Greetings friends! Are you a plaid lover? If so, we have a special treat for you today from our design team. They are sharing unique and one of a kind layouts with plaid using our To the Sea and Backyard Blooms kits. Let’s begin with a this awesome traditional 12x12 design from Audrey of @lawofcraft. "Our challenge for this blog post was 'Mad About Plaid' and the newest collection, Backyard Blooms has so many gorgeous options to play around with this idea. Since plaid is essentially intersecting lines creating a checkered pattern, I decided to create my own plaid(ish) design using the awesome stamp sets. The block and line stamps are perfect to create a plaid pattern. Mine is a whimsical, loose plaid. I just stamped randomly on the page, making sure to alternate the block and line stamps, and also throwing in a circle here or there to create the plaid. After I was done stamping, I broke up the monotony with some green acrylic paint splatter and then stitched around the circle.“ “I also punched out circles using in two different shapes using the plaid paper from the kits and the travelers notebook to mimic the big circle in the middle. I placed these in a pattern around the page.“ “I used some of the embellishments from the kits to cluster around the circles to help tell my story, about Dennis, my dog, and his smile when its summer.“ “Most of the die cuts in these kits have sticky backs which is SO fun! I stuck a few down and popped some up with pop dots from my stash. I love to create dimension in my layouts by sneaking some of the stickers under the popped up die cuts. The puffy stickers are just perfect for this. I also scattered some of the puffy stickers shaped small dots and hearts around the page like confetti.“ “Finally, I finished my layout by journalling about Dennis's summer smile around the big circle. I really love how this layout came together to celebrate my perfect lil' dude. How are you going to use the plaids in the kit?“ Our next “mad about plaid” design is a travelers notebook layout by Korrie-ann of @korrieannderkreations. Korrie-ann included a walkthrough video you can view by clicking here. “I loved the idea of Mad about Plaid, but plaid patterned papers were not part of the To the Sea design so I chose to make my own.“ “The striped paper was perfect for my idea. I cut the designs from paper into strips and weaved them together to create my colourful plaid. The colours went really well with the Quote Here comes the sun on the left-hand side page. I kept my photos in a photobooth style and just layered them on the blue bubbles paper and placed them at a slight angle onto my plaid.“ “The page needed something at the top to balance out the page so I made a little cluster with the die cuts and the cork veneer arrow.“ “At the bottom I couldn't resist adding the little cork turtle, he is just too cute!!“ We love these clever layouts and hope you are inspired to try the techniques Audrey and Korrie-ann chose to add plaid! Please share your “mad about plaid” ideas with us in our private Cocoa Daisy Fans facebook group or by tagging @cocoa_daisy on social media. Happy crafting! ~Robin