puffy hearts

2023 Favourite layout | Tarrah McLean

Hi creative friends!

It’s Tarrah back with you for the last time this year sharing my favourite layout created in 2023!

Like some of the other design team members, my favourite layout of this year was created using the gorgeous Happy Days collection! Don’t you think there is something about the rainbow colours in the Happy Days collection that really catches the eye!? I sure do!

So besides the gorgeous colours in the Happy Days collection and placing vertical strips in rainbow order, I wanted to make the strips a little different so I decided to score lines in the strips and then fold them in a concertina fashion to create a zig-zag effect. I love how effective this looks against the white cardstock!

 

Another of my favourite things to do is to embellish my layouts in a tone on tone fashion. I chose co-ordinating embellishments for each colour and added them on top of the strips of paper and also tucked into the top and bottom of the strips as well.  I used lots of various embellishments like puffy shapes, ephemera, puffy fabric hearts and accessory stickers.

I placed my title in the middle along with the gorgeous photo of my niece! Another thing that I love is that photo of my niece! Her outfit was perfect for this collection! I love how the rainbow colours in the collection bring out the colours in her jacket.

Have you got the gorgeous Happy Days collection? If you have, I hope you are inspired to use it up and create some cute projects with it?!

Thanks so much for stopping by the Cocoa Vanilla blog! I hope you have enjoyed the inspiration from myself and my fellow design team members throughout the year? Looking forward to sharing more Cocoa Vanilla projects with you again in the new year!

Merry Christmas and a safe and happy new year to you all!

Happy creating!

Tarrah x

Celebrate Together | Heart and Home | Kellie Moore

Hey there Cocoa Vanilla friends it’s Kellie here and welcome back to the blog today .

I have a layout using the new Heart and Home collection to share today….the memory I am documenting is a photo of myself with my youngest son recently taken at a wedding where he was a page boy….isn’t he the sweetest?!

To start my page, I decided I wanted to create a background with a bunch of the papers from the A5 paper stack so I decided to cut a bunch of squares and lay them on an angle, leaving a strip white space down the page to allow the page to not become too busy. To add more texture I added some hand stitching around the squares.

I placed my photo towards the left side of the page so I could create a diagonal through my photo. I matted my photo in white as I already had so much pattern going on.

I wanted to keep the embellishing on the lighter side to not overpower the photo so I added some of the floral ephemera to the top left and bottom right of my photo, not sticking them flat to the page so they add dimension.

For my title I chose the word ‘Celebrate’ from the Titles with Gold Foil then added the word ‘Together’ using the Mini Puffy Alphabet. I also used a heart sticker from the Accessory Sticker Sheet above my title, along with some of the heart Puffy Stickers.

I hope you enjoyed my page today and have found some inspiration to help you get creating.

Till next time !

Kel x

Family Day Out | Happy Days Collection | Michelle Stokes

Hey Scrappy friends! It’s Michelle here today with a new layout share for you all. I think this might be the last I share with the amazing Happy Days Collection for a little while as I just received a fresh box of the NEW collection Heart & Home and oh my is it stunning. But first, lets take a walk through this fun creation.

We recently had a family celebration of 50 years marriage for my partners parents, and what better way to celebrate than a family day out on a steam train ride. The kids (both young and old) all had the best fun hanging their heads out the windows as we rolled along the seaside

I had a couple of photos that I wanted to use to document this special occasion, so I thought a “rough” grid design would work for the base with lots of layers and different sized squares of pattern papers. I used a mix of both 12×12 and A5 pattern papers from the collection and cut them into 4×4, 3×3 & 2×2 inch size pieces to layer together. I added machine stitching around the edges for extra detail and left the strings loose for extra texture on the page.

I grouped photos together and layered one over the top of the other to continue the layered effect I was going for with the pattern paper

I added pieces of ephemera, accessory word stickers, chipboard pieces and puffy stickers/heart to the photo stacks to create interest in these areas

I created my usual floral clusters diagonally across from each other by fussy cutting florals from both 12×12 & A5 sizes of the LUSH BLOOMS paper then grouping them together with cut apart pieces from the FEEL GOOD paper

To create the title I’ve mixed letters from the CHIPBOARD TITLES pack to create my own words, and added a words strip from the FEEL GOOD paper above.

Lastly I added a few splatters of gold ink and some tiny puffy stickers in both hearts and dots to finish off the layout

I’m really happy with how quickly it all came together, with the fussy cutting being the most time consuming process of it all.

Well thats all from me today, thanks so much for stopping by! Can’t wait to see the new collection start appearing online within the next couple of weeks, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for inspiration from the team in the coming days.

Until next time, Happy Scrapping!

Michelle x

Choose Happy | Happy Days | Kellie Moore

Hello Cocoa fans, welcome back to the blog.

Today I have a page to share that features ‘watercolour’…this was my DT assignment, and I wont lie by saying I felt confident with this task. If you know my work, you know I’m not a huge user of mixed media. I love the look of it, but Im not confident but I gave it my best shot. Here is my page..

What I decided to do was use watercolour in a controlled way. I started with watering down some distress oxides in co-ordinating colours to the ‘Happy Days‘ collection, then I pulled out some alpha stamps from my stash. I used a paintbrush to paint on the colour onto my ink pads then stamped out some words onto white cardstock. Here is what it looks like close up..

 

I love the look of the words, they add a really unique look to my page. I used the paper ‘Flutterby’ as my main paper and layed it on top of a full 12×12 of the ‘Rainbow Bright’ paper. Next, i ripped down from the middle of the ‘Flutterby’ paper and added some of the ‘Little Blossom paper to the inside of the paper to add contrast.

Next, I started on my photo. I added a white border to my photo, then added a layer of the ‘Little Blossom’ paper and a layer of the ‘Feel Good’ paper. I then used one of the frame die-cuts (from the ephemera pack) cut in half to add to each side of my photo, and a label tab above my photo. I added some dimensional foam behind my photo to add dimension.

Now that I had my photo in place I decided to get my title in place. I used a label sticker from the ‘Accessory Sticker Sheet’ and some of the ‘Mini Puffy Alphabet’ stickers for the word ‘Choose’ then the word ‘Happy’ from the Die-Cut Ephemera. I added some yellow distress oxide under my title to make it pop and used some of the ‘Puffy Sticker’ hearts around it. At the bottom of the page I added some rainbows from the ‘Feel Good’ paper.

To finish off my page I added some more heart ‘Puffy Stickers’ above my photo and added some white ink splatters.

I hope you are inspired to create, and that you might try this watercolour technique or something similar …even if it is outside your comfort zone!

Thanks for stopping by today

Till next time

Kel

 

Happy Days | Happy Days collection | Mandy Melville

Hello everyone!

Mandy here today to share a new layout using the beautiful new Happy Days collection! I absolutely love all of the gorgeous bright colours in this collection and for this layout I wanted to create a fun and happy layout featuring all of the colours! What better paper to use for this than the Rainbow Bright paper! I knew that this would be perfect for documenting a photo of my youngest daughter with her besties on her 5th birthday.

The Rainbow Bright paper made such a gorgeous background for this photo and really brought the layout to life! Once I had decided on this paper, I then matted my photo with one of the papers from the A5 Paper Stack. I adhered it to the page using craft foam in order to give it some nice dimension and to help it stand out against all of the bright colours in the background.

   For my embellishing I decided to keep it mostly tone-on-tone. So on the pink section of the rainbow I added pink embellishments, on the yellow I added yellow embellishments, and so on. I started with a fun little cluster on the bottom right hand corner of the photo. As this was on the blue and purple section, those were the colours that I chose for this cluster. I included some florals from the Floral Ephemera pack, as well as some that I fussy cut out of the Lush Blooms paper. I also added a couple of Die Cuts to the cluster.

Moving over to the left hand side of photo, I added another embellishment cluster using similar items that I used in the first. I tucked some of the flowers under the edge of the photo and some on top to give the cluster some dimension. How gorgeous are the Puffy Hearts?! I couldn’t resist adding one to each of my floral clusters!

I added a third cluster above the photo, creating a visual triangle to draw the viewer’s eye around the page. To keep the clusters looking balanced I again included similar items to the first two. You can also see that I fussy cut a few butterflies out of the Flutterby paper and I scattered these around the page, again keeping them tone-on-tone.

For my title I decided on using the ‘Happy Days’ words from the Die Cut Ephemera pack. I positioned the words so that they curved around the arc of the rainbow. It was the perfect title for this happy photo!

I finished the page off with some typed journalling strips and a few little hearts from the Chipboard Titles pack.

Thanks so much for joining me here on the blog today! I hope that you’re able to create some bright and fun layouts with this collection too!

Mandy x

So Awesome | Happy Days collection | Sue Plumb

Hi everyone, it’s Sue Plumb here and I am SO excited to be sharing my first design team project using the brand new ‘Happy Days’ collection. I am sure by now you have seen the collection in full (either here on the blog or in person), so I know you will agree with me when I say how gorgeous it is! All those bright, vibrant colours really do make me happy.

For my first layout I decided to document some recent happy photos I took – my daughter on her 15th birthday. She was ecstatic to receive her first pair of “Docs” (Dr Marten boots) as a gift – definitely a happy day for her.

I chose to start with the yellow plaid pattern on the B side of the “Feel Good” paper, which is the cut apart sheet for this collection. I didn’t really want to sacrifice the cut apart first up, but I could not resist that gorgeous happy yellow for my background. To add a little extra colour I added some teal acrylic paint using 2″ wide brush and the dry brush technique. Initially I had planned for the brush strokes to be horizontal on the page, but after spinning the page, I decided I like them better vertical.

Next, I started building my paper layers. I matted each of my three photos using the sweet strawberry print on the B side of the “Lush Blooms” paper. I also used an extra piece of this paper to place horizontally across the page as an anchor point for my photos. I tore along one edge to add a textural element. I topped the strawberry paper with a thin stripe of plum purple, which was cut from the top edge of the striped pattern on the “Sunshine Lollipops” paper. I then added some frayed gauze and an aqua paper doily before adding my photos on top.

Now it was time to start embellishing my page. I couldn’t resist reaching for the gorgeous florals from the collection; so I used a mix of flowers fussy cut from the “Lush Blooms” paper and pieces from the Floral Ephemera pack. The first cluster I created was around the top left corner of my photos. I also used a small banner piece from the Die Cut Ephemera pack across the top edge of my photo.

The second cluster I created was below the centre photo and here I used a larger fussy cut floral piece with foam tape behind it to add a little height. (I had already planned at this point that my title was going to go alongside it, even though I hadn’t added it yet.) With two clusters in place, it was time to add my third cluster to balance my page.

The position of the last floral cluster was alongside the photos on the right edge. The positioning of this final cluster completed my visual triangle around the focal point of my page. Again, I used some foam tape to create dimension.

With all the flowers in place, I then set about adding some text to the page. I chose the die cut hello flag from the ephemera pack to place along the bottom edge of my main photo. This formed the first part of my subtitle, which was Hello 1st Docs, with the letters for the second part coming from the Mini Puffy Alphabet Stickers pack. The main part of my title, So Awesome, was using words from the Chipboard Titles pack.

At this point it was simply a matter of a few finishing touches. I created a small cluster along the bottom edge of the page using a scrap of paper, a flower, a phrase stickers from the Accessory Sticker sheet and a sweet little heart shaped Puffy Sticker. I added a couple of extra phrase stickers and heart puffy stickers to the page as well. I also added a die cut butterfly (I am sure you already know how much I love them) and the final finishing touch was one of the gorgeous Puffy Hearts stuck directly onto my centre photo. Oh, and a little black ink splatter.

And that was it!! I hope you love my layout and it inspires you to get creative too. Even if you don’t have the ‘Happy Days’ collection yet, grab out some other Cocoa Vanilla goodies and get busy! ‘Happy Days’ is already shipping to retailers so keep an eye out at your favourite store.

Until next time, happy scrapping!

Happy times | Happy Days Layout | Anna Komenda

Hello, hello! It’s Anna here and I have a brand new layout to share with you. I just got brand new “Happy days” collection and I couldn’t wait to start creating with it. As always, first project is somehow hard as there are so many options and decission making process is complicated. So many patterns and colors to choose from! I like to focus on limited color combo at first or even make a monochromatic page to help me narrow the choices. This time I decided to use pink – yellow – plum colors with a bit of green added.

I started with white cardstock and green ink applied with a soft brush. Next I added some texture using white chalk paste and floral stencil and left it to dry. In the meantime, waiting for the background to dry, I started fussy cutting flowers from LUSH BLOOMS PAPER. I like having a lot of florals on hand even though I have three full packs of FLORAL EPHEMERA. You can never have too many of them!

After my background was dry, it was time to add some pretty papers and embellishments. My idea for this page was to create banners on the string using different patter papers. The biggest one is made with yellow FEEL GOOD PAPER. Second one is cut out from LUSH BLOOMS PAPER (the same one I cut out flowers too!). Smallest banner in plum color is cut out with cute FLUTTERBY PAPER. I added some holes for the string to each one and glued them down to my base.

With all my main elements in place, I was ready to add my photo on the biggest banner. I decorated it with previously fussy cut flowers, some EPHEMERA pieces and butterflies cut out from FLUTTERBY PAPER. I also reached for pretty PUFFY HEARTS pack to add them here and there.

My title is a combination of word “happy” taken from EPHEMERA PACK with word “times” taken from CHIPBOARD TITLES. They look fantastic together. I love this font so much! Here I also added some flowers.

The smallest banner is decorated similar way as the other ones – with flowers and butterflies. You can also spot some cute, puffy stickers in heart shapes as a finishing touch. After finishing my composition I decided I needed to add something on the top and in the bottom of the layout as it seemed too white so I cut off strips of the papers I used for banner and glued them down! Now my page was done!

That is all for today! I hope you like my page! I already have an idea for few other projects with this line. Sending you a lot of hugs.

XO Anna

So Happy | Happy Days collection | Mandy Melville

Hello everyone!

I’m so thrilled to be sharing my first layout featuring the brand new Happy Days collection! As always, Zoe has knocked it out of the park with this collection! It’s bright and fun and it’s perfect for scrapping all of your happy snaps! The hardest part for me was deciding which photos I should scrap first with these beautiful products! I ended up deciding to document the first time that my eldest daughter rode her bike with no training wheels.

I couldn’t resist using all of the gorgeous patterned papers in the collection and decided to trim the papers into one inch strips and arrange them along the top and bottom of the page. I love the way this adds lots of beautiful pattern and colour to the page and draws the viewer’s eye in towards the photos. I also added the rainbow border from the Feel Good paper along the edge of the strips. For my background I chose to use the Rainbow Bright paper with the tiny hearts on it as this provided a nice neutral contrast to all of the patterned paper strips. I matted my photos with the magenta Flutterby paper and adhered them to towards the left hand side of the page, using craft foam for added dimension.

Tucked under the top edge of the photo on the left, I added a die cut pinwheel and a flag banner. These add a fun element to the page, complementing the theme of the photos. I adhered the pinwheel with foam tape and added a chipboard star to the middle of it for some extra interest.

Of course I had to use that sweet bicycle die cut on this page! I also added the ‘Love that smile’ die cut and one of the super gorgeous Puffy Hearts to finish off this little cluster of embellishments. The puffy hearts are soft and pretty!

For my title I used the words ‘So Happy’ from Chipboard Titles pack. I love the fun and playful font that’s been used for these titles! To finish off the layout I added some typed journaling, and I couldn’t resist adding a few blooms from the Floral Ephemera pack.

Thanks so much for stopping by the blog today and taking a look at my layout! I hope that you’re as excited for this new collection as I am! I can’t wait to share more projects using Happy Days!

Mandy x

Sweet Moments | Daydream collection | Mandy Melville

Hello everyone!

Mandy here with you today to share a new layout using one of my all-time favourite collections, Daydream! I adore the pretty colours and sweet florals in this collection and I can’t help coming back to it time and again. The photo that I chose for this layout is one of my Mum and youngest daughter, taken recently when we enjoyed a fun girls day out, op shopping and lunching!

The gorgeous wreath on the Daisy Days paper is one of my favourites, and it was the perfect way to showcase a special photo such as this one. I decided to add some extra interest to the background by using the Sun Shower paper to frame the wreath. I did this by cutting a wavy circle out of the middle of the paper and then laying it over the wreath paper.

Next I matted my photo using one of the papers from the 6 x 8 inch Paper Stack and I adhered it at the bottom of the wreath. I added some extra die cut flowers around the bottom of the photo, adhering them with foam tape to give them some nice dimension. I also added some leaves from the These Days Floral Ephemera to the cluster, and I finished it off with a Wood Epoxy Button, also from the These Days collection.

I love combining different alphas to create my titles and on this layout I chose to use a combination of the lovely Mini Puffy Alphas from the These Days collection, with a word from the Daydream Die Cut Titles. My title ‘Sweet Moments’ was the perfect sentiment for this photo. I added my typed journaling strips underneath the title.

I finished the layout off by adding a couple of sweet little butterflies that I fussy cut from one of the 6 x 8 papers, and I also tucked one of the lovely Puffy Hearts into the cluster around the photo. I love the texture that this adds to the page!

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope that you enjoyed taking a look at my layout, and that you found some inspiration.

Mandy x

Beautiful | Daydream collection | Tarrah McLean

Hi creative friends!

It’s Tarrah back with you and today I am sharing a new layout featuring the gorgeous Daydream collection! The Daydream collection would have to be one of my all time favourite collections by Cocoa Vanilla Studio. Which collection would be your favourite?

The photos I am documenting on this layout are of my niece when she was posing with a cute hat on her head! The florals and the lovely words in this collection are perfect to go with my photo.

I decided to start out my layout with a plain white piece of cardstock, which I often do, I then cut strips of different patterned papers from the Daydream collection in 1 inch sizes. I strategically then arranged these strips into a triangular pattern so that no 2 patterns were together on the page. I matted the photos with some of the papers from the A5 paper pack and arranged the photos slightly overlapping each other.

The floral die-cuts in the Daydream collection (or any of the collection for that matter) are just so beautiful! They look absolutely gorgeous when they are added to a project! I tucked in lots of different sizes and colours at each side of the photos and I also tucked some in to the top of the photos as well. I added different heights of foam adhesive and regular adhesive to get the shadow and dimension on my page. Once they were all stuck down, I bent up the edges of the petals and the leaves to make them look more realistic as well!

My title is made up of the gorgeous cardstock title words and I also added one of the banner die-cuts below the title too. I adhered it slightly overlapping the bottom of the photos and added foam tape to the bottom of the title to adhere it with the same level as the photos. Some of the smaller embellishments that I added include accessory stickers, moth and heart die-cuts and also some of the super cute sequins. You can see I added some of the sequins to the centres of the flowers, I love how the sequins look in the centres of the flowers. I should add sequins to my projects a lot more often!

Above the photo on the right, I also added one of the tab stickers from the accessory sticker sheet and also added one of the super cute fabric puffy hearts here too. Lastly I stamped my date stamp and called my layout finished. I love how it turned out. I love the pattern that the papers make on the page and how the florals look even against the busy patterned paper background.

Thank you so much for stopping by the Cocoa Vanilla blog today! I hope you enjoyed reading about how I created my layout as much as I enjoyed creating it.

See you next time!

Tarrah x

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