October 2021

So Sweet | These Days Collection | Danni Visser

Hello lovely Cocoa Vanilla Studio fans! Danni here with an embroidery-inspired layout using a fun cutfile. I have not been doing much hand stitching recently and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I have chosen to document an adorable photo of my daughter ready for kindy one morning.

I started with a cutfile by COAPA Cutfiles featuring a cute embroidery hoop and stitching holes for these overlapping hearts. I chose some embroidery threads in colours to complement the These Days collection and stitched them in a chain-link stitch. I cut the outside hoop of the cutfile in the woodgrain from Pretty Posies 12×12 patterned paper and adhered the two pieces together.

I popped the whole hoop up on dimensional foam and positioned it in the centre of Home Grown 12×12 patterned paper as my background. I punched a hole through the top of the hoop and threaded a pink ribbon through, to create the illusion that the hoop is hanging from the top of the page.

I matted my photo with the pink spotted paper from the A5 paper stack and positioned it to overlap the embroidery hoop. I love this photo of my daughter and the colours she was wearing matched the layout nicely, but the background was very cluttered and had lots of different colours. By removing the saturation from the background of the photo I was able to make sure the background didn’t clash with the layout without having to turn the whole photo black and white.

For embellishment I created a classic three clusters of florals around my photo and the outside of the cutfile. I used a combination of floral ephemera and the little flowers from the clear stickers to create these. I also tucked in some of the tiny black foam leaves from the foam title stickers. I also used to foam title stickers to create my title “So Sweet” curving around the edge of the cutfile. I positioned it diagonally across the page from my photo to create balance on the layout.

To continue with the hearts theme, I added three of the puffy gold glitter hearts that added a lovely touch of sparkle. I also included a sprinkling of the teeny tiny hearts from the puffy stickers around each of my embellishment clusters. As a final touch I added some splatters of white and yellow ink to finish off the layout.

I love how soft and pretty this ended up looking. I hope you enjoyed joining me. There is a process video on the Cocoa Vanilla Studio YouTube channel if you would like to watch the layout come together, linked below. Happy scrapping!

Danni x

 

Little Moments of Joy | These Days Collection | Laura Alberts

Hey y’all! Laura back again with a really sweet layout using what I call a ‘picture in picture’ design using the new These Days collection. This design features a smaller layout inside of a larger one and gives the impression of a frame or shadow box. The inside layout is 8 1/2 x 10 inches with a paper pieced wood grain border to frame it, then attached to the gorgeous heart background of The Good Life patterned paper. I also added one of the super cute wood buttons from this collection at the top to give the impression that it’s push-pinned on a wall.

I switched things up for myself with this one, moving the photos to the bottom of the page and the journaling to the top, which is quite opposite of my normal style. Along the beautiful green polka dot border, I added fussy cut houses from the cut apart side of The Good Life paper. Some of these little houses are raised on pop dots and others flat, for an impression of dimension. On the top right of my photos is a corner cluster that wraps around with a large and medium floral, plus a tab.

Each of my photos has a white border and a vellum photo mat to soften the layers.The title is actually fussy cut from one of the journaling cards included in the These Days collection and it fits perfectly between my two photos. By layering two of the ephemera floral clusters underneath of it, the title appears to burst out from the page. I’ve also fussy cut several of the tiny flowers from the pattern papers to use as scattering bits around my clusters.

  

I really love the way this rainbow stripe peeks out from the side of my photos and adds a bit more color to the overall layout. This bottom left photo features a horizontal cluster with more fussy cut florals from the stunning Home Grown patterned paper. As a finishing touch, I added gold Nuvo drops in the centers of some of my flowers and dotted around the outside of my clusters.

I hope this inspires you to look at your patterned papers and journaling cards a little differently and incorporate them in a big way on your projects too! To see how “Little Moments of Joy” came together, check out the process video below!

Boy album | Mix of collections| Anna Komenda

Hello Friends. it’s Anna here and it’s time for another Throwback Thursday. I recently dug up some older masculine collections from CVS and I decided I need to use them up finally. You know I usually am a bigger fun of flowers and pink so I still had plenty of papers and embellishments to play with. I went bold with this project, cutting into dozen of papers, using up to the last bit 5!!! sheets of 6*12 stickers and 3 sheets of transparent stickers! I am so proud of myself for putting those old goodies in good use. Ladies and gentlemen – I present you a big boy album with a mix of many CVS collections:

Can you name all of the lines I used here? I think I managed to squeeze in every single masculine collection that was ever released at Cocoa Vanilla. You can finds bits and pieces from: “Flying high”, “You rock”, “Boys rule”, Totally rad”, “Legendary” and “Made of awesome”. Most of them are no longer available in the store but “Flying hight”, “Made of awesome” and “Totally rad” were released as digital versions too! So you can print yourself as many papers and elements as you wish.

My album is sized 21*21 cm and it holds 5 pages inside. Each page has some flaps or pockets to hold many photos at 10*15 and 13*18 cm size. There is also plenty of room for a journaling and other keepsakes. I made everything from scratch starting from the cover. I used false leather with a wooden print to make album more durable. I mixed it with kraft cardstock that seemed to work better with all those patterns and colors.

Colorful papers are so joyful and fun – perfect for a little boy album. Even though they are from different collections, they still look good and cohesive together. I am not going to lie – I used so many 12*12 sheets here but I also managed to squeeze in many smaller paper scraps. However I was holding those papers for years and they totally deserved to shine and bring joy to someone.

I embellished my pages with a lot of various embellishments like ephemera pieces, 6*12 stickers, transparent stickers, chipboard stickers, washi strips, flair buttons, wooden elements and resin stars. All of them comes from the collections I listed previously. To be honest, many of them were stored in one bag together as a “boy stuff” that I can no longer tell which collection they belong to. It doesn’t matter though. I am just happy I managed to use up as many of them. It always feels so good to throw away used up sheet of stickers. Does it feel this way for you too?

Some of the pages are more “fancy” with shakers filled with sequins or transparent foil piece. They serve mostly decorative purposed but I can imagine it will be more fun for kids to browse through this kind of album. Hidden spots, pockets, magnets make the album more interactive.

Making this album took me few days for sure (much more hours than I planned) but it was such a great experience. It’s not filled with photos as it will be a gift for my friend and her little boy. I even added his name on the back of the cover.

I hope it will bring her joy and adding photos will be a great dive into memory lane. This is the essence of scrapbooking for me! Now it’s time for a girl version, don’t you think? I still have some of the boy collection left so I will be able to make few mini albums too. There is a chance you will see them here :)

Photos will not give justice to this album so I recorded a flip through video for you. You will be able to see all the flaps and pockets this way.

Thank you so much for stopping by and see you in November.

XO Anna

These Lovely Days | These Days Collection | Melissa Vining

Hi everyone, it’s Melissa here and I’m so happy to be back with you to share a layout that includes creative journalling!  If you know my style you’ll know that journalling is very important to me, and I include it on pretty much every layout (unless its a title page).  So of course I was thrilled to be assigned this designing prompt!  I decided to document a photo of my three girls at a local beach here in the South of the South Island of New Zealand.  I used the gorgeous ‘Wall of Fame’ paper with all of the darling little fames to contain my journalling.

I started my layout by matting my photo with two papers from the ‘A5 Paper Stack’.  Then I placed craft foam behind it to lift it slightly off the page.  I then decided on my title (using the ‘Foam Title Stickers’) and stuck the photo and title down so that I could work around these larger elements.

I did a little bit of embellishing on my photo with that gorgeous ‘Die Cut Ephemera’ basket of flowers, and some ‘Wood Buttons’.  I think they add to the whimsy of this page!

Next I selected words and phrases from the A5 paper cut apart sheet, ‘Die Cut Ephemera’, ‘Clear Stickers’, and ‘Accessory Sticker’ sheet.  I tried to use as many of these as possible incorporated into my journaling contained within each of the little frames. This was a challenge!

Each frame contains separate journalling that can be read in any order.  But together this journaling talks about the importance of time together as a family, which is definitely something I want my kids to look back on and treasure when they are adults. I finished my page by embellishing with more ‘Clear Stickers’ and ‘Puffy Stickers’.  Less is definitely more with this page because the journalling itself makes this page very busy.

I made a video that you can watch below, and to be honest I was little nervous because I don’t often journal this much as a design feature.

Thanks for reading and watching.  I hope I’ve inspired you to journal lots on a page in a different way!

Take care

Melissa xx

Our House | These Days collection | Josefine vd Hoeven

Hello creative Paper lovers,
It’s Josefine here at the Cocoa Vanilla blog today with a new layout for you. For this layout I used the beautiful collection “These Days” The challenge for this layout is “creative journaling” therefore I created an interactive element for journaling on this layout.

One of my favorite songs is “Our House” by Madness. I also think the song fits very well with the great style of this collection and it makes me think of my own family. I draw two circles in the center of the page and with the mini alpha set I make my title on the first circle. On the second circle I write part of the lyrics.I used my sewing machine and stitch with gold sewing thread through my title.

 

From the design paper “Neighborhood” I fussy cut all the houses and placed them in the center. I cut a 19 cm x 7 cm strip of design paper and fold it in half. I placed the photo on top of it and so I create a place to write my creative journaling in it.

Now that I have finished my journaling I am making a cluster of die-cuts flowers, butterflies, wooden buttons and word strips on the left side of the photo. I think it gives a fun and playful effect to my layout. I use 3D foam to create different layers in my cluster.

Finally I splatter with white acrylic paint that I mix with water and splatter on my layout I used my watercolor brush for this. For some extra color I also splatter with the color ” worn lipstick” from the Distress Oxides.

 

 

I want to thank everyone for stopping by the blog today and I hope I was able to inspire you. Of course I hope to see you again next time on the Cocoa Vanilla blog and for today I wish you a very happy and creative day. XoXo, Jo

 

Sweet Daisy | These Days | Michelle Stokes

Hello Hello! It’s Michelle back here today with a new layout to share, and a slightly different subject to scrapbook than the usual continuous layout shares of Leila. The past few days my fellow DT Members have been sharing some really awesome ways to add journalling to their layouts in a creative way, and today its my turn to share. I’ve used a mix of our more recent collections These Days and Sunkissed, plus one paper from the Boys Rule collection.

As you can see, a new addition to our family is on its way. This one is of the furry kind and she’s oh so cute! We’ve named her Daisy and cant wait to welcome her into our home. I wanted to document the first time we met this sweet little pup, and I think this layout was a perfect way to do so.

To begin the layout I found an awesome 3D cut file design on Etsy and cut it out using the Happy Go Lucky paper from the Boys Rule collection. The perfect shade of textured black to use for a 3D style cut file. Each individual piece is adhered together using foam tape to give it the dimensional 3D look. I added a couple of fussy cut flowers in place of a collar from the Home Grown paper (These Days Collection)

Now we can’t have a cute puppy on a page without a sweet little dog house can we?

Using the woodgrain pattern side of the Pretty Posies paper I’ve constructed a dog house using a concertina fold for the main structure. This gives it a more dimensional look, similar to what a real dog house might look like. I added a rainbow pattern dog bed (Family Ties paper), some flowers (Home Grown Paper) out the front and a name plate using a label tag from the Good Life paper along with some puffy alphabet stickers.

Heres some close ups of that sweet puppy face. She’s grown and changed a lot since these photos were taken, and I cant wait to document the next visit.

I printed the photos at around 2x3inch size and adhered them to the layout using some foam. Underneath these I’ve added the sweet heart paper from the back of the Good Life paper and sewn around the edges for a little extra detail. Tucked into this cluster are more mini flowers growing out of the “grass” (Family Ties paper) a cute puffy gold glitter heart, accessory sticker and cut apart ticket from the Good Life paper. Theres also a mini Butterly (Take Flight A5 paper) to match the 2 above the dog house and a strip of hearts which is another cut apart piece from the Good Life Paper.

In regards to journalling, I’ve kept it pretty simple. It’s not often that I add journalling to my layouts these days and when I do its not very substantial. So I thought I would share a way to get creative, when you don’t have a lot to write.

I’ve used one of the frames from the Wall of Fame paper to create a thought bubble, hovering over the dog in amongst the clouds to add a couple sentences about our time with her the other week. These are all adhered using foam tape to give them all a little dimension in the top corner. The clouds and sun can be found in the Sunkissed Collection Ephemera pack.

Lastly I added a sprinkling of gold ink around the layout and a couple of hand drawn bubble dots to connect the thought bubble to the sweet little dog.

Well thats all from me today. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my take on creative journalling. Be sure to check back in tomorrow to see what the next DT member has in store for you.

Until next time, Happy Scrapping!
Michelle x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Family | Midnight Collection | Kylie Kingham

Hello Cocoa Vanilla fans! It’s Kylie with you today with a brand new layout to share. The theme on the blog today was ‘Creative Journaling’ so I am going to share a fun way I have incorporated a journal card to a layout.For my 12 x 12 page I have used one of my very favourite past collections, ‘MIDNIGHT’.

Some torn strips of paper were added to my background page with double sided tape to give some nice texture.I’m documenting some cutesy first birthday photos and thought it would be fun to have an envelope on my page. This was created using my We R Memory Keepers, All In One tool and I used measurements to fit a 6 x 4 card. However if you don’t have this tool you could easily make your own envelope by carefully opening out a paper envelope, tracing it before cutting it out. So using it as a template. Once I had made my envelope I then made a lining for it in co-ordinating paper and adhered it to my background page.

From the ‘MIXED BLESSING’ paper I trimmed a 3 x 4 card and I like to use my typewriter to add my journaling. It just seems to have an aesthetic I love plus I really don’t like my handwriting! Once completed I then added it over a piece of ‘INKY DEPTHS’ paper so it had a nice contrasting border. I used this same paper to mat both of my 3 x 4 photos too. My journal card was added to the envelope with repositionable tape, that way it can be removed to read and put back in place easily.

To finish my page, all that was left to do was to add some flowers…….LOTS of flowers, as well as a large title from the die cut pack.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing how I have included some creative journaling in my layout today and that it gives you a little inspiration for your own creating! Until next time,

Kylie.

Thankful For You | These Days collection | Tarrah McLean

Hi creative friends!

It’s Tarrah back with you today to share a new scrapbook layout incorporating creative journalling. I pulled out the gorgeous These Days collection as I love the Autumny feel this collection has, I documented a photo of my Mum and I.

I decided to incorporate my creative journalling by hiding it behind a cut file. The cut file I chose is from CUT to YOU. I cut out the smaller outline (solid piece to write the journalling on) of the design first and I then cut out the main design a bit bigger. I backed some different papers from the A5 paper stack behind the main design, I then adhered and made a crease on the left edge only so that the pumpkin opens up. I love how by looking at the main layout you can not tell that the pumpkin opens up.

I chose the small yellow gingham paper as my background paper however trimmed it down a little and backed it onto the beautiful wood grain paper. I then machine stitched around the entire outside edge to add some texture. To help open up the cut file, I added a tab sticker and some twine tied in a bow. I added baby powder to the bottom of the tab sticker to remove the stickiness of the sticker.

I adhered my photo in the bottom left corner of the cut file making sure there was no adhesive added to the section that needed to lift up. I also backed the Thankful part of the cut file with the wood grain A5 size paper and adhered it to the bottom of my photo using craft foam. To finish the title, I adhered the words For You using the super cute puffy alphabet stickers. I also placed a heart puffy in the centre of the words.

To embellish and enhance the story and design of my page, I took lots of die-cuts from the ephemera pack adhering many of these with craft foam, including the trees, the Family word and some of the florals too.  Just above the Thankful title and above the tree on the right I added epoxy wood beads and lastly I added some phrase stickers from the Accessory sticker sheet.

I absolutely love the way my layout turned out and I hope you were inspired to have a go at some creative journalling too? Thanks so much for stopping by the Cocoa Vanilla blog today!

Happy creating!

Tarrah x

These are Happy Days | These Days collection | Rachel Lowe

Hello CVS friends! Let’s talk about journalling and memory keeping. I dislike my writing so if I do write I usually add it to the back of my layout. I tend to journal by adding phrase sentiments. My book cut file on todays layout is a fab way to add journalling in a creative way.

I have used the beautiful These Days collection. The book cut file is from the Silhouette Design store. I firstly cut two of the pages, one slightly smaller than the other. I stitched down the centre to create pages I could turn as this is where I have added my creative journalling.

Once I added my 3×3 inch photo with foam tape I added phrase sentiments using the Accessory Stickers. On the opposite page I used a 3×4 pocket card from the collection, tearing a strip off the bottom for visual interest. Also from the pocket cards I tore two of the printed phrases and added over the black and white cheque pocket card. I then set about making this an embellishment cluster adding floral die cuts, wood epoxy button and more die cuts to tie in with my theme. I also added a brush stroke clear sticker over the bottom phrase.

I used the second pages of the book to add two forms of journalling, a large title using the foam sticker titles and a pocket card to add handwriting.

I added a small floral bunch to the left page, using foam tape so that when the pages were closed it didn’t close flat and so it had dimension/height. The right hand page I added a lined pockets card and added two of the glitter hearts. Again so the page did not close flat I added some butterflies with foam tape, positioned so they look like they are flying out of the book.

In focusing on journalling for this layout there is lots, something I need to do more of! Thank you for stopping by today and if you have any questions please leave in comments.

Rachel X

 

 

 

Always Lovely | These days Layout | Anna Komenda

Hello crafty Friends. It’s Anna here and I have another page to share with you with beautiful “These days” collection. To be honest, I am in the process of making masculine album as an inspiration for you, but I underestimated the time needed to finish it. So layout it is this week and I will finish the album and share it as my next inspiration. This full of flowers page needed a serious date with my scissors :)

It started as a white sheet of paper, blue ink and a stencil. I applied really soft layer in the area I knew my flowers will end up. Next step was to add yellow splatters and wait until they are dry. In the meantime I was fussy cutting like crazy. All the flowers come from “Home grown” paper sheet. You may wonder why I didn’t use Flower pack instead. First, I wanted my flowers without the white outline. Second – I was being cheap here :) I would have to use at least one pack of them and it seemed like too much for one page. And they are in the category “too pretty to use”.

I also cut out some butterflies from “Take flight” paper to add to my composition. After all the flowers were ready, it all went pretty fast. I used foam squares to glue down the elements of my composition because you know I love dimension. I made my photo a party of the square frame and embellished it here and there with Ephemera pieces and Puffy stickers.

I wasn’t feeling creative for some unique title so I chose words from Title foam stickers. The font is so lovely and the quality is excellent. Black letters really pop from the background. As you can see, this page didn’t need much more than some flowers and butterflies and my embellishing was quite fast and easy here after all the flowers took their place.

My last step was to splash everything with blush mist and the page was done. I love squeezing out as much as I can from a simple paper sheet and this page is a perfect example. With a little bit of patience set of pattern papers can help you create fantastic projects. That’s why I always buy doubles for papers that can be fussy cut, like a flower or butterfly sheet. This way I use one as a simple pattern and second for cutting out pieces and I am not stuck with the dilemma – which side to use :)

That is all for today. Thank you so much for stopping by and fingers crossed I will finish my boy album in next two weeks :)

XO Anna

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