Hello Cocoa Daisy fans,

Please join me in welcoming Celine Navarro to the Memory Keeping (MK) design team and her first blog post! Together we are introducing you to Traveler’s Notebook Tuesday (TNT), a day each week that is completely devoted to the traveler’s notebook kit, design ideas, and tips for telling your story in this medium. We encourage you to comment here, the Cocoa Daisy IG page, or on the MK Facebook group with questions or requests for TN topics you would like the team to cover. In addition to TN Tuesdays we are going to bring back the sketch challenge at the end of June and will be running the challenge for two weeks each month.

Please keep an eye out for the announcement of our first challenge which will run from June 29th – July 14th.

Now, let’s get started with our first TNT design share. The theme today is ways to incorporate items from our various planner kits into your TN design. I created a layout for my dad’s 80th birthday album that is part of a long letter we wrote to him after our trip. I wanted to find a way to include the letter in his album and the planner kits were perfect for a layout with a photo of my dad and my sister and a bit of the letter. I will be sharing all of the letter layouts with you but they will be out of order initially.

In this design, I used items from the South Beach kits including the classified planner & MK kit, and the planner add-on, as well as two of the papers from the TN MK kit. First, I cut up the papers I chose and hand sewed them together. I created my sequin pocket and added it with a strip of paper in the middle of a large section of the pale green paper. Finally, I included die cuts and stamping to add a bit more interest.

I completed the opposite side of my design with my photo and a journaling spot which includes die cuts and stamping.

Pocket page TN albums are a great way to use your TN insert and kit. There are a variety of pocket sizes available from each album manufacturer. You can also choose to use rings and acrylic or wood covers which gives you freedom over the amount of bulk you want to add to your album. There are endless possibilities and we will be sharing some of them with you on TN Tuesdays.

Now I am handing off to the fabulous Celine Navarro who is going to walk you through her first design for Cocoa Daisy!

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Oh dear! Can I just say that I’m a little bit nervous here!? Hey everyone! Celine Navarro here! So so so excited to be here with you! I have to say that i’m honored, excited and terribly SCARED to be back in the Scrapbooking industry, but what a wonderful feeling it is also! I was over the moon when I received my first package from Cocoa Daisy and even more when I started creating (again!) in a Traveler’s Notebook!

My approach to a Traveler’s Notebook is somewhat simple : as an avid traveler myself, I truely see a TN as a travel notebook, but my life as a work-at-home single mom is far different from my life as a young entrepreneur traveling the world to teach scrapbook classes, even though I can’t complain as I’ve been traveling quite often now too! ahah!

Anyways, I wanted to find a way to approach TN as a way of expressing my daily gratitude and also celebrate the upcoming Summer season. So my first Traveler’s Notebook ever will be about Summer Gratitude. What do you think? I am so in love with this month’s kit that it won’t be hard to play with it until there is nothing left!

Oh friends, it felt so good to create again! People were right : it’s like biking, you never really forget! So I just grabbed whatever black ink I had left from my dinosaur times and added some splashes here and there to get more contrast, which was also brought on the background by the black stamp. 3D foam tabs were glued on the back of the suitcases rubons, to create more depth on my page. Then it’s all about gathering elements together and create a “bundle” of items.

I have always loved BIG photos in my scrapbook projects : whether it is layouts or mini albums, I tend to love big photos more than small ones. And this was no exception when came the time to print my photos for this project : it HAD to have big photos, esp. of my sweet girl, Salomé.

I played with die-cuts, rubons, stickers and tags on the right page, and tried to balance all these elements with depth (using 3D foam tabs) and contrast (using black ink).

Summer isn’t Summer without a bucket list! So I made two : a leisure one and a work one (when you’re a work-at-home mom, you have to be even more organized in the Summer time!).

Summer is all about eating FRESH food : it is so warm where I live (south of France) that the only things you want to eat are fruits, vegetables and seafood! So this is what my Summer is going to look like soon! And I’m pretty excited about it, I have to say!

To me, this TN will be all about Celebrating Summer : time with family and friends at the beach, enjoying good food, relaxing after a warm day by the pool, drinking fresh orange juice and playing.

What about yours? What is your Traveler’s Notebook about?