Today I am sharing a school themed layout with the gorgeous These Days collection!
I used a cut file from Paige Evans named “Open Book” and I thought this was a beautiful starting point for my page.
I used a thick white cardstock for my background, on which I added a little bit of watercolor paint starting from the open book and up, adding also lots of little splatters of paint.
I let it dry completely, and in the meantime, backed my cut file with different patterned papers from the collection.
I applied white gesso on some parts of the book to fade away the colors a little bit for a very soft look.
I mounted the open book on adhesive foam before adhering it to the page.
I used a photo of my sweet daughter on her first day of school a few weeks ago. I couldn’t be happier that she still wants to collaborate for that!
I added tissue paper and adhesive foam behind it and placed it a little bit crooked on the right side of the open book.
I fussy cut 3 frames out of one of the A5 patterned papers, scattered them around and added a few embellishments on them.
My title is a mix of Die Cut Ephemera, Clear Sticker and letters created with a die from my stash.
Finally, I created a floral cluster with the Floral Ephemera pack, I added two butterflies and stamped the date on a label from the Accessory Stickers Pack.
Here are more close-ups.
I am so happy with the result!
I hope you can find inspiration with my page today in using this beautiful collection in a versatile way!
Thank you for stopping by, have a great crafty day !
Hi everyone, it’s Raquel here and today I am kicking off a school theme this week on the blog. And what better way to kick off school week than with a post celebrating World Teachers Day which is today, October 5th. So to celebrate this day I decided to create a layout all about the 2021 school year….and what an interesting year as a teacher and Mumma it has been here in Victoria.
Here is the layout that I created:
As I mentioned, my goal for this layout was to document the 2021 school year. And boy…what a year it has been. The continual shift and change from onsite to remote learning has been tough as a teacher of 5 year olds and a mum of two primary school age children. I had a few photos taken at random times throughout the year that I wanted to include on this page. This free ‘notes’ cut file from Paper Issues was perfect and allowed me to add multiple photos. I used the ‘Family Ties’ paper for the cut file and love this colour against the white background.
I took advantage of the theme of ‘teacher’ and included all of the woman and child ephemera pieces on this layout. They were the perfect addition to this page I thought.
Due to the framed design of this page my journaling is scattered from the to left square to the bottom of the page. As always I used my typewriter and cut it in a strip design.
To back the spaces in the cut file that were not filled with photos I used a combination of the 3×4″ pocket cards and the a5 paper pad. The designs were perfect and I was able to incorporate a variety of both busy and more subtle patterns to balance out the layout.
It is so lovely to be able to spend my days in my profession in the same school as my kiddies. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a perfect situation as my little man may attest, but I love being able to see those special school moments like awards and assemblies that I had previously missed as a Mumma.
The whole cut file was adhered to the page using a foam adhesive. I also used a variety of dimensional adhesives to adhere any of the ephemera pieces to the page.
The clear sticker hearts and mini heart puffy stickers were that perfect small embellishment to finish off my clustered areas of embellishments.
I also ran a two strips of patterned paper along the left side of the layout. I used my binding edge punch for one of the layers to coincide with the ‘school’ theme.
I am absolutely in love with the mini alpha puffy stickers,…..wow, such perfection! I love the impact they make without overtaking a layouts design.
It was hard to know what to title this page with, so the simple ‘teach’ seemed to fit the purpose. The ‘for the record’ sentiment was on a 3×4″ card. Worked well for this layout to lay journaling.
What a year, I’m crossing fingers and toes that 2022 is a much calmer year for us all xxx
Above all the challenges of the role that has been 2020 and 2021 as a teacher I honestly would not change my job for anything. The absolute joy I get from my profession as a teacher is the ultimate reward…the relationships, the growth I see and the professional learning that I make daily…..just the best!
On this day I think we also need to take our ‘hats off’ to the families and carers who have helped to facilitate their child’s learning alongside their child’s classroom teacher. What a team we have all made and what a journey this last two years has been! Thank you!
Mandy here today to share a new layout featuring the amazing Daydream collection! This is still one of my absolute favourite collections to work with! The colours are so pretty, the florals are stunning, and everything just works together so beautifully. It’s one of those collections that’s so easy to work with, and I’m always so happy with the projects that I create with it.
The layout that I’m sharing today features the beautiful Over the Rainbow patterned paper, and a sweet photo of my son Isaac and youngest daughter, Eleanor.
To start this layout off, I decided to fussy cut that beautiful rainbow out of the Over the Rainbowpatterned paper. I wanted to add some craft foam behind it so that I could raise it up and give it some nice dimension. I had originally intended to use a sheet of white cardstock for my background, but when I laid the rainbow over the woodgrain patterned paper (which is the reverse side of the Over the Rainbow paper), I immediately fell in love with how that looked. The hoarder in me was a little sad to use up two sheets of this gorgeous patterned paper on the one layout, but it looked so pretty that I couldn’t resist!
I matted my photo with two papers from the A5 Paper Stack and then adhered it over the top right hand side of the rainbow. I embellished around the photo using lots of the beautiful floral die cuts from the Die Cut Ephemera pack, as well as a cute little house. I added a large floral cluster above the photo, and created another smaller embellishment cluster on the bottom right hand corner of the photo.
In order to complete the visual triangle, and to balance out the photo and embellishments in the top right, I created another embellishment cluster in the bottom left hand corner of the page. This one includes more floral die cuts, as well as a banner that says ‘The Good Life’, and a little word sticker from the Accessory Sticker Sheet. I also added a Puffy Gold Glitter Heart from the These Dayscollection to each of the embellishment clusters. I love the sparkle and texture that this adds!
For my title, I decided on using the ‘Happy Days’ die cuts from the Die Cut Ephemerapack. I wanted to curve the title around the rainbow, so rather than using each word as a single die cut, I fussy cut each letter so that I could adhere the letters individually and curve the words around. I was really happy with how that turned out!
To add some extra detail to the page, I fussy cut a few little butterflies out of the All Aflutter paper in the A5 Paper Stack, and adhered them on top of the rainbow. I also added some white ink splatters around the embellishment clusters, and I doodled a white border around the top and right hand edges of the layout. To finish the page off, I added my typed journaling strips underneath the photo.
Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope that you’ve been inspired by my layout!
Hi Cocoa Vanilla Studio fans! Danni here with a sweet baby layout featuring the adorable These Days collection. My inspiration for this one came from the stripes on Family Ties 12×12 patterned paper. I wanted to play with some textured paper layers, and I had a large cardstock heart left over from a cutfile, so that decided the direction of my page today.
I started by cutting Family Ties 12×12 patterned paper into strips, then distressing the bottom edge of each strip with a paper distressing tool and rolling the edge up a little more with my fingers. I then took my cardstock heart and glued the layers on top, starting from the bottom and working my way up to the top, overlapping each strip. I used the cutfile out of pure convenience, but you can easily do this just by hand-cutting a large heart shape.
Once I had all the strips glued, I trimmed off the excess with scissors by flipping the heart over and using the back of the cardstock heart as a guide. I chose a white cardstock background because I really wanted the gorgeous colours on the heart to stand out. I added some ink splatters to the background in shades of soft blue, pink and yellow to match the beautiful These Days collection colours.
I added two black and white photos of myself and my son when he was a baby. I love the way he is looking up at me in these photos! I backed the one where you can see his face more with paper from the A5 paper stack and popped it up on dimensional foam.
Next, I created three clusters using the floral ephemera around the heart and my photos. I added two of the tiny wood epoxy buttons to the centre of a flower in two of the clusters, then a large wood epoxy button to the middle floral cluster. Right in the middle of the heart I added a framed sentiment piece from the die cut ephemera. This phrase perfectly summed up how I felt about my sweet baby boy in this moment.
For a title I added ‘Together’ from the foam title stickers across the bottom of the heart, overlapping my photo and the bottom floral cluster. Finally, I added some adorable floral puffy stickers to the clusters and some teeny tiny puffy sticker hearts at the top and bottom of the page. A few sentiment stickers from the accessory stickers finished off the layout perfectly.
I love how sweet and light this layout turned out. I hope you enjoyed joining me for this project today. See you next time and happy scrapping!
Hey y’all! Laura Alberts here with a blast from the past! This layout features Hello Sunshine and a bit of Endless Summer, some of the oldest Cocoa Vanilla collections in my stash! To start this layout, I backed the stunning denim style patterned paper with this Happy Days pattern paper to give it a bright, cheerful border. Then, I used Vicki Boutin’s Iridescent Glaze to add some lovely hearts around the perimeter of my photo clusters. These little hearts help to define the shape of the center clusters.
In the top left corner, I layered an ephemera frame and florals from Endless Summer with a sticker banner from Hello Sunshine. I love the way some pieces are tucked underneath, while others are on top. The mix of the two makes this area of the layout feel more dimensional even though it’s quite flat.
On the top right side of the layout, I repeated that process, layering Endless Summer florals underneath of the photo and stickers from Hello Sunshine on top. To give these hearts a bit more interest, I added Endless Summer enamel shaped hearts and tiny punched gold foil hearts into the background. I love the mix of colors and textures in these clusters as a result!
The photos featured in this layout are of my husband and I’s favorite treat restaurant for date nights. It’s a special place for the two of us and makes special occasions feel even more special! Adding the ‘Just Perfect’ banner underneath the restaurant’s sign seemed fitting!
This title is actually a cut apart, but it blends in really well with the background, giving it the appearance of a stamp! After I finished the embellishing, I added gold Nuvo drops and splatter around the clusters for a bit of sparkle. My journaling is written around the entire perimeter of the layout, giving it a handwritten border, and talking about how much we enjoy this restaurant and why we we love it!
I hope this layout inspires you to reach deep into your stash and pull out some old Cocoa Vanilla Studio favourites! I love finding new ways to use older product!
Hello, hello crafty people. It’s Anna here with a little surprising (at least I think so) page in masculine style made with a big mix of many masculine CVS collections! You know it’s a rarity for me to make boy pages as I have two daughters and I am faithful to all things pink and glitter. You may also remember that I was a mom to the pretty beagle boy named Pirat. He was the hero of some of my layouts and albums. We lost him last year and we promised ourselves it will be our last dog as the loss was so heavy. However, after almost a year, we started missing fur on our clothes, couch and in the cup of tea. One thing led to another and now there is new king in our little castle!!!
Ladies and gentlemen – meet Filut (Jester in English). He is 4,5 months old beagle boy and he is with us since July. It’s like having little baby in the house again. He makes me laugh, sometime he makes my cry (after eating piece of wall…) but out house and our hearts are full again. Be prepared for more masculine layouts coming!!! He is so cute and I can’t resist taking pictures of him. For his first layout I had a very specific idea in mind with a child like page with wonky scene.
I started with picking background from the very first Cocoa Vanilla collection called “Flying high”. It’s not available anymore but you can purchase it’s digital version. You can also fing digi version of “Totally rad” line for even more fun! I then went through many other papers picking few to make a house. Some of them were only scraps. I didn’t measure anything, didn’t skecth any shapes. Just took the scissors and made few cuts. From all of the lines I used only “Legenday” is still available to purchase. So you may consider this page as using up older stash.
After my house was done, I added photo and embellishments around it. Again – I reached for the mix of stickers, cardboard stickers, chipboards and ephemera pieces. I keep them all in one bag – leftovers from old masculine collections – so I can’t even tell which line they belong to. In an empty area in upper left corner I added a title. I ased old alpha stickers from CVS too. Longer phrase perfectly fits here. I like adding my letters tilted and moved – I don’t need to worry they do not line up perfectly then! Make them cricket on purpose!
Whole page came together pretty fast and it was so fun to make. I just love using up my older stuff and plaing with basic supplies. You can make more girly version of this page too, with wonky house and random elements from various collections!
That is all for today. Thank you so so much for stopping by and see you again in October. Fall officially started on northern hemisphere which means much less daily light, gloomy weather, rainy days and cold. Not a fan here! However I am happy scrapbooking and Filut will be my companions during long evenings.
It’s Sophie here and I am sharing another layout created with the stunning “These Days” collection!
I wanted to play with the gorgeous striped patterned paper “Family Ties” as my main focus on the page.
So, I started with a thick white cardstock for my background and painted a light horizontal line with watercolor paint in shades of green and blue to ground my photo.
On the top of the layout, I teared a big chunk of the striped patterned paper, cut along the stripes and curled each of them in different lengths. I adhered them to another teared piece of the same paper so that each color matched the one under it.
I added tissue paper and adhesive foam under my black and white photo and placed it at an angle on the middle left side of the page.
I clustered a few beautiful flower bouquets (Die Cut Ephemera pack) around the photo, as well as fussy cut flowers from the “Home Grown” patterned paper and floral ephemeras.
I adhered the center of three butterflies (Die Cut Ephemera pack) around the photo, curled up the wings and hand stitched their movement on the page with white embroidery floss.
Finally, I used this beautiful Die Cut Ephemera Banner for my title, and hand wrote my journaling.
Hi everyone, it’s Raquel here, thanks so much for stopping by the CVS blog today. Today I am here to share another new layout using the ‘These Days’ collection. I have not gotten tired of creating with this gorgeous collection and every new layout I create is featuring a different element of it.
Today I wanted to feature one of the 12×12″ papers, the ‘Wall of Fame’ paper that is full of gorgeous frames. I have seen a few layouts shared with this gorgeous paper from both the CVS team and people within our CVS Facebook community. I was feeling so inspired and ready to play.
Here is the layout that I created:
I used my fine tip scissors to cut around the edges and inner pieces of the frames. Of course I had to feature a series of photos within the frames as well as highlight a few embellishments and create a few embellishment clusters.
The subject of this layout is my girl taken on one of our summer holidays. We look forward to a little coastal getaway every year and these pics were taken then. The delight of a child when they find a dandelion is just the best.
To embellish the page I have used a variety of the ephemera pieces, clear stickers, puffy stickers and accessory stickers. The frames form a big part of the initial design of this layout. Because the frames are printed on an essentially white background, I have used a variety of foam adhesives to adhere the fussy cut frames onto the layout.
I adore this envelope ephemera piece and was so glad I found a spot for it to feature on this layout, nestled within one of these frames. When using the clear stickers I will place the ‘painty look’ ones directly on a layout. However, any other elements I will apply to white card stock and then fussy cut out. This allows we to use the pieces like ephemera. The wood button was a great finishing touch to this page.
The ‘Wall of Fame” paper was calling my name as I mentioned previously, has it been calling yours? I’m thankful for fine tip scissors. To fit my photos within the frame they were printed ‘4 up’ but with borders. The outside and background space allowed for a perfect framed photo within the patterned paper frames.
I was not sure at the start of a title for this page. I just loved these photos and wanted to document them. This ‘foam title’ “you” simple but perfect.
The right of the page had some white space which allowed me to add some journaling while still remaining balanced. I wrote my journaling based on the ‘wishes’ of a dandelion. The gold puffy heart , oh my, the perfect touch to the page!
Thanks so much for popping by the blog today. I know it is only 2 weeks since my last share but sometimes they feel like lifetimes apart with this challenging world that we all live in right now. Currently I am on day 1 of my school holidays as a teacher and Mumma. After what feels like years of lockdowns and switches between online and remote learning with 5 year olds….I am ready for all to settle soon. Fingers crossed!
Gwen back with you on the blog today with a fresh new share using the ‘These Days’ collection. I’ve used it to document a fun photo of my teenage daughter at the beach on a recent family get away. I’m doing a lot of fussy cutting for this page and have teamed that with a large title for a simple design that came together fast.
To create the background of my layout, I’ve created a frame with the ‘Wall of Fame’ pattern paper and added it to a sheet of Olive green card stock from my stash. I love the shade of this paper, it screams fall. I’ve also used it to back the word ‘Adventure’ in my title. Next, I’ve used the signature floral print in the A5 pattern paper stack to back the word ‘Big’ in my title. Using the A5 papers for this allows for more of the pattern to show, it really is the perfect scale for backing cut files. This title design is a cut file from CUT to YOU.
As I was backing the title, I thought I’d extend it with the words ‘with you’. These have come from the ‘Mini Puffy Alphas’ which are so cute!! I’ve also added in some stitching here; to co-ordinate with the stitching around the edge of my page and photo. I love the look of stitching over puffy stickers, it adds a home made touch to the page, texture and detail.
I’ve backed my photo with the ‘Daybreak’ pattern paper in the A5 paper pad and mounted it on foam. I’ve then gone ahead and fussy cut out a bunch of floral pieces from the ‘Home Grown’ pattern paper. I’ve added my photo to the left of the layout and then the floral elements down the right hand side of the photo flowing down the page towards the bottom right hand corner.
To further embellish the page, I’ve added in elements from the ‘Accessory Sticker Sheet’ including some typed sentiment stickers which I have mounted with 3D foam for dimension. I’ve also fussy cut several butterflies from the ‘Take Flight’ pattern paper. *TIP – Fussy cut out a bunch of butterflies in advance to have them ready to add as finishing touches to your pages. There is a lovely mix of colours to use in this collection.
Lastly, I’ve added in three of the ‘Wood Epoxy Buttons’ around the page. These add a lovely texture and detail to the design. They come on a foam pad which you can use for extra dimension, or remove if you prefer a slightly flatter look.
I’ve also made a YouTube process video which you can watch here:
I hope you have enjoyed seeing my process for this layout and it inspires you to get creating with this stunning collection.
Hey y’all! Laura back again with this really fun paper pieced layout. I am loving the gorgeous ombre background in the These Days collection and just had to use for these fishing photos. Today’s prompt was borders and frames, so I decided to use the manufacturing strips to create a staggered mat for my photos and then tucked in several of the small frames that I fussy cut from the Wall of Fame patterned paper. I also brought in quite a few word phrases and banner flags from the cut apart paper as well. In addition, I’ve added a few clear stickers like this one here with the small ‘X’ shapes behind some of the embellishments.
Since I used three photos on this layout, I knew that I wanted to keep the embellishing fairly uniform and simple. Using a wood button on two of the corners added a big pop of interest without distracting from the photos. I also layered several word phrases over the photos on opposite corners to create balance on the page. I really liked how these word phrases mimicked the background strips behind the photos. Another way that I mimicked the shapes in this layout was with the frames, staggering them along the top and bottom of the photos to reflect the border strips underneath them. For the title, I used a set of clear stickers that puzzled in beautifully below my photos.
On the other two corners, I drew in some journaling lines and shared the story that accompanies these photos. My family often makes trips to Michigan to visit our extended family and friends. An added bonus is that we also get to enjoy the beautiful property on the water that they have there. In these photos, my husband is showing our sons how to use fishing rods, which was rather exciting for them! I love challenging myself to scrap more masculine photos with feminine collections and this one worked perfectly!
I hope this inspires you to look at your supplies a little differently and experiment with creating backgrounds! This collection has such a versatile color scheme, it’s a real joy to create with. Can’t wait to see what you make with the These Days collection!
