Greetings of the Season

If you have come here via the Counterfeit Kit Challenge site, then you will know that I'm here today as part of the Master Forgers' Greetings of the Seasons to all our fellow counterfeiters!

Keeping it short and simple today.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very wonderful Christmas full of love, fun and happiness as well as a smattering of creativity if time allows!

Pinterest inspiration here

And a bilingual Merry Christmas to you all!

Thanks for dropping by and, "Consider yourself hugged" as they say here in Germany :-)

Traditions

It's that time of year when we start thinking traditions, so it is perfect timing for Counterfeit Kit Challenge mini-challenge #3 to be prompting us to record one (or more!) of them on our pages.

I came up with a long list of traditions for summer, Christmas, the build up to Christmas, things like British Guy Fawkes night. But either they needed photos I didn't have or couldn't find, or they were a bit too Christmassy for my Dempster autumn kit that I was determined to use.

So I fished around in my photos for inspiration and came up with a connection I hadn't noticed before and I suddenly realised that this has become a real autumnal tradition for me.

When the leaves start falling, and the temperature starts to drop, I start taking baths. Regularly. Maybe more than regularly! Let's just say that it's not exactly very environmentally friendly to be using up all that water - just for me.

But it's true.

And this is the layout I put together. A tried and trusted design but one that I love so why not use it over and over again?

Sorry for the bad photos. They are all a bit orange.  I need to try and work out a better routine to photograph my layouts now that I hardly ever see daylight!

So, hop on over to the Counterfeit site and join in the challenge of capturing one of your traditions - every family has them, whether they are the same as many others, totally off the wall, or somewhere in between.

It's as if they planned this month just for me!

I know that you know that I love autumn. I tell you all the time. So when I saw the list of challenges for this month at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge, I was happy, happy, happy!

First off we had our favourite stamps and I knew my trusty maple leaf would be the one. Now comes inspiration from autumn photos.

While I was putting my kit together, I knew that I wanted to make some more Yukon layouts and I had photos like this one below in my mind. I knew that I wanted to have sumptuous tree photos included and this was just what I needed.

So for the mini challenge #2 "Be inspired by fall foliage" was a no brainer. This photo jumped out at me and my Engineer Creek layout was born.

Look at those colours, look at the brilliance of that golden hue, look at how unreal these leaves seem to be. That was exactly what we got at Engineer Creek and it was somewhat spectacular! Sunset, when the setting sun hit the top of the trees was all the more amazing. I am still living off those memories!

I think I could do this challenge a dozen times and still not get bored! Why not give it a try?

Don't forget to share your creations with us over at the Counterfeit site (here), we love to see where these prompts take you.

I just made #70!

I made it. I reached my target of at least 60 Christmas cards made. It might be a few days late but it's not too bad. In fact, I just counted up and I managed 70!

I've made a few this week that I can't actually share just yet but here is my take on the latest Jingle Belles prompt #24 "Christmas Feast".

It's the last one of the year and they are inspiring us to include food of some sort on our cards. A nod to this being Thanksgiving time of year as well as all the delicious food that is associated with Christmas.

I was surprised to find that I didn't have any paper with food on it. I expected to find Christmas puddings somewhere on the Figgy Pudding papers but nothing!

So I went with candy from the Eskimo Kisses line, making a little layered banner full of sweets.

Simple and fun and a way to use some of the stickers I knew I wouldn't use on layouts. I sprinkled a liberal amount of sparkly bling just to finish it off and a sweet (pun intended) sentiment.

And there you have it. Card #70!

I spent some time yesterday stamping inners with a mix of English and German sentiments so now I just have to put them all together and get writing! I'm aiming to get them in the post the first week of December (wow, so early!) and I could NEVER have managed that if it weren't for the delightfully, wonderful girls over at Jingle Belles.

This is their last prompt of the year but you can be sure that they will be back in January for the next batch of fun prompts to get us Jingling all year. You really should join in!

Inspired by stamps

I hope I'm not alone when I say that I have a small collection of stamps (I don't consider myself a stamper at all really) but even then, I don't use them very often.

I think that it will take too long to get them out, pick out a colour, fish out the acrylic block, practice the stamping and then risk my whole project by getting the stamping wrong!

But it doesn't have to be that way. And every time I'm challenged or inspired to use my stamps, I remember how much fun it can be.

So the latest Counterfeit Kit Challenge mini challenge is perfect to blow the dust off your favourite stamp and get going!

"Pick ONE stamp (not the whole set) to inspire you and use on your project. You can use more than one stamp, but your inspiration one should be prominent.  You will tell me which stamp it was on your blog and how it inspired you."

With my November kit, Dempster, being such an autumn inspired kit and with my intention to capture some more of my Yukon memories, I went with a tried and tested leaf stamp to guide my design. In fact I saw the end result in my head before I even opened up my stamp drawer and knew exactly how I would use the stamp to make a leafy border.

The leaf is part of a pack of four that I picked up when I was making my monster Nova Scotia album back at the beginning of my scrapbooking adventure.

I didn't know anything about stamping back then and just picked up a set to add some detail to my pages.

In fact, the set has four leaves in it

 ... but the truth is I hardly ever use the others, reaching for the maple every time.

It's a really good quality stamp and the detail is so lovely that it's hard to go wrong with it.

The connection between the leaf, the maple, Canada, my kit and my travels all come together in this page and it turned out pretty close to the picture I had in my mind which is always a surprise and a delight.

"And to think I was worried there wouldn't be enough trees"

I used a whole range of different distress ink colours, stamping the leaf three times in each and then fussy cutting them out to form a layered and scattered border across the centre.

I tucked in a lot of pretty pearls, some funky wooden toadstools and a scatter of buttons to add some more dimension.

And of course the star of the show is the photo. I really was worried that there would be few trees on our travels through the Yukon and NWT but even though they definitely got smaller the further north we travelled, there were more than enough to keep me smiling. I might have more tree photos than anything else in fact!

Glad to have captured another little piece of the puzzle that is our adventure. One day I will bring all these pages together to see how full a story I've told!

Christmas is a coming...

.... and I'm still catching up with cards.

I must get around to counting, I must be almost at the number I need by now.

But first, here are three more I created today from the Jingle Belles sketch this week by Allison Fillo.

I've just realised that I missed off the three elements on each of them, but the layers and main elements are still there.

Happy to be using up some of the older BasicGrey Wassail papers.

I'm hoping to find some time to work back on some of the older prompts now that I have caught up with this week's.

How are you doing with your cards? Next up is getting the inserts ready and my list updated and drawn up. It's coming!

Counterfeit Kit Challenge November kit reveal blog hop

Welcome to the November Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit reveal and by now you will know that this month was really a bit different from usual! This month we are all here to share with you our counterfeits of recent CHA collection releases! I love how the girls like to shake things up round here and once I got my brain working on the ideas offered up by some of the other Forgers, I had a whole lot of fun.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself! If you are here via the inspirational Jemma, then you are on the right track, but if you've come here direct, you might want to pop back to the beginning of the hop over at the CKC blog and start there - you don't want to miss what these creative Forgers have counterfeited this month.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun and decided I needed an autumnal kit and there were loads of suggestions from the Forgers for this CHA challenged girl. Gradually I whittled all those gorgeous collections down to just one: Take a Hike by Simple Stories. I loved the mix of traditional autumn colours with some blues, lots of spots and a good sprinkle of neutrals, giving me the possibility of using this kit for more that just Fall layouts.

This is a BIG kit for me as the collection was huge! And of course, being Simple Stories, it was based around the paper products so of course, I had to add in a whole load of embellies to match those papers too. Again, this is a BIG kit for me! We will see how it works or if I get bored of it before it's finished.

Anyway, without further ado, here it is - Dempster

I know you all find this funny, but as always I started off by matching up some cardstock and the neutrals (I was happy to find a way to include some of my BG Basics)

And then I went through the collection and matched up the papers - by colour and design. There's a good mix of old and new papers here which pleases me and many of them are double sided which gives me so many more possibilities.

Then there were alphas and journalling cards etc which were also part of the original collection. In fact, there's lots more in the original collection which would be really easy to counterfeit - bingo cards, ready clustered papers, journalling cards, borders etc but I'm happy to have included a lot of older Mr Campy stuff with some newer Echo Park and the new nature inspired Cosmo Cricket S'more Love. But you never know, I might get inspired to have a go at some of the other elements. Fellow Forger Libeeti is bound to do some of that :-)

And the final fun bit for me is the addition of oodles of embellishments, picking out elements with lots of texture and a hint of brighter colours to extend the possibilities of the kit

And there it was, a huge autumn kit which was just calling out to be used for some Yukon pages (can't believe that our Yukon adventure is 5 years ago now!) and that led me to come up with the name - Dempster. The infamous highway going north for more than 700 km to Inuvik which took us through the most breathtaking landscape you can ever imagine. Yes, this is the perfect kit for some more of those pages!

If you've made it this far, do leave a comment and let me know you were here. And let me know which of the recent collections you are going to lift. Such a fun exercise! (question: these blog hop posts are becoming pretty hefty with all these photos - do you like it or would you prefer something a bit shorter? Let me know.)

Here is the full hop list in case you get lost along the way:

Guest Designer: Julie -  http://hisglorygirl.blogspot.com

Crystal -  http://crystalscraftycreations.blogpot.com

Jemma -  http://just-jimjams.blogspot.com

Lisa -  http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com  ß you are here

Libeeti -  http://creationswithlove-li-bee-ti.blogspot.com  ß go here next

Margie -  http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com

Milissa -  http://millermall.blogspot.com

Rebecca -  http://howIburb.blogspot.com

Susanne -  http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com

Bethany -  http://inspiredscrapper-bethany-blogspot.com

See you over at the CKC site - have fun!

Rolling and a jingling

I am keeping my Christmas cards super simple in the hope of catching up and today managed to go back to Jingle Belles prompt #22 "Holiday Creatures" and make 4 cards.

I've found that while I am making one in a particular design, it makes sense to run off another one similar or even the same - everything for ease, me!

First off, I made two whimsical silly ones using some old Sassafrass papers. I was trying to think of something clever for the wording on the second one like "Sliding into the Holidays" or something but it all sounded a bit negative - ideas?

And then I used a sketch that Lauren had posted as she was a GD and made something a little less frivolous. I liked the blocking and the banner so I adapted it to what I had. I used some really really really old My Mind's Eye and I'm going to be sad when it comes to an end - love those browns and blues together.

Another four cards. One more day like this and I will be past my target and it's still early enough in the November to feel like I did it within my self imposed deadline!

Trying to sprint to the finish line

I've been a bad Jingler these last months and now I'm paying for it!

I had a target of a minimum of 60 Christmas cards ready made by November by joining in on the Jingle Belles challenge and I was almost there. Then life got in the way and here we are at the beginning of November with only 54 cards made and lots of super Jingle prompts missed.

So I'm determined to try and catch up a bit and run off a few cards. Starting with the current prompt #23 using this lovely sketch by Allison Fillo.

Sketch by Allison Fillo

I really liked the sketch and got to work on it straight away but I have to admit to always having more problems with card sketches than layout sketches. Perhaps because there is less room for interpretation as the size is so much smaller.

Anyway, I stretched my card making muscles with this one first...

And then stayed truer to the sketch with this one...

Another two cards hit the pile and I'm back with the Jingle gals!

Nice to be back :-)  I promise to try to stay "back"!

A little early and also a little late

I've been out of action for a couple of weeks. It wasn't really much of a surprise, but when it happened it was a bit like Christmas. You know Christmas is 25th December. In fact, it never moves. But it still manages to creep up every year and surprise you! And then you find yourself out there scooping up last minute presents on December 23rd. 

Well, it was the same with the new addition to our family. My new, beautiful, precious niece. It's not like we didn't know she was coming. You get 9 months notice! And the due date was always going to be wrong. We all expected her earlier than the November 1st date my sister'd been given. But when everything started happening, I was totally not prepared and ended up dropping everything to rush over to the UK to be with everyone when the little bundle arrived - exactly the two weeks early that everyone had predicted.

I was in the middle of unpacking boxes, creating layouts every day through LOAD and up to my ears at work. But babies are so much more important. I'm sure you understand.

When I came back, it took me a few days to find my rhythm again and we had a manic weekend planning and ordering our new, fancy kitchen as well as fixing the old flat for handover.

So it was lovely yesterday evening to get my hands on some pretty paper and photos to create my last LOAD layout for the month. A different one to the usual but one I love all the more for that difference.

And apart from being late for everything right now, I'm really late for S's "In Good Company" challenge, which is sadly being retired. But I'm going to just give her my link to let her know how sad I am that she has decided all good things must come to an end :-(

S, I wish you would reconsider keeping IGC going... but hope that you at least come up with a new challenge for us :-) Pretty please?

Oh yes, and this is layout #7 with my Counterfeit kit, Brighter (Oct) and I know I haven't shared the others with you yet, but there's a whole lot of layouts to share so watch this space and I promise to try harder.

Sorry for the dodgy photo, but it's that time of year again and I have yet to discover the good light in the new flat...