Cocoa Vanilla Studio – Free Spirit
Hi everyone! It’s Nat here with some card projects from a summery and sizzling collection all the way from Oz. The Free Spirit collection is from a new brand I’ve never used before, but the style reminded me of a veteran designer in the scrapbook industry and lo and behold they are one and the same person: Zoe Pearn who designed a good few collections for My Mind’s Eye back in the day as well as her own digital content. It’s lovely to see her designs back in printed paper and even better, with matching embellishments!
Check out all the Cocoa Vanilla ranges now available from Hey Little Magpie here.
Restocks for many items came into the store earlier this week and you can find the Free Spirit collection here.
Unfortunately the Eclectic paper (featuring cut-apart journaling accents) which I’ve used in my projects is no longer available.
I absolutely love the tones in this collection: deep pink, orange and coral, plus navy and aqua – so pretty!
Here are the items I used for my projects:
The ephemera die-cuts and the Word Jumble paper I used for this card feature this lovely stylized look of water-colouring. It makes the colours even more vibrant and adds another layer to the designs. Very pretty!
I loved how the “always” puffy sticker pops against that hot pink floral heart.
While I had the puffy stickers out I wanted to use the “Smile” sticker against a really bold background.
The My Way and Shabby Chic papers go great together, but for a bolder line between the two I used the arrow border sticker from the sticker sheet for the background and added a frame and tab from the ephemera pack to make that greeting really stand out.
The Dreamy Paper is a fantastic background when you want to use really light colours that go with the collection when white would be too cold. It has a great mix of pink, grey, aqua, and peach bubbles so you can pick out the colours that work best for you.
Here it is again as the background to a larger frame:
I was desperate to get those pineapples from the ephemera pack in some how… all this card is missing now is a pina colada on the side!
The colours are so soft, all that was needed was a bit of bunting and a greeting die-cut in a coordinating shade of card.
This large 5×7 card is a complete contrast to the understated simple look of the one above:
I used the lush blooms from this collection along with more ephemera and puffy stickers. It’s definitely a card I’d give to someone in person as it’s packed full of dimension!
The Shine Bright comes from the ephemera pack – I just love the font and waterbrush lettering style. I used enamel dots from my stash as the dots for the i’s and there are pops of 3D foam tape where needed to create a little lift.
Sticking with the florals I was determined to use the B-side of the Shabby Chic paper as a solid background as it is such a statement pattern:
Well, I mixed it up with the lovely diagonal stripe pattern from the Word Jumble paper, plus lots of ephemera like the flowers and slide die-cuts and the butterfly stickers.
I stamped part of the greeting in one of the labels from the Eclectic paper and paired it with the “Fabulous” from the puffy stickers. A few gold sequins here and there finished it all off.
And finally, with lots of off-cuts of paper sitting on my desk I decided to cut them into strips to make a DIY background:
I added my remaining butterflies from the sticker sheet and ephemera pack and stamped the greeting on another label from the Eclectic paper.
I had a few gems left in my embellishment box that really needed using up and hey presto they provided the finishing touch here.
Well that’s it for this month, until next time – happy crafting!
