Finally Together | Cocoa Vanilla Studio

Hi everyone, today I am popping in to share another layout I created earlier this month for Cocoa Vanilla Studio using the gorgeous new 'These Days' collection. As this range has such a lovely home / family theme I decided to document one of my favourite ever family photos. This photo of the five of us was taken not long after we had finally brought our boys home. After being born prematurely, we spent over 10 weeks (which at the time felt like forever) in hospital and just looking at this photo reminds me of the elation I felt when we were finally able to be a family at home. 

I knew I wanted to use a patterned paper background for my page, but I started with a sheet of white cardstock as the base. I chose 3 papers - the tiny heart print Good Life; the adorable house print Neighbourhood and the spotty green Family Ties. Starting from the left edge, I added various sized vertical strips of paper, slightly distressing the overlapping edge as I went.

For my photo, I added two layers of patterned paper to mat it – the black and white floral and the wood grain print, both from the A5 Paper Stack. On top of those paper layers I also added some frayed gauze for texture before adding some cardboard and then my photo on top.

I then turned my attention to my embellishments, beginning with the Wall of Fame patterned paper with all the doodled frames on it. I fussy cut three of the frames, and then tucked them in around my photo to create the bases for my embellishment clusters.

For the cluster in the top right corner of my photo I used the home sweet home sticker from the Accessory Sticker sheet, which I placed inside the frame I had tucked there. I then chose several floral pieces from both the Die Cut Ephemera pack and the Floral Ephemera pack and tucked them in around the frame. I then added a small heart and small butterfly – both from the Puffy Stickers sheet; a small Wood Button; and a couple of leafy branches from the Foam Title Stickers pack. I also added a die cut butterfly to the corner of my photo.

To keep my design cohesive, I used the same types of embellishments in the cluster on the bottom left corner of my photo – Die Cut Ephemera, Floral Ephemera, Wood Buttons, Puffy Stickers and Foam Title Stickers. I topped this cluster with the oh happy day! sticker from the Accessory Sticker sheet. I arranged this cluster so that it trailed towards the bottom left corner of my page, which helped give my layout design a horizontal flow through the photo from top right to bottom left.

My title was the focus of my final cluster, along the bottom edge of my photo. I used the fussy cut frame I had placed there as the spot for the first word of my title, finally, which I created using the Mini Puffy Alphas. (These alphas are so gorgeous, and one of my very favourite things from this collection.) For the second word of my title, I used the word together from the Foam Title Stickers pack. These stickers are a beautiful script font, and a lovely charcoal colour. I love mixed font titles, and I think the combination of these two styles look great together. Below my title I added a brush stroke sticker and a small cluster of crosses from the Clear Stickers sheet.

Along the left edge of my layout, I added a couple of sweet phrase stickers from the Accessory Sticker sheet so that they ran vertically in line with the layered paper strips. And that was my layout done!

I am loving working with this collection so far; it’s one of those ones that is just so easy to work with, and I love how many embellishments there are to choose from! If you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, ask your favourite scrappy retailer, or check with a stockist from the stockist list HERE

Until next time, happy scrapping! X