memory keeping

Smile | Storyteller collection | Tarrah McLean

Hi creative friends!

It’s Tarrah back with you and today I am very excited to be sharing my first layout featuring the stunning new Storyteller collection! This collection is absolutely gorgeous and so versatile for any themed projects and layouts you want to document your memories with! I absolutely LOVE anything with hearts so the 12′ x 12′ patterned papers with the hearts on them would have to be my favourite!

As soon as I saw the rainbow striped paper, I knew I wanted to use this paper for my first layout. I decided to cut the coloured strips up and placed them all but one, onto a sheet of plain white cardstock. I adhered them down and then bent the edges of all of them with my fingers to create some texture. I left one of the coloured strips out as I wanted to leave some space in between each coloured paper.

I placed my photo slightly to the right of the page using craft foam to add dimension. I layered some papers from the A5 paper stack underneath the photo and distressed the edges slightly to add some texture and to help make the photo pop! I searched through the pocket cards and found the perfect one to suit the photo of my son as photographer! I used craft foam to adhere the pocket card to the left of the photo. When I am placing elements on my page and I am not 100% certain about their position, I will mostly always only use a very small amount of adhesive in case I need to reposition anything or add an extra layer underneath. Once I am happy with where everything ends up on my layout, I add extra adhesive for reinforcement.

Now I have the main focus of the layout sorted out, next I added a title. I went through the gorgeous black Foam Titles and chose the word ‘Smile’. I placed this word at the bottom of the pocket card to help tie the photo, pocket card and title together. At either end of the photo and pocket card, I tucked in some pretty flower ephemera pieces, I also added the little piece that says ‘Snap Happy’ to the right of my photo.

On top of my photo, I adhered the ephemera piece that says, ‘The Story Behind the Photo’ and also a small phrase sticker from the Accessory Sticker sheet in the top right corner. I also added some more of the phrase stickers above the photo and below the photo, these are great additions to a page to help tell a story! Above the pocket card, I added the camera die-cut using craft foam. From this point, I decided to add my embellishments in a tone on tone look…I took some of the super cute heart die-cuts, enamel hearts and wood epoxy buttons and placed them on their corresponding colours.

Thank you so much for stopping by the Cocoa Vanilla blog today! I had so much fun creating this layout, I hope you enjoyed reading how I created it. Make sure to ask your retail store for the gorgeous Storyteller collection…you absolutely NEED this in your life!

Happy creating!

Tarrah x

Bloom And Grow | Midnight Collection | Kylie Kingham.

Hello friends! Kylie back with you to share a fun project with you all. Today is all about a throwback collection so as soon as I found out my assignment you can be sure I immediately thought of the MIDNIGHT range. I love every single collection of Cocoa Vanilla, but the ‘Midnight’ collection is just that little bit ‘extra’ for me. I love the subtle ‘Boho’ vibe, the delicate florals and pretty colour palette. When I dug through my stash I was super excited to find one last DIE CUT AND BACKING paper. I obviously had put one aside for safe keeping, but this assignment made me think it was time to finally create with it.

These background papers are quite unique and if you haven’t seen or created with one before I highly recommend them. They are great for creating beautiful pages fast! They kind of look as though you have used a cut file design and backed it but really all of that work has been done for you. You are also not limited to using the page as is, you can remove the die cut element and back it with whatever paper you wish or leave it plain. So the creative possibilities are endless.

For my layout today I decided to use the background as it was without breaking it up in any way. Since I didn’t want to cover the background too much, I decided to print my photos a little smaller. I resized them to 2.5″x 4″ using my Silhouette software, and used my home printer for printing. I cut down some of the ALL THE THINGS paper to two- 2.75″x 4.25″ photo mats so that my pictures would have a nice framed border. The photos were layered over each other and adhered to the lower right side portion of the circle template. I was extra super excited to see that I still had some of the adorable mason jar embellishments……I mean seriously…..How cute! Can’t ever get enough of these! I layered lots of florals as well as the mason jars at the base of my photos. To create dimension and texture I curled some of the flower edges upwards and used foam adhesive squares to adhere them in place.

For balance on my page I added a secondary cluster of embellishments on the opposite angle to my photos and following the curve of the circle. By using both the chipboard embellishments and the cardstock embellishments together gave a nice texture to my page. I finished my page design with with a few simple stickers such as the Butterfly and the sub phrase quotes. This was a very quick layout to bring together and I love the finished result.

Thanks for joining me today to check out my scrapbooking walk down memory lane with the throwback collection- MIDNIGHT.

See you next time,

Kylie.

Little Moments of Joy | These Days collection | Sophie Delorme

Hello Cocoa Vanilla friends!

It’s Sophie here and I’ve got a new layout to share!!

 

I used the beautiful These Days collection for my page today and decided to go with stripes!

I used a thick white cardstock for my background and cut a few strips of the Family Ties paper in several different lengths. I placed them below my photo, machine stitched on them with white thread and also added small teared pieces of velum on each of them for more interest. I think it also adds softness to the page.

 

I also placed a few sentences cut out of the The Good Life paper in between the strips of the Family Ties paper.

I mounted my photo on tissue paper and foam adhesive, cut a few frames from the Wall of Fame paper and used one of them to write down my journaling.

 

I used a pocket card for my title and embellished around my photo with beautiful florals from the Floral Ephemera pack.

 

I added a few hearts from the Puffy Stickers sheet as the finishing touch and stamped the date.

Here are more close-ups:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am so happy with the delicate and soft feel of this page, and how it highlights such a sweet moment with my puppy!

I hope it was inspiring for you too, and maybe gave you new ideas to try!

Thank you for passing by, and happy crafting!

Sophie xx

Hello Summer | These Days | Lina Monaco

Hello my friends! Lina here! And today, I am sharing a layout I created using the These Days collection. With all it’s bright summery colours and florals, I just could not resist!  I mean, it’s almost summer here in Canada and what a better way to kick it off!

I started with a cut file and used the papers The Good Life and Family Ties to paper piece the title. It’s all layered onto a white piece of cardstock and then popped up on dimensional foam for height. The title now has dimension and lift and adds a bit of something different. Next, I used a photo of my darling daughter from our last family summer vacation. The photo is matted with a variety of papers form the A5 Paper Stack and then popped up with dimensional foam.


Next, I started working on my clusters… I knew that I wanted to add 3 different ones to form a visual triangle. Next to my photo I created the main cluster and used a rainbow Pocket Card as my base and layered pretty pieces of Die Cut Ephemera and embellished with the Floral Ephemera. I mean, that bike is pretty special and needed to have a place on this layout. I added some foliage and greenery to really bring in that tropical element as well.


Embellishing my layouts is my most favourite part of creating any layout. I take great joy in adding bits and bobs to layouts to really round them out and make them my own. I added some metallic gold thread to the layout both behind my photo and title and in nest form so a precious wood button could sit. I just love the pop of gold peaking through; I feel it just adds that bit of extra texture and depth.


I kept this layout pretty clean (for my style) and didn’t fuss too much with it. I really wanted the photo, papers and title to be the main focus without them getting lost within all the pretty. I added a couple typed sentiments from the Accessory Stickers and hearts and butterflies from the ephemera packet and called this layout complete! Love how it turned out and I am officially ready for Summer!
Thanks a bunch for joining me today on the blog :)

xoLina

Love This Girl | No Limits Collection | Danni Visser

Hi Cocoa Vanilla Studio fans! Danni here, back to share with you another fabulous No Limits collection layout. I have been eyeing off the gorgeous teal mixed media-inspired pattern on Stardust 12×12 patterned paper ever since I received the collection, so I decided to start with that as a base.

The first thing I did was add a sprinkling of stars using some different texture media. I used a 12×12 star stencil from my stash for the pattern, using a spatula to add first a sparkly gold glitter gel medium, then a white modelling paste. This added beautiful three-dimensional stars with lots of textural interest. I then added a bunch of ink splatters in gold and white all over the page.

Next I added two photos of myself and a very dear friend at dinner several years ago. Sometimes it’s lovely to look back and document a memory that happened a while ago! I added a white border to both photos and used the A5 paper stack to create a layered photo mat.

I used the die cut titles and some glittery alphas from my stash to spell out my title, layering it at the bottom of my photos.

For embellishments I went for a combo of the die cut ephemera, the accessory stickers and the chipboard stickers, layering them either side of my photo mat. I made sure to vary the heights of the embellishments, using foam squares in between where needed to create dimension.

I also added two epoxy wood buttons to finish off the packet, yay! I always feels SO good to use up a packet of scrapbooking supplies. I added a small embellishment cluster to the bottom of the page to balance out the top-heaviness of the layout.

Finally I added some puffy sticker dots to each of my embellishment clusters and a bunch of puffy sticker stars cascading down my page below the title. I love how this turned out and I hope you do too. There is a process video on the Cocoa Vanilla Studio YouTube channel if you would like to watch, link below. Happy scrapping!

Danni x

Chill out | Sunkissed Layout | Anna Komenda

Hello, hello! Welcome everyone. It’s Anna here with a brand new page to share with you. I know that you poor Aussie people are just few days only until winter starts but we, on the top of the world, are just entering summer, which makes me soooo happy. It was time to pull out summer lines, including wonderful “Sunkissed” collection. I must admit, I am running a little low on some elements from it, but I still have plenty to make few more pages! I had a perfect photo in mind to scrapbook – beautiful sunset over the Atlantic Ocean. Colors of the photo are very warm and water doesn’t seem blue anymore, more like grey with a purple tint. I wanted to scrapbook it with a very warm color palette choosing mix of yellow, orange, pink and red. Perfect color combo for any sunset!

I had a perfect paper in mind called “Summer lights”! I cut it into smaller rectangles and turned them into a bunch of tags using corner puncher and tag hole puncher. I wanted to create a frame around the page with them. My initial idea was that a background paper will be white to contrast better with saturated tags, but after I tried it, I decided it’s just too much difference. I reached for tried and true Distress Oxide inks in Mustard seed, Spiced marmalade, Ripe persimmon, Pink Raspberry and Candied apple colors and blended them into the strips of colors creating similar patter to the one I just cut into tags. Weird move, I know, but my mixed media background was still lighter than the printed paper and I could add some water splatters for more texture.

Next step was to glue down the tags on the edges of the paper arranging them in similar color pattern than the background. I only applied glue as a thin strip on the bottom of the tags so I was able to lift the top part, creating extra dimension. I could also tuck ephemera pieces behind them!

After all of the tags were in their designated spots, I trimmed down the excess part, that was peaking behind the edge of the background and I started creating a composition. First, glueing down the photo in the bottom right corner, surrounded with palm trees from Ephemera Pack and some flowers from Flower Pack.

Next I added a title. Thanks to the beautiful Glitter foam titles, I didn’t have to think much about it and I simply chose one of the phrases. Yellow color stands out nicely on red and pink background. I also added two cute glitter hearts that are added to the title stickers. Few flowers, hidden behind the tags and some sun and clouds on the top of the page and my composition was almost done!

Last step was to add few puffy stickers here and there (I had a hard time using them as I just want to hoard them forever) and word strip from 6*12 stickers sheet. Few white splatters were the perfect finishing touches. And voila! Page is done. I love the warm colors of it.

That is all for today! Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I hope you like my project and it inspired you to make your own background. You can choose any theme with this kind of design!

See you in two weeks <3

XO Anna

Totally Awesome | No Limits Collection | Kylie Kingham.

Welcome back to the Cocoa Vanilla blog. It’s Kylie with you and today I am sharing another scrapbooking layout I created with the ‘No Limits’ collection. When I am looking for inspiration to create a layout, more times than often I will use a paper collection as the inspiration. There are lots of stars that feature throughout the ‘NO LIMITS’ range, both in the die cuts, stickers and on the paper prints. I wanted to have an emphasis on stars as well as having dimension and texture within the page design I created and am sharing with you all today.

Using several different papers I cut some layered stars using a simple star shape from my Silhouette software. I resized it and then used the offset feature to produce an even layering effect. There are six layers to each star all together and once they were cut out I distressed all the edges. (**This seemed a great idea at first but it did take me a longggggggg time! But the finished result was worth it.) Once all the layers were adhered together it was time to add them to their canvas! I trimmed down some of the UNIVERSAL paper to measure 9″x 9″, distressed the edges a little and adhered it centred to the Stardust paper. I also drew a fine lined border around the edges with a black marker.

My photo was trimmed down to 5″x 4″ and adhered to some of the ORBIT paper, making sure all the edges were distressed a little for extra texture. With my photo adhered in place I layered a few simple die cuts behind it and adhered the stars positioned in the top portion of my page. For balance I also adhered a star to the base line of my photo and used some of the star puffy stickers too.

To complete my page I created a large title from the title die cut pack and positioned it on my layout so that it would overlap my photo just a little. I used foam adhesive squares to adhere it so that it sat up from the background of my page a little adding a nice dimension.

Thanks so much for checking out my layout today. I hope it has given you a little inspiration for your own scrapbooking.

Take care,

Kylie.

Happy Birthday | Make A Wish collection | Tarrah McLean

Hi creative friends!

It’s Tarrah back with you and today I am sharing a new scrapbook layout for our Throwback Thursday feature! I decided to pull out the gorgeous Make A Wish collection for my layout today…do any of you still have any of this beautiful collection?

I am documenting a photo of my eldest niece who turned 6 last year…she had a pretty unicorn and tiara cake for her birthday cake!

I chose the white with pink spots paper for my background and trimmed down a piece of plain white cardstock to adhere on top of the white and pink spotted paper. Once adhered, I machine stitched around the outer edge to add some texture to my page. Next I chose a fun, birthday themed cut file from CUT to YOU and cut it out of white cardstock. I then chose some of the cute papers to back the balloons with and also the word Happy in the cut file. Once the cut file was backed I added craft foam underneath and adhered it to the plain white cardstock background. I love the shadows and dimension this creates on the page!

As the design of the cut file had some space on the left, this was the obvious place to add my photo and a 3′ x 4′ pocket card right next to my photo. I also added some machine stitching to the outer edges of both the photo and pocket card. I decided to add the word Birth using the alpha stickers from the Make A Wish collection so that my title reads, Happy Birthday instead of just Happy Day. I was able to pick letters that were all the same colour, placing them to the left of the word Day. Below the title, I added the notebook edge diecut and machine stitched across the very top edge, I love the texture this creates. I had one of the gorgeous fabric bows left over so it just had to be adhered on the ‘strings’ of the cut file. I also placed the Stay Lovely round sticker from the Accessory Stickers on one of the balloons.

Before I adhered the photo, I took the gorgeous doily die cut from the ephemera pack, cut it in half and tucked one half under the left edge of my photo. I also placed a tab sticker from the Accessory Sticker sheet and à banner puffy sticker from the puffy stickers. The small heart die-cuts are so gorgeous, I love all the colours these come in! I added a pretty yellow one here and a pink one on the other side above the letter ‘Y’ in Happy. Above the photo, I added the banner that says Fabulous and the Best Ever phrase piece also. I added some machine stitching through these 2 pieces also for some added texture. I placed the Hello arrow chipboard piece and a triangle puffy sticker in the centre of the page, to fill a little gap that was there.

To the left of the ‘H’ in the Happy word, I added one of the gorgeous vellum hearts, a phrase sticker and one of the chipboard hearts also. Across the middle of the title, I also added the Dream Big chipboard piece! Lastly the pink banner piece that says ‘Love You’ was added between the ‘P’ and ‘Y’ in Happy and I stamped the date stamp of when the photo was taken. I just loved working with the Make A Wish collection again! Even though it might be an older collection, you can still create pretty projects using older collections!

Thank you so much for stopping by the Cocoa Vanilla blog today! I hope you enjoyed my layout as much as I enjoyed creating it? I hope this inspires you to pull out an older Cocoa Vanilla collection and get creating with it?!  There is something satisfying about using up your stash don’t you think?

Happy creating!

Tarrah x

Just Chillin’ | Sunkissed collection | Sophie Delorme

Hello Cocoa Vanilla friends!

It’s Sophie on the blog today with a new layout to share !

 

I used the Sunkissed collection for this bright and colorful page !

I used a thick white cardstock for the background and applied dry ink on a stencil from my stash with a brush.

I layered two pieces of patterned papers from the A5 paper stack behind my black and white photo, and cut a big envelope with a metal die to insert a tag cut out of the Good Vibrations paper for my journaling.

 

I fussy cut beautiful florals from the Growing Wild paper to decorate around the photo and cut out cute little clouds from the Just Chillin’ paper that I placed above the photo.

 

I used a 3×4 card for my title and added a few Accessory Stickers as the finishing touch.

 

Here are more close-ups:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahhh Summer…! There isn’t a better collection than Sunkissed to highlight those beautiful memories!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Until next time,

Sophie xx

Picture Perfect Moments | These Days | Lina Monaco

Hello Friends!
Lina here with another layout using the ever beautiful and timeless, These Days collection. I thought it’d be a perfect collection to use to document a simple black and white photo of my daughter. If you’d like to watch the process video and how it all came together, click HERE to be taken to the Cocoa Vanilla Studio YouTube channel.


Using the rainbow ombre sheet of patterned paper called Daybreak, I used some Gesso and an old gift card and spread some of it in the top right hand corner of the paper. This will be where my photograph will sit and I wanted some contrast between the brightly coloured paper, my photo and the embellishments. I also took some of the gesso on a brush and splattered it down for a cool effect.
I then matted the background paper with the black and white patterned, Neighbourhood, and the green polkadot, Family Ties. I feel like all three patterns, although busy, work well with each other.


Next, time to embellish… I took pieces from both the Die Cut Ephemera and from the Floral Ephemera to create my clusters. I have one main one to the left side of my photo and then two smaller ones. One at the top right hand corner of my photo and the next, a much smaller one at the bottom left hand corner. These three clusters are dainty and simple as not to take away from the photo but add just the right amount of whimsy the layout needs.


I added tons of layers to the photo with matting using the A5 Paper Stack using papers that mixed well and many layers and tabs with the embellishing. Next, I added the lovely butterflies that are in the Die Cut Ephemera package to the page. I added hot glue to only the centers and lifted the wings up on either side so the butterflies looked like they are in flight.


To convey my message or journaling, I used the little typed sentiments from the Accessory Sticker sheet. That tiny type is my favourite and I ALWAYS gravitate to them for my “journaling”. It’s always just short and sweet and says exactly what I need it to. Lastly, a good sprinkling of some gold paint for good measure and to tie the entire layout together.

I hope you enjoyed my layout today, thanks for stopping by!

xoLina

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