Just taking a quick break from packing orders of our new ‘Happy Days’ collection to announce the winners of our recent giveaway. As you already know, this collection is dedicated to my dear sister Kellie, who passed away shortly after Christmas. Thank you to everyone for your messages of condolence that you included in your comments about the collection. Please know that I read every single one of them and I could certainly feel the love from you all – thank you!
Now let’s announce some winners!
Our first lucky winner who will receive the ENTIRE ‘Happy Days’ collection is…
Congratulations Jenny Dutton!
And our runner-up, who will receive a collection kit is…
Congratulations Shelby Teeter!
Congratulations to both ladies, we hope you enjoy your ‘Happy Days’ goodies! (Keep an eye on your email Inbox – Sue will be in touch to organise your prizes shortly.)
To everyone who entered – thank you so much for your support for this collection. ‘Happy Days’ is already shipping to our amazing retailers all over the world, so please keep a look out for it at your favourite scrappy store.
It’s been such a whirlwind of activity here at Cocoa Vanilla Studio recently that we haven’t had a chance to announce the winner of our new ‘Storyteller’ collection giveaway… until now! I would like to start by saying how appreciative I am for all the beautiful messages and positive feedback I have received about this collection. As you know, I collaborated with my long time friend Traci Reed on this one, and I am thrilled with how it turned out. It really does warm my heart to hear that you love it and I am sure Traci is delighted to hear it too.
Now let’s get to those winners!
Our first lucky winner who will receive the ENTIRE ‘Storyteller’ collection is…
Congratulations Belinda Ryken!
And our runner-up, who will receive a collection kit is…
Congratulations Anne Farrar!
Congratulations to both ladies, we hope you enjoy! (Keep an eye on your email Inbox – Sue will be in touch to organise your prizes shortly.)
To all who entered – thank you so much for your support for this collection. ‘Storyteller’ is currently shipping to our valued retailers around the world, so please look out for it at your favourite scrappy store.
Hi everyone, Its Melissa here and I’m back with you today with three days in my December Daily Traveler’s Notebook. I’m creating my entire 25 Days of December with the beautiful Joyful collection, and keeping it simple is helping me get through the month.
My first day is Day 10, and for this one I had two photos and associated stories to document. This part of my homemade notebook has a piece of patterned paper sewn in and plain white paper. I focused on using one of the “Pocket Cards“.
As always I am distressing all of the edges, and outlining with a journaling pen to provide extra details without dimension.
For this page I embellished with a partial fussy cut floral that I cut from one of the papers in the A5 Paper Stack and I added an Accessory Sticker.
Day 11 only had one photo, so I created a large tag using Feeling Festive and some white cardstock to hold my journaling. I embellished with cute Puffy Stickers.
I love all the cute details on the Advent cut aparts! So perfect for numbering my days.
The big tag was a fun addition to a page that needed to be filled in, and I was inspired by a scrappy friend who recently posted a photo of a TN page with a large tag. I don’t plan the taking of my photos each day, I just try to capture moments. Sometimes I forget to take more than one.
Day 12 just happened to be last page of my notebook (I’ll be creating volume 2 next) and had Tis’ the Season as the back cover and white cardstock. I’ve loved using full page photos, and I size and print them at home. I used an App called Print to Size on my phone, and I print them directly to my printer. I mistakenly purchased matt photo paper and was concerned I wouldn’t like it, but I actually love how it looks.
I loved writing directly onto my photo for this page! The holly is from the Die Cut Ephemera.
Square shaped photos are another of my favourites, and for this one of Brielle with our Christmas Countdown I just had to use the corresponding sticker! Since the photo shows how many days until the big day I used the space in the sticker to journal.
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing three of my pages, I also made a video showing me creating them and it includes a walk through of the previous days!
Hi everyone, its Melissa here and I’m back to show you the first two days of my December Daily in my handmade Traveller’s Notebook. As I shared in my last blog post I’m creating my entire notebook with the gorgeous Joyful collection, which is so perfect for my summer photos! We also moved into our new house a month ago so this album will be so special to document new memories in our new town.
My Day 1 is always my kids with their Advent Calendars, and this is a tradition that we all love! Unfortunately Sam had already gone to school when this photo was taken. The large photo is of my 12 year old daughter Azaria wrapping gifts at church for our Christmas Boxes that we give to nominated people in our community. I kept things very simple with small areas of embellishment, and focussing on the photos and journalling.
I cut apart Advent which is perfect for numbering each day. I distressed the edges and outlined the square with my journaling pen. I can’t add any bulk or dimension to my album so outlining is a great way to add extra detail. I backed my photo with a paper from the A5 Paper Stack.
Day 2 was a super cute photo of Brielle (7) with her advent calendar and Azaria and I late night shopping. When I made my Notebook I included a piece of Deck the Halls paper to break up the white pages. For my large photo I cut a banner from one of the papers from the A5 Paper Stack and outlined it. I embellished with a fussy cut flower, a Puffy Star from the Puffy Gold Title Stickers, and a phrase from the Accessory Stickers.
The photo of Brielle printed with a small mark on the top of her hair. I covered this up with a santa hat from the Die Cut Ephemera. It looks so adorable!
For the second page I lined everything up centrally. I embellished with an ephemera tag and an accessory sticker. I love how this page looks with the patterned paper as the background.
I hope you enjoyed seeing two of my pages! I’m looking forward to creating this album now that the pre-Christmas craziness is over!
Hi everyone, it’s Melissa here and I’m so excited to be sharing my first project with the beautiful new Joyful Collection! We’ve recently moved house again and life has been crazy busy. For my December Daily this year I’ve decided to keep it super simple (well attempt to!) and work with a handmade homemade Traveller’s Notebook. Joyful is so perfect to document my December and I have everything I need to make a cute TN!
I went through the beautiful papers and just had to make my cover with Tis The Season, the florals are just so gorgeous!! I added a Pocket Card for my title, and hand stitched around the edge of the frame for added texture and interest. I used some number stickers from my stash for the “25”.
My first inside pages of my December Daily are always the same, I have our names and ages and oh boy time seems to be flying by! I’ve been doing this project for 10 years now!! I used another Pocket Card for my journaling. I embellished with a tab from the Die Cut Ephemera and some fussy cut flowers from Tis The Season.
My first page is always journaling the reason why I create my album, which is very much inspired by Ali Edwards (the creator of December Daily). I Used a piece of paper from the A5 Paper Stack which I tied a bow with twine from my stash. I wrote my journalling on some white card stock and created my title with a phrase from the Puffy Title Stickers. They are gold and so pretty!
I finished with a tiny Puffy Sticker Christmas tree. I outlined around all of my pages with black pen, and no its not perfect but thats ok! I hope you enjoyed seeing the first couple of pages of my December Daily! I’ll be back later in the month with some more pages that include photos of the days.
Hi everyone its Melissa here and today I’m going to be sharing something a little bit different. Did you know that you can make your own Traveler’s Notebook inserts? I started doing this because I couldn’t purchase them here in New Zealand, and I found it a perfect way to feature beautiful patterned papers. I also love having control over the weight of paper inside the notebook. This is by no means my own idea, and there are lots of videos on YouTube for how to do this in lots of different ways. Anyway this way is definitely the lazy girls technique because no measuring is required, just an existing notebook to use as a guide. In terms of the actual making, I suggest you watch my process video (at the end of this post) where I demonstrate what you need and exactly how to create them.
I let each of my 4 children choose a patterned paper from limited selection from the Legendary and Unforgettable Collections to make each of the notebook covers. I was pleasantly surprised that two of my girls selected a paper from Legendary which tells me its definitely not just for boys!
Sam (age 13) ended up with the arrow paper by default, but I knew it would be perfect for a teen boy. I embellished with two cut aparts from Epic Tales, one that I tore in half and distressed the edges of, and the second that I fussy cut the word “EPIC” which was perfect for his cover. I did some subtle mixed media splatters and splatters on the background with some shiny mist. I finished his cover with a couple of Accessory Stickers, and I also used some of the Clear Stickers.
Here is a close up of Sam’s notebook.
Next up was Azaria (who has just turned 11), who completely surprised me by choosing the Brave Heart paper for her cover. She loves neutrals, so I decided to mix in some of the gorgeous Unforgettable, and based the embellishment of her cover off the cut apart from the Story Teller paper. I altered the cut apart by cutting off the floral pieces, distressing all edges and then glueing them back together. I love doing this!! I minimally embellished with some Clear Stickers and a Die Cut Ephemera piece. Edgy and girly all at once!
Here is a close up of Azaria’s notebook.
Next up was my girly-girl Brielle (6) who I knew had to have her entire notebook made from Unforgettable! She immediately fell in love with the Glorious paper! For her cover, I started with layering the wreath cut apart from Storyteller over a piece of paper from the 6×8 Paper Stack, and added a Clear Sticker arrow with a heart layered over the top. I distressed all of my edges of course! I needed something to break up the busy floral from the embellishment, so I used white acrylic paint applied with a dry brush, and I applied it very thickly. Once it was dry I added one of the Clear Stickers (cut in half), punched a tab and stapled it on, and my final touch was to add a clear sticker heart on the tab.
Here is a close up of Brielle’s notebook.
Onto the final notebook which was for Ava (3.5) who is my rough and tumble little girl. As soon as she saw the selection of papers in my hand she said “I want the stars” so the Legendary All Star paper was hers! I wanted to challenge myself to use more of Legendary on Ava’s notebook so I used a cut apart from Epic Tales. I distressed all of the edges like I did with the other three notebook cover papers, and for a subtle girly touch I added a Clear Sticker flower from Unforgettable and I totally love the resulting mix of grey and pink!
Here is a close up of Ava’s notebook.
I bound my notebooks by hand stitching with 3-hole pamphlet stitch, and the centre of the notebook looks like this.
And here’s a lovely photo of all the notebooks stacked up. Now to convince my children that they’re not actually getting the notebooks, but they’re for me to document their stories that don’t require a full 12×12 layout!!
You can watch my process in the following video, and I also show the embellishing of the notebook covers.
I hope I’ve inspired you to make your own Traveler’s Notebooks!
Hello friends and welcome to my roundup for 2019. It has been an honor and a privilege and great, great fun designing with Cocoa Vanilla’s beautiful products and I have a few that are close to my heart to share with you all!
This is the most recent project I’ve made while on the team but it’s probably the one I love the most. I love the Midnight collection so much, and if I had to pick a favorite from Zoe’s designs, this one would be it. The colors are so soft and beautiful and this color palette is my favorite.
I especially loved this layout because of the easy design. I love any layout where I can stashbust, use all the embellishments, and repeat things in threes. This layout hits all of those high places for me and it’s so easy to reproduce that this is one of my favorites.
This next layout is a close second! It was a page I made for Cut File week and I used one of Gwen’s files from the Cut To You shop as well as the Happiness collection. This layout features another one of my favorite things: RAINBOWS! I’ve long said that rainbow is my favorite color and that is still true.
In addition to rainbows, we have vellum and watercolor and all the flowers we can handle? With all of this fun and bright elements, what’s not to love?
For my last favorite, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about one more thing that had my heart: traveler’s notebooks. Traveler’s notebooks were my first foray into scrapbooking and making and memory keeping, and I will always have a soft spot for this size and how accessible they are to so many people.
Traveler’s notebooks have that fun square shape without the intimidation factor of a 12×12 piece of cardstock. I love how this spread is lovely enough to be expanded to a traditional layout but small enough to fit into a book. This spread was fun and easily, one of my favorite traveler’s notebook layouts I’ve made all year!
So that’s it, friends! Thank you for a fun year, filled with memories, color and so many beautiful projects, and I cannot wait to see what happens next year.
Hi everyone! It’s Sue Plumb here continuing on with our focus on traveler’s notebook pages. For today’s post I decided to create my first spread using the recently released, and oh-so-beautiful, ‘Unforgettable’ collection. I had a couple of photos of my sister and I that I printed in black and white, as I thought that despite being two separate pages, that they could work well side by side in my book.
I began with the 6×8″ Paper Stack, as these are the perfect sizes papers for my notebook inserts. I chose the scaled down version of the stunning butterfly Lacewing12×12″ paper for the base of my pages. I trimmed down my sheet into two pieces and placed one either side of the spine.
On the left side I then added a pink and white striped piece of paper cut from the Pretty Bits 12×12″ cut apart paper. I then adhered my photo and journalling on top. I then worked vertically from the top to the bottom to embellish my page.
At the top I used the our little moments sticker from the Accessory Stickers sheet; followed by the captured word cut from the Story Teller paper; the large butterfly fussy cut from the Pretty Bitspaper; and the small heart tab sticker from the Accessory Stickers sheet. I finished along the bottom of the page with the best things in life are free sticker and stamped the date.
I knew I needed to work in a vertical style again on the right page so that the two sides of my spread had cohesion across the design.
I started by adding the every photo has a story quote piece from the 6×8″ Paper Stack; followed by the wood grain piece from the Story Teller paper with my photo and journalling on top. Below that I added the take a photo it will last longer sticker from the Accessory Stickers sheet; then finished off with the cute pink camera from the Die Cut Ephemera pack.
For my second spread, I decided to work with the previously released ‘Happiness’ collection to document some photos of my boys and I on a day out together.
This time I was able to work with the spread as a whole, rather than two separate pages sharing a spread. I started with the 6×8″ Paper Pad, choosing the scaled down version of the Sprinkles paper as the base for my pages. I cut the sheet into two uneven pieces and placed them either side of the spine.
I then added my three photos and my journalling, which I stuck on top of a journal box cut from the Little Things paper. I also added the making memories quote card from the same paper.
Next, I added some floral pieces from the Die Cut Ephemera pack – cutting the largest piece in two and placing in on either side of the spine at the bottom of the page. I also used a couple of single flowers, which I tucked under the edges of my photos.
I then added two small phrase stickers from the Accessory Stickers sheet; and finished off with a few other elements from the ephemera pack – tickets, hearts and the title piece.
That’s all from me today, I hope I have inspired you to try some traveler’s notebook spreads if you haven’t already – it’s such a fun size to work in!
Hello Cocoa Vanilla Family and welcome back to the blog! For my assignment this week, I was given the task of documenting in a traveler’s notebook, and considering this is the medium that made me fall in love with scrapbooking, this happened pretty seamlessly. I decided to play with the Unforgettable collection because it’s so delicious and I needed some floral action in my life. I chose to print my photos in black and white so I could use all the colors on my layouts.
For my first spread, I decided to create a sunburst of sorts using triangles I cut out from the 6×8 paper pad. I cut rectangles, then cut those in half to create the triangles and arranged them across the top half of my layout. That was the hard part. The rest of this came together pretty easily!
I chose to mat my photo on just one patterned paper since there were already so many going on in my background and then I popped the large floral element on foam, stuck it on the bottom left of my photo and added the circle die cut right behind it for dimension and interest.
On the left side of my page, I started with a card from the cut apart sheet since it was the same size as my photo, added a floral die cut and then adhered my title – also from the ephemera pack. With traveler’s notebooks, dimension can get out of hand really quickly so I chose to use a flat ephemera piece as my title as opposed to chipboard or foam. I added a single butterfly to the left side and a blue tab element to the right and called this layout done!
For my second project, I knew I wanted to use these branches that I had left over from a previous layout so I started with the pink cardstock background so the white of the cutfile would pop against the background. Then I printed my photos at 2×3 inches and matted them on three papers from the 6×6 patterned paper stack. I used strips of the same patterns on the right side of the spread to carry over the color and patterns and I added two more branches to the right side to continue the theme.
Now we embellish! I used some small elements from the ephemera pack as well as stickers from the accessory pack to add some texture and interest to the photos.
On the right side, I used a piece that I cut from one of the 6×8 patterned papers, layered it over a tag, flower, and butterfly, and added some additional flowers along the branches to tie the whole layout together. A couple of enamel dots on both sides finished off this spread and I am super happy with how both projects came out this week.
I hope you found inspiration here and are fired up to scrap small and make something beautiful today in a traveler’s notebook today. Till next time, keep it crafty friends and have a great day.
No, we haven’t forgotten that we promised to announce a winner for our recent giveaway celebrating the release of our new ‘Unforgettable’ collection. (Things have just been a little hectic around here – as they usually are when we are about to start shipping a new range.)
We were overwhelmed with the response to our giveaway, and are beyond grateful for all the lovely feedback and comments we received about our new release. It really does make all the hard work that goes into designing and producing a collection worthwhile to know that you guys are as excited about it as we are – thank you!
So without further ado, let’s announce our lucky winner who will receive the ENTIRE ‘Unforgettable’ collection…
Congratulations Katie Green!
And we have a lucky runner up as well, who will receive an ‘Unforgettable’ collection kit…
Congratulations Kelly Malacko!
Congratulations to both our lucky winners. (Please keep an eye on your Inbox and Sue will be in touch to organise your prizes.)
For everyone else, your favourite retailer should have ‘Unforgettable’ on their shelves VERY soon as we begin shipping in a few days time. I can’t wait to see what you all create with it and hope you love it as much as I do!
Congratulations Jenny Dutton!
I cut apart 
