Ready Made Backgrounds with Cocoa Vanilla

When I get a sheet of paper like the background above I am loathed to cut into it, and then spend time trying to find a photo (as I don't want to cover it up too much) and a little bit of paper so I can show as much as the paper as I can!  I know it should be about the story and the photo and not the background!  When I really love a background I tend to create lots of little layers of papers, so here you can see some strips and little stickers, and also use something that is transparent - so vellum or in this case a torn glassine envelope, so you get layers, but can see the paper behind.  

Sticking with the minimalist page I used a beautiful title from the Midnight chipboard, and also one of the hearts that co-ordinates - to add a little more bling, but again coverage you can see through I used a circle of silver thread and then also wrapped some around the heart.  The final step was a few drips of silver mist.

So you can still see plenty of that beautiful background paper but I've also managed to use it too!  The papers are Cocoa Vanilla's Midnight collection and you can find them in the shop.

This is one of those papers where I would have to buy 2 sheets!  I hope this has inspired you to choose and use one of your favourite papers, one that you've been saving!

Multi-photos and messy backgrounds with Cocoa Vanilla

We were sent a mixture of Cocoa Vanilla lines this month to play with and I've used a mixture of More than Words and Midnight - both of which are gorgeous and go really well together.  I have lots of pictures of Palma Cathedral from our holiday last year - it was beautiful - it has a mixture of traditional Cathedral beauty but also an arts and crafts sort of vibe with a little section done by Gaudi too.  In an ideal world the photos should have been black and white to go with the paler colours...but then the beauty would be hidden, so I went with full on colour and pastels.

I took inspiration for the background from the papers and used a mix of distress oxides and distress inks in pale blues, yellows, pinks and greys.  I then used a Kaisercraft called Fading Dots and imitated the dots that are on some of the papers too in black ink.  Lots of fussy cutting of flowers - though fortunately as these flowers are roughly drawn you can get away with rough cutting.

Then it was just a case of arranging them all together along with a few butterflies and some of the little type written words from the sticker sheets.

I used a pale cream alpha and to make it stand out had a go a mimicking the hand drawn flowers in pencil - still a skill I need to perfect but it was good fun to have a go with.

Another similar arrangement for some more of the photos - I just trimmed the photos to focus on the areas that I wanted, then mounted them on white card.  I added some torn strips of paper behind them...but being that I dug out some of my mists and created an inky pink and silver background.

The photos show the main sanctuary - it had a beautiful chandelier packed with candles, carefully handcrafted, then in the centre is the chapel designed by Gaudi.

There are some beautiful chipboard flowers and hearts in the Midnight ephemera collection and these were great to add as embellishments to my pages.

A whole paper full of butterflies to cut up from More than Words, layered on Midnight stickers - normally scrapping boys it was fun to use up a little bit of pink!

A bit of a tour around my holiday - I hope you've enjoyed the pages and it's given you some inspiration.