So, the first thing I do when my kit arrives is actually what I do BEFORE my kit arrives.

I clean off my desk. This is a major milestone and accomplishments all by itself, and for the rest of the day my family compliments me on how neat and tidy my desk is.

I always receive my kit at night, because I have to pick it up from our mailbox, so I open it after the kids are in bed.

Once I’ve opened it, I put each kit and add-on back in it’s bag, so I can open it all up again the next morning. 🙂

I usually shoot a video as I’m opening my kit in the morning and afterwards, make a big pile of all of my kits and add-ons together.

I cut out several pieces from plain cardstock using the Cocoa Daisy cut files available to subscribers. This way I’ve got lots of little pieces ready to go. I usually cut a background or two, too, so I can try layering it over different patterned papers as I’m working through my kits. I start by cutting out of plain cardstock — usually white but this time I used the navy that came in the kit, too — so they are neutral and will go with whatever pages I’m working on. If I want a different pattern or colour I either mist, stamp, or re-cut.

I also stamp out each image onto sheets of plain cardstock that I keep just for Cocoa Daisy stamp images. This makes finding the right stamp for a project easy-peasy and is a helpful reference guide.

I go through all of the patterned paper from the kit and turn the side I like best up. I arrange them this way and leave them fanned out on my desk as often as I can. I like to pick up the papers, shuffle them around and appreciate new colour and pattern combinations.

I like to pull out an assortment of media in colours that will work with the kit. For this kit I selected some aqua and inky blue mists, and embossing powders in metallic and gold glitter, and opaque powder, cricket, denim blue, black, neon green, neon yellow, clear and white. I don’t normally stamp in coloured ink, but I always have a navy blue ink pad, my black hybrid Cocoa Daisy ink pad and a VersaMark pad on my desk.

The last thing I do before I start scrapping is to pull out all of the kit embellishments and put them out in small containers on my desk. What I use tends to vary each month… this month I used two vintage saucers. I always open up all of the embellishment packages because I like to sort through all of the little pieces. These saucers will stay on my desk all month long until it’s time to put away the leftover bits into my Cocoa Daisy stash box when I once again clean off my desk to get ready for my next kit to arrive!