guest designer

Rainbow Run Mini Album | Happy Days collection | Guest Designer – Niki Rowland

Hey everyone! This is Niki (@nikiclairecreates) and I’m excited to be back with another project and process video Guest Designing for Cocoa Vanilla Studio! This time I have made a mini album. It is a box in the shape of a rainbow, with an arch shaped mini album inside!

To make the box, I started with the front and back covers. I hand drew a rainbow onto a piece of scrap cardstock and cut it out and then used this as a template. I traced around it onto lots of different papers from the A5 paper stack and cut them all out, then distressed the edges and layered them all together. I then mounted this onto a piece of white card and cut out leaving a white border. I added pink hand stitching around the edge using embroidery thread I did all this twice so I had identical rainbows, one for the front of the box and one for the back.

To make the clouds I did the same: hand-drew a cloud onto a piece of scrap cardstock and cut it out to use as a template. I drew around it onto that super-cute ditsy heart print which I cut out and mounted onto white card. I added pick stitching around all of the clouds, then added them to my rainbows.

To make the inside part of the box, I used yellow cardstock to make an insert. I make these really simple, just two pieces of cardstock cut and folded – you can see more details on the process video.

With the box assembled, I moved on to making the mini album itself. I again created a template from white cardstock for the pages and cut that out. I then used this as a template for all pages. I drew them onto more papers from the A5 Paper Stack and cut them out. I then stuck them all together, back to back, to make a super-easy album, which I secured around the outside with ribbon.

I embellished the front of the box with a Chipboard Title, a few pieces of Floral Ephemera, a fussy cut butterfly and some phrase stickers. I also added the title ‘Rainbow Run’ using those adorable Mini Puffy Alphabet Stickers, to one of the clouds.

To embellish the album itself, I wanted to include the wooden medal from the Rainbow Run (this mini album is all about a sponsored run I took part in) and the actual ribbons from the medals at the event. I managed to incorporate those onto the front page and the ribbons are what tie the album together I think it’s really great to include momentums like that within albums if possible and these were perfect!

The album itself is quite interactive – I have 40 photos to include, so it had to be! Some pages have photos that flip up or flip out, there is a ball-chain containing 11 photos, there is also a pocket page. On one of the pages, I made a shaker pocket: I cut a piece of acetate to the same size as the page, pierced holes all the way around the edge and chain stitched with the same pink thread used for the album covers, trapping the sequins inside. I love how this looks! 

I used more papers from the A5 paper stack throughout the album to decorate the pages and mount my photos. I’ve also used lots of Floral Ephemera,  Phrase Stickers and several of the puffy heart stitchers throughout the album. I also used some of the other Chipboard Titles to make feature pages.

I absolutely love how this turned out, it is just adorable and so pretty to look at and I had the perfect photos for a rainbow album! I really hope you have enjoyed it too.  I have made a process video of this mini album, which includes a flip through too, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/jvOZK-Qy43o .  Thank you so much Cocoa Vanilla Studio for having me as a Guest Designer, I have loved it!

Happy scrapping

Niki

@nikiclairecreates

My Sunshine | Happy Days collection | Guest Designer – Niki Rowland

Hello again everyone! This is Niki (@nikiclairecreates) and I’m so excited to be back sharing my third layout as a Guest Designer today using Happy Days!

For this layout I wanted to feature the Specialty paper which consists of beautiful foiled gold frames on white card. Inside all the frames are also gold foiled icons – all TOTALLY perfect for fussy cutting! I cut out a few of the frames and cut the middles out too. I then added two of the tiny journaling cards from the A5 Paper Stack inside the frames. They were the perfect size. They needed mounting onto a piece of scrap card first so that the frame had something to stick to (as they were exactly perfect for the apertures). I raised he frames on foam pads. The two cards I chose were the two rainbow ones – these look gorgeous inside the gold foiled frames.

I chose to use the yellow check side of the Feel Good paper for my background. I trimmed this down a bit, distressed the edges and added it to a sheet of white card. I then arranged my frames and my photo onto the yellow background.

I embellished the frames with Floral Ephemera and with the gold foiled icons fussy cut from within the frames – these are amazing as extra embellishments! I added some other little bits of Die Cut Ephemera to my clusters and added some small Puffy Heart Stickers too.

I added a title using ‘my sunshine’ from the Chipboard Title Stickers – I love this font! And the white letters stood out beautifully against my yellow background.

I finished off by handwriting my journaling and splattering my embellishment clusters with white paint!  Here is the link to the process video I made for this layout: https://youtu.be/sb-V5KniUa8

I hope you have enjoyed seeing this layout, I loved making it!

Happy scrapping

Niki xx

@nikiclairecreates 

Fantastic | Happy Days collection | Niki Rowland

Hi everyone! This is Niki (@nikiclairecreates) and I’m delighted to be back Guest Designing with my second layout and process video using Happy Days. I am obsessed with those gorgeous words on the Definitive paper and have spent some time fussy cutting a lot of them out.  I wanted to make a feature out of them on this layout.

I chose the purple side of Flutterby paper as my background, which I paired with the pink strawberry side of Lush Blooms paper. I trimmed these both down and distressed the edges, then stuck them together offset slightly. I then positioned these onto a sheet of white card.

I mounted my photo onto a darker patterned paper and added that to my layout together with a gold fussy cut frame from the Specialty Foiled paper. I then arranged all the fussy cut words around the photo, cascading down from top to bottom. I raised them all on foam pads to give them some dimension.

I then added some of the Floral Ephemera to the bottom corner of my photo, and another cluster in the top right corner. I chose mostly pinks and purple flowers but also added a few yellow ones. Purple and yellow are opposite each other on the colour wheel, so are therefore ‘contrasting colours’.  Contrasting colours work best when there is a lot of one colour with a small amount of the contrasting colours and this is exactly what I did with the yellow – just a couple of small pops of it in amongst all the beautiful purple.

I added another tiny cluster in the bottom right corner of the layout using some of the Die Cut Ephemera. I added some butterflies and handwrote my journaling under all the words. I also embellished the words with lots of Puffy Heart Stickers.

I finished off with a few splatters of white paint over the top of the embellishment clusters! I absolutely love how this turned out, I adore purple as a colour so love how this looks as a background!  Here is the link to my process video for this layout if you would like to watch along: https://youtu.be/2ygAZcQKt0c 

Thanks so much for joining me today and happy scrapping!

Niki xx

@nikiclairecreates

Smile, Crazy, Funny | Happy Days collection | Guest designer – Niki Rowland

Hi everyone,

We are thrilled to be able to welcome a special guest designer today – the very talented Niki Rowland! Niki will be joining us with some projects featuring our ‘Happy Days’ collection and we know you are going to LOVE them!

 

 

I’m Niki, I live in the UK with my creatively challenged husband and my three children. I’m a pretty paper addict who makes the occasional cupcake and likes coffee and shortbread biscuits. I love turning bright colours and floral ephemera, into scrapbook layouts, with a few mini albums along the way too. I currently create for Simple Stories, and GoGo Getaway which is my own scrapbooking retreat business. That keeps me pretty busy but because I wouldn’t want to get bored, I also am a governor at my children’s school and somehow, I also ended up leading the PTA as well…so now I can add ‘fundraising’ to my list of skills too!  Creating feeds my soul and I try to do something creative every day. I hope you enjoy my creations x  

Hi everyone! This is Niki Rowland (@nikiclairecreates) and I’m delighted to be guest designing for Cocoa Vanilla Studio today!

I will be sharing four projects during June and July, and today I have my first layout and process video to share with you, using the Happy Days collection. I cannot tell you how much I love this collection, it is so bright, happy and fun! I absolutely fell in love with the colourful stripes on the Sunshine Lollipops paper and decided to focus on that for this layout.

I decided to cut the stripes into their colour groups and make rosettes in a variety of colours. I really enjoy making rosettes and love how they look and really went for it on this layout! I cut out two wide pieces (four stripes wide), several smaller stripes (two stripes wide) and one teeny stripe (one stripe wide). I scored them every quarter-inch and concertina folded them. To make the rosettes themselves I glue the two ends together to make a cylinder, then press the cylinders down in the middle and glue a punched paper circle on top to hold them in place. I did this for all the smaller rosettes, but for the two wide ones the strips needed to be longer to make full circles, so instead I just made semi-circles. These were perfect for the edges of my layout!

I then arranged the rosettes across a white cardstock background, but felt they needed something more, so I added some ink in coordinating colours under each rosette. I also added splatters in the same colours. This creates a ‘glow’ behind each rosette and make them pop off the page even more! I then glued the rosettes in place onto the background, using hot glue.

I cut out the subjects of my photos and added them to each of the large rosettes. I also fussy cut several words from the Definitive paper and added these to all the smaller rosettes – I love these words so much, the font is awesome and the words are perfect for my photos!

I then added Floral Ephemera colour-on-colour, tucked in around the photos and rosettes. I raised some on foam pads for added dimension. I also added a few bits from the Die Cut Ephemera pack including two very cute pinwheels, several hearts and a couple of phrase banners.

I handwrote my journaling in black ink and underlined it to make it stand out more. I loved the look of the black against the colourful rosettes so decided to add splatters of black paint…a bit of a risky move but I LOVE how it turned out! I finished off by adding a few of the mini heart Puffy Stickers in the coordinating coloured areas.

Thank you SO much for joining me today, I really hope that you have enjoyed reading about my layout. I have also created a process video so that you can watch it all come together, it can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/ooh3f_t6Mo4.

Once again thank you so much for joining me, and thank you so much to Cocoa Vanilla Studio for inviting me to guest design!

Happy scrapping and see you again soon

Niki xx

@nikiclairecreates  

Total Legend | No Limits collection | Guest designer – Kellie Moore

Hello crafty friends and welcome back to my last post as Guest Designer for Cocoa Vanilla Studio. For today’s layout I decided to showcase lots of the patterned papers from the ‘No Limits’ collection to create a pie chart effect. I love to do this type of design when I want to use lots of different patterns.

When designing a page like this, I like to stick to more of the “B” sides to make sure the patterns aren’t competing with each other and making the page too busy. I added in the Nebula paper to break up the solid papers I have used. This adds a nice contrast. I also added some black stamping to the outer edges of the pie pieces to help them pop off the page. I also added some foam adhesive to some of the pie pieces… I love dimension!

Before gluing my papers down I distressed the edges of the papers and added some distress oxide to the outside of the pie chart in matching colours. This adds some nice pops of colour to my white cardstock.

To embellish the page I think I used a little bit of everything from the ephemera pack, the wood epoxy buttons, the puffy stickers, the accessory stickers and the chipboard. Again, I used the Nebula paper to fussy cut out some stars to add around the page.

Lastly I cut my page down to 11.5″ square and backed it onto the Spark paper…. I think a patterned paper border really finishes off a page made on white cardstock.

That’s it for me creative peeps, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here as guest designer and I hope I have inspired you in some way. I also want to thank Zoe and Sue for having me, I have loved every minute.

Happy Creating!
Kel

You Are Awesome | No Limits collection | Guest designer – Kellie Moore

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cocoa Vanilla blog.
For today’s page I decided I wanted to create my own background using some Distress Oxides so I chose the colours Evergreen Bough, Chipped Sapphire and Fossilized Amber which match with the ‘No Limits collection’. To add them to my white cardstock I simply added the oxide to some plastic packaging, spritzed them with some water then pushed the plastic down on to my page. I placed the colour more to the right hand side of the page where I wanted to place my photo.
To balance the page I added a strip of the ‘Latitude’ paper to the left hand side of the page with a slight strip of black cardstock showing through. This also balances my black and white photo.
For my photo I added some different papers from the ‘A5 paper stack’ and popped my photo up on dimensional foam.
I decided to cut some hearts from the papers and added some hand stitching around them to create some texture. I placed the hearts and the top left and bottom right of my photo.
Next, to finish off the embellishing around my photo, I added pieces from the Chipboard Sheet, Ephemera pack and some of the Wood Epoxy Stickers.
For my title, I used the ‘Awesome’  from the ‘Chipboard Sheet’ and I decided I wanted it darker so I simply used a Sharpie to colour it black.
The page felt very right heavy so I decided the top left needed something so I used a tag from the ‘Ephemera’ pack, another stitched heart and ‘You rock my world’ from an A5 paper.

I hope you enjoyed today’s share and you are inspired to create !
I will be back soon with my last page as Guest Designer.

Happy Creating,
Kellie

To the Moon | No Limits collection | Guest designer – Kellie Moore

Hello CVS fans and welcome back to the blog today to see my 2nd creation using the new ‘No Limits’ collection.

For this layout I decided I wanted to make a big rocket for the main focus of my page. I took one of the rockets from the ephemera pack and recreated it using different papers from the collection.

Now, I am a BIG fan of hand stitching on my layouts. I love the texture it adds and I actually find it relaxing… I know this is not everyones cup of tea as it is time consuming. You can see I have stitched in co-ordinating threads on my rocket and it really helps to make the rocket pop from the page. To finish the rockets off I also added some of the wood epoxy stickers and puffy stickers …so fun!

To add to the ‘space’ theme I created some clouds to the top of my layout. I just used white cardstock and free hand cut them out…again you will see I stitched my clouds. I then cut a moon out of the ‘Orbit’ paper and then added a bunch of stars to the top of my page both from the chipboard sheet and some of the puffy stickers.

For my title I used ‘Love You’ from the Die Cut Titles then for ‘Moon’ I just cut apart some of the other words to make it work!

I backed my photo with a piece of the ‘Latitude’ paper….yellow is one of my favourite colours in scrapbooking…it helps to make the photo stand out on my page.

Lastly I added a few stickers from the ‘Accessory Stickers’ under my photo and thats it!

I love how this page turned out and I hope you do too!

See you in a few weeks for more ‘No Limits’ inspiration.

Happy Creating!
Kel

So Funny | No Limits collection | Guest designer – Kellie Moore

Hi everyone, please welcome guest designer Kellie Moore to our blog today…

Hello CVS fans!
My name is Kellie Moore and I am very excited and honoured to be a guest designer for Cocoa Vanilla Studio. I have been scrapbooking for around 15 years and it is my therapy and relaxation from the crazy times we are living in! I live on the gorgeous Tweed Coast with my husband and 3 boys, so when I was given the ‘No Limits’ collection to play with I was beyond excited and I have had so much fun with it. I will be sharing 4 projects with you over the coming month. I’m not sure how I would describe my style, I love layers and texture and every now and then having a small play with mixed media … I could live without paint but COULD NOT live without patterned paper! I hope you enjoy my creations and I inspire you to get crafty.
When I started on my first layout I loved the the subtle grey paper called ‘Universal’ so I decided to use that for my background. I cut this paper down to a 11.5 inch square and then created a mat around it with the ‘Latitude’ paper to bring a nice pop to the page… I really love how bright and fun those stripes are.
I decided for this page I wanted to scrap these 2 photos of my son being a goofball… my photos are slightly smaller than 6×4. I added a small white border around each photo then used red cardstock around one photo to help pull out the red in my sons shirt then used a piece of the yellow ‘Latitude’ paper to mat my other photo, Both pictures are popped up on some foam adhesive.
When I first opened the ephemera pack I immediately fell in love with the large stars and decided to make some sequin shakers with them. I pulled out some co-ordinating colours of sequins and added the stars diagonally … one to the top left and one to the bottom right of my photos to help create balance on the page, then added a smaller star to the bottom left to create a visual triangle.
Underneath my photos I wanted to add more pattern so I cut some strips of different papers and layered them to help fill the space.
For my title I pulled out the die cut titles and decided ‘So Funny’ was perfect for these photos . Again I popped the title up on foam to help it stand out on the page.
Now that the base of the page was done I added a few more pieces from the ephemera pack, chipboard pieces, puffy stickers and wood epoxy stickers to help finish off the page.
Lastly I added some phrase stickers from the Accessory Sticker sheet that summed up my crazy boy.
I hope you enjoyed my first page for CVS and I will be back soon with my next creation.
Stay scrappy!
Kel

Fun | Sunkissed collection | Guest designer – Josefine van der Hoeven

Hello  creative Paperlovers,
Welcome to the Cocoa Vanilla Studio blog for a new share! So glad to see you! It’s Josefine here to show you a new scrapbook layout that I created as a guest designer for Cocoa Vanilla Studio with the beautiful summer collection “SunKissed”. I can’t get enough of these beautiful designs. This collection from Cocoa Vanilla screams for the summer! Everything you create it gets a great summer look.
I started with a white piece of cardstock and cut out a tropical leave with my “Cricut Maker” using some beautiful design papers from the “Sunkissed” collection.
After that I started with the mixed media background. I used two colors of distress ink and a bubble designed stencil. With a blending tool I blend the two colors together. The colors I used are, “mowed lawn” and “twisted citron”.
When I’m done I splashed some more with the distress oxides using my brush.
I placed my tropical leave in the center of my layout. From a piece of yellow design paper I cut a circle to size. I used my sewing machine to decorate the edges with different golden stitches. For the clouds I used the same golden sewing thread and stitch through the center.
I grab the different summer die-cuts and make a selection of which ones I wanted to use on my layout. I carefully slide the die-cuts between the tropical leave and the photo. I like to use 3D elements on my layout. And I decide to fold an origami Sea shell.
Wondering how I made this sea shell? Hop over to the Cocoa Vanilla Facebook Group for the short process video of this cute little sea shell.
I’m almost done. Now It’s time to splatter some more with white acrylic paint and different colors of distress oxides. I stitch the edges of my layout with golden thread using my sewing machine. I am so happy how my layout turned out, looks so Tropical!
I hope I was able to give you some great ideas and wish you a lot of fun creating gorgeous projects with this beautiful summer collection! I want to thank you for stopping by on the blog today!
Wish you a lovely and creative day!
XoXo, Jo

Fun | Sunkissed collection | Guest designer – Josefine van der Hoeven

Hello  creative Paperlovers,
Welcome to the Cocoa Vanilla Studio blog for a new share! So glad to see you! It’s Josefine here to show you a new scrapbook layout that I created as a guest designer for Cocoa Vanilla Studio with the beautiful summer collection “SunKissed”. I can’t get enough of these beautiful designs. This collection from Cocoa Vanilla screams for the summer! Everything you create it gets a great summer look.
I started with a white piece of cardstock and cut out a tropical leave with my “Cricut Maker” using some beautiful design papers from the “Sunkissed” collection.
After that I started with the mixed media background. I used two colors of distress ink and a bubble designed stencil. With a blending tool I blend the two colors together. The colors I used are, “mowed lawn” and “twisted citron”.
When I’m done I splashed some more with the distress oxides using my brush.
I placed my tropical leave in the center of my layout. From a piece of yellow design paper I cut a circle to size. I used my sewing machine to decorate the edges with different golden stitches. For the clouds I used the same golden sewing thread and stitch through the center.
I grab the different summer die-cuts and make a selection of which ones I wanted to use on my layout. I carefully slide the die-cuts between the tropical leave and the photo. I like to use 3D elements on my layout. And I decide to fold an origami Sea shell.
Wondering how I made this sea shell? Hop over to the Cocoa Vanilla Facebook Group for the short process video of this cute little sea shell.
I’m almost done. Now It’s time to splatter some more with white acrylic paint and different colors of distress oxides. I stitch the edges of my layout with golden thread using my sewing machine. I am so happy how my layout turned out, looks so Tropical!
I hope I was able to give you some great ideas and wish you a lot of fun creating gorgeous projects with this beautiful summer collection! I want to thank you for stopping by on the blog today!
Wish you a lovely and creative day!
XoXo, Jo

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