The kit that wasn’t

Its March, time for a new kit over at Counterfeit Kit Challenge, yay! Such an exciting day, I always look forward to seeing what the new one will be, and taking my time picking out my own kit.  This month they are counterfeiting this kit from a Piece of Cake Designs.

And here is what I came up with. First the papers.

then because I didn’t have enough papers last time, I added some more.

then the embellies, including the stickers and cork pieces

My kit was set. All ready to go. Except…… I didn’t like it. Not inspired in the least bit. Didn’t want to do anything with it.

That’s not good.

So after thinking it over, I thought, you know what, I’m going to put it all back and make a new one. Yes, yes I am. I mean its my stuff, no rule saying I can only make one right. And the point is to USE my stuff. So this morning I took it all apart. Then with luck, over at the CKC their bonus is tips for building a kit! I had my coffee and went through everyones blog, reading their hints and tips and checking out their kits. Then I made a new one.

I used these papers instead. I’m aqua’d and pink’d out. Don’t get me wrong, I love those colours but it feels like its all we’ve been doing for the last year in the scrapbook world. Last month I loved my kit and I think its because I enjoyed using orange as a colour, which actually was a colour for this month, but I had just used it.

And again I added extra papers.

I also was not feeling the florals. Again, I have a zillion flowers to use up but they are hard for me, and I had just used some the last few months, so I decided to take a break from them.  One of the suggestions, I’m sorry I forget by who, was to make a kit that inspires YOU, its your kit. That’s what I’ve done. No florals, no aqua, no pink and the orange I traded for red. Then I added embellies.

Some things I kept, those stickers and the cork tags, some things I won’t use all of but I’ll use some. I replaced ribbon with washi, and my 6×6 pad this month is Amy Tangerine. I’m trying to put one in each month. I’ve put leftover bits and pieces in there and a sheet of rub ons again and I am much more inspired by this kit.

Thanks again to everyone over at CKC for their time and ideas. I tried to take a piece of what everyone said and put it into my kit, and if I can use some of this up, yay! At least I’m inspired now.

Welcome 2014

I feel like 2014 will be a good year, don’t you? I hope to get lots accomplished this year in all aspects of my life, not just scrapbooking.

Have you chosen your word for 2014 yet? Are you taking Ali’s class? I am not registered for the class, but I have chosen my word, and I am going to try to be aware of it and incorporate it into my life. My word for 2014……..

One litte word 2014

I feel I can use that word in lots of areas, not just physically stronger, but mentally as well. I sometimes use the weakest excuses really, for not doing something, and I need to be a little stronger about that.

I am using that word in my scrapbooking as well. Not falling to the “pressures” of the latest and greatest, to really think if I need something or not, to try to be a little more creative and if I fail, that’s ok. Also to use up my stash. I have product from years ago, I mean years, and I think, well I can’t post a pic of that now! But once the page is in my album, who will know if I did it in 2014 or 2009? Maybe it was brand new product then, maybe I made the page then, who knows, but when you flip through the book, you can’t tell the date it was made – well other than technique give aways lol.

I will be posting some layouts using older product in the next little while, as well as a new “system” I’m trying out. My version of batch scrapbooking. I will post lots of pics so you can try it too if you like.

I hope 2014 is a wonderful year for you. I wish you all the best and if you have chosen your word, do share! Perhaps we can do something together here along this line to keep ourselves inspired.

One last layout

Well I managed to get in one more layout using my November kit from CFC. I am so happy that I got these all done, and I have to say creating the kit is really working for me. I have tried page kits in the past, in fact I still have a bunch of them made up…. sitting there….. still in baggies….you get the idea. Yet this monthly kit idea really seems to work, I’m as surprised as you lol. So here is my last layout with this kit.

one last layout

I did end up having to add some black cardstock to make this layout stand out as I thought the colours were just to “beige” without it. I think the black just makes it pop a little more.
A super big thank you to CFC for letting me be their guest designer for November, so much fun, such a talented group of ladies, a fabulous site that I really do recommend you try out. They are doing something a little different for December but will be back with kits again in January. Be sure to check out the December challenges there!

All that glitters…..

So I don’t know if you had a chance to read earlier, but my challenge over at CKC was to change the colour on something. I was so happy with the way some of these items turned out, I decided to do some more. I dug out my glitter and a whole bunch of naked chipboard, sat down and started glittering! It was fun actually, and the evening zipped by. Here’s a couple of pics for you.

Here is my table with all my glittered pieces all over the place.

all glittered up

Then here are some shots of how the chipboard turned out. I used several different types of glitter, ranging from superfine, to chunky. I used the same glue on everything.

gold and white chunky glitter before

and then…..

gold and white flowers

Then I tried a couple of different kinds. The one on the left is a red white chunky glitter and the one on the right is a red, superfine glitter.

2 different glitters

and here’s how they turned out.

how they turned out

You can really see the difference here in the different glitters.

Then I tried this glitter, which I just love! It is so pretty. Sorry about the blurry photo.

how will these turn out?

And just look how pretty they are when they are done!

so pretty

I had also bought some neon glitter, so I tried that as well. Here is the yellow I used on some flowers. Its very fine, almost a dust, so not quite as thick as the other types.

neon yellow

So those turned out pretty good. I do have more, I didn’t take a picture of everything, you get the idea. I think I am also going to paint and mist one evening on my chipboard as well. I am far more likely to use a little red glitter heart, or yellow flowers on a layout than I am a piece of naked chipboard. I’ve had this stuff for years, time to do something with it!

A couple more layouts

A couple more layouts done. I’m pretty happy about this. I am a slow scrapper, a very slow scrapper. I’m not sure what I do, but boy oh boy it takes me a long time to do a layout. This time I have done a double pager, but not in my usual style. All these photos were taken at the corn maze, and they will go side by side in the album, and they match, but they don’t. I usually use the same background paper to run across both pages, I haven’t done one like this with the same paper but different colours before. I only had one piece of each of these in my kit, so I tried it. What do you think?

left page

and then this one

right page

I used the “pharmacy labels” as journaling tags, tucked in behind the “today” card. I did use up that piece of lace yay! And some of the little word chipboard pieces. You can see that here.

lace

I also cut some of the paper I made and used that as embellishments. On an earlier post you can see how made this paper, I just cut out a few of the hearts, put pop dots behind them and used them as embellishments. I also added a little wood veneer clip and some more counterfeit enamel dots. I like the different textures this brings to the page.

embossed hearts

This last photo is just of a chipboard flower and then I used a couple of leaves I made for the “change the colour” challenge.

chipboard and leaves.

I hope you are playing along with CFC. If you are a slow scrapper like me, it might help you too. When I have this kit made up, I am not looking through every single supply to find something. I know these things will all go together, and it will be just fine. Its certainly worth giving it a try.

November 1

November means lots of excitement in the air, crisp days, glorious colours, but darker cooler evenings as well, a perfect time to curl up and get your scrap on!
This month at Counterfeit Kit Challenge they have chosen Jenni Bowlin’s October kits to counterfeit. There are a few different ones on the site, I have chosen this one, the papercrafting kit.

Jenni Bowlin papercrafting kit

and this is my counterfeit of it. I still don’t have navy blue, so instead I chose general colour, and design. If there were stripes, I chose stripes, and I chose papers with faux stitching to add to the feel.

my counterfeit kit

It is a large kit, but I quite enjoy that. I copied the acetate items and the bird, and the speech bubbles, from the top left corner.

embellishments

I copied the pie chart, and stamped tags from the bottom right

pie chart and embellies

I also copied the owl, and the flowers, but instead of using all chipboard flowers, I used some prima ones! This is great for me since I tend to not use them. I don’t know why, I like them, I just find them hard to use, so this was a great chance to try. I also made my own version of the white heart paper which I will give you more detail on later.

my forged paper

So as Jenni herself said, “its a big one” but its packed full of goodies and fun things to try.
Try going through your stash and playing along. Check out the Counterfeit kit Challenge site for inspiration and be sure to follow along on the blog hop! Next up is Angela and you know she has some great ideas to share!

September Counterfeit kit

This month the challenge was to counterfeit one of the Citrus Twist Kits, a great challenge. I chose this one, the July add on kit.

And here is what I came up with. I did also get some inspiration from Lisa H who used some Passport papers in her kit. I thought that was a great idea so I used some too, whew finally, been hoarding those a long time! Here are my papers.

then keeping with the travel theme, I added some stickers, flair anything along the travel line I could find.

Then I chose some alphabets, some stamps, some wood veneer and added them. I didn’t do very well on the alphas last month, so I added some more this time, see if that works better.

Then some embellies. I took out some cards, washi, ribbon, etc. I also decided to take out some chipboard. I have a ton of this stuff still so I am hoping to take out at least a couple pieces each month and actually use them! I also added a border strip and anything along the travel line that seemed to go well.

So that is my September kit. I am really enjoying the last couple of months with this! I find limiting my choices actually helps me be more productive, I simply grab my kit and work from that. You should play along and see if it helps you too!

August Counterfeit kit

Well, I thought I would try joining in with The Counterfeit kit challenge and make my own kit, turned out it was far more time consuming than I thought! But it was a lot of fun, and I think as I get better at it, it will go quicker.

Here is the original kit that we are counterfeiting.

And here is what I came up with. It was interesting how what I had imagined in my mind, is not what actually happened, but that’s ok 🙂

The papers:

papers for kit

And I had some scraps already for some of these, so I’m going to throw them in too.

Adding these scraps too

Then some alphas, a couple of 6×6 sheets, and some stamps. I know I don’t have enough alphas, but I found this part just too hard when I had no idea about what photos I would be using etc. I picked a couple I wanted to be sure to try to use, and I will have to take out more as needed.

Then I added some embellies, as you can see most of these have never been opened. Time to use them!

embellishments

I store my embellishments generally by colour and since I am trying to use up my stash, I went to each colour box and pulled a few things out, just to try to use them up.

stash embellishments

Then just a few extras, washi tape, mists, few chipboard pieces, some sequins, I won’t use all the colours, just didn’t want to take those little sequins out!

mists, washi, etc

So here is a picture of my (almost) final kit. I know its a large one, but my thinking is that I am going to work out of this kit until its done. I tried to imagine going away for a weekend and packing stuff to basically do a few pages, minus tools, inks and a few more letter stickers. I am curious to see how close I come to having the right amount of stuff, and how much more I need to add. But really, as long as I’m using stuff up and getting some pages done, I don’t mind at all!!

final kit

Big Title

Jump

This layout was done for a challenge over at The Scrapping Nook. The challenge was to use a big title, so I went for it! I think it actually worked well for this layout and design.

This is one of Ryan’s best friends jumping here. Here does so well, its such a pleasure to watch him.

It’s 2009!

Another New Year, here’s hoping it’s a fabulous one.   I’ve had a nice break over Christmas, managed to lots of celebrating, eating, visiting and even some scrapping.  What a great holiday.  Here’s one I did for a challenge over at Love is in the details, another soccer layout, this one with a grungy look.

Play

Here’s to a great 2009 everyone.