look at!

I've never done a written class, so if you have any questions at all or need clarification

on anything, just let me know.

Enjoy!