Kill that (November) kit

As mentioned before, I started off February LOAD with 5 Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits on the shelf.

September's Passport, November's Comfort, January's Begin and 2 from February, Tender and Nostalgic. I have been reaching for these kits almost every day of the month and am happy to see some serious reductions.

January's is complete with 9 layouts and now November has also all been used up producing 6 layouts and a mini-book. Not as many layouts as usual because I think each was a bit more paper heavy than usual. I ended the month with quite a few embellishments left over but only a few scraps of paper. No doubt I could have managed a card or two to really finish it off, but who's got time for cards in the middle of LOAD? Not me :-)

Anyway, I'm here this morning to share two layouts using Comfort - in fact, the first layout I made with the kit but couldn't share right away - magazine layout - and the last before I broke it all up and tucked the scraps away.

This was made for The Scrapbook Magazine on the topic of resolutions. It seemed appropriate to record my OLW for 2014.

Lots of embellishments and bits and pieces to add dimension and fun to this, what I'd like to think is, happy layout. I loved this background paper and hope that I have another sheet left in the pack. Crate Paper's collection packs (unfortunately no longer available in new collections) duplicated some but not all the papers, so I'm hoping for a double on this one!

And I'm hoping to track down some more of these wonderful gold doilies - bought at a local stationary store in the Golden Wedding Anniversary section - as they are perfect on so many of my pages right now.

The second layout to share today is for LOAD214 #24 Myth: Each page you create should have a new design.

For this design, I scraplifted and took inspiration from two of my own layouts: New Year, New Me and On Our Way Down (both found over at Whimsical Musings)

I've blurred out my niece's face for this public forum but take it from me that she's grinning!

Another new fave little embellishment at the moment are these fine star outlines. I had used my Big Shot to cut out some stars for the mini-book I made from this kit and was left with a load of negative outlines. So I just cut around that with scissors to leave this narrow shape! Love them and they are perfect for layering and following through on the theme.

Totally loving these beautiful wooden/birch bark hearts that Lynette so kindly sent over for me

I really loved this kit and am, as ever, a little sad to have said goodbye to it. But there are still three kits on the shelf, along with the new Scrapabilly kit for me to start and a new Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit to go live on Saturday. It's not like I'm short of variety to use right now :-)

Wednesday Wonderland

Back again with another two red inspired cards for the latest Jingle Belles prompt, Rudolph the *RED* Nosed Reindeer.

This time, I got happy with the washi tape over some neutral paper and added some elements I found in the DIY shoppe die cut pack from Crate Paper. Not a Christmas pack at all, but they seemed to fit so well that I felt I just had to use them.

What's funny about this ribbon is that I ordered it when I'd only been in Germany a short while and was still working on learning the language. The wording here is apparently totally wrong in German! Oh well, best intentions!

So, another prompt, another four cards. Looking forward to the next prompt which will be coming out on Friday. Joining us?

More LOAD shares to complete my Counterfeit Kit Challenge January kit, Begin

Ah, at last! It's not that I didn't love the kit but after 9 layouts from the same supplies, I'm ready to say goodbye to my Counterfeit Kit Challenge January kit, Begin.

I'm really surprised to have actually managed 9 layouts but there was a tiny bit of adding things in here and there (letters) towards the end! Oh yes, and a few scraps of paper when I needed to match up some blues on my Auf Schalke layout.

I've been sharing my layouts here on this blog and also on the Whimsical Musings blog when they fit the prompt over there, but if you want to see them all in one place, you can check out the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Flickr gallery (here) where I've included them all - and more in the case of a few tweaks and additions!

But here are the last two for this blog.

LOAD214 #22 Myth: The photos you use have to match the event you are scrapbooking

Many of my layout topics have nothing to do with the time I took the photos. I take lots and lots and then find a reason to scrap them - such as these geese. The photo itself was taken for a Photo A Day prompt of orange but how to scrap it apart from talking about the cute geese on this day? By talking about the fact that they are now a relatively regular view on the way to and from work/shops/local restaurant. Not really something I saw all that often in Birmingham :-)

LOAD214 #23 Myth: Scrapbooking is all about our past memories.

A page about my upcoming adventure to see Pam (oh yes, and a small town called New York!) is definitely not a page about the past.

I added some journalling into the little bag and wrote about how excited I am and how wonderful it will be to finally meet her.

And at the end of making this layout, I took all the remaining bits and pieces and tidied them back into my stash - although there wasn't an awful lot left. I used a whole pack of transparency words, a whole pack of buttons and pins as well as all but one of the veneer speech bubbles, and the paper scraps were really just that, scraps. A well used kit which surprised me with the colour combinations it came up with and how fresh it worked with my (almost) standard white cardstock

So, 9 layouts. Eight of which were for LOAD214 and two also doubled up as Whimsical Musings layouts. A very successful kit indeed.

Keep your eyes open for the new kit reveal on Saturday - I haven't managed to make mine up yet but the inspiration is really gorgeous!

February Counterfeit Kit Challenge member blog hop

Welcome this Monday morning to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge member blog hop. Happy to see you here.

Hopefully, you've arrived via Cindy and if you've dropped in directly, you can get to the beginning of the blog back at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog so that you don't miss anything along the way.

I decided to choose the second challenge for the hop - to create an angled background for my project. And with that, I managed to create all three challenges this month which is something I haven't managed for a long time.

We had the ugly sweater inspiration (here) and then the ten minute card challenge (here). It felt really good to get all of the prompts completed and to really make the most of the inspiration offered up by the blog and the team. Love this group of creative girls!

Anyway, here's my angled background layout and this was really fun to make even if it didn't turn out quite as I had planned in my head. This is a really good design concept when your kit is coming to an end and you only have some scraps. I tried not to overthink it and just created the page as I usually would. One silly photo and some minimal embellies means that the background is still a main feature on the page.

This is layout #9 from my February kit, Tender.

I'm the end of the hop today but here's the full list in case you got lost along the way.

CKCB          http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com
Jemma      http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk
Julene       http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com.au
Tina           http://tinasscrapcorner.blogspot.com
Annie        http://www.artyfartyannie.com
Lesley        http://ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem.blogspot.co.uk
Maggie      http://maggiebscrapblog.blogspot.fr
Chrissy      http://craftychrissycreates.blogspot.co.nz
Leslie         http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com
Elaine        http://chidkids26.blogspot.co.uk
Karen        http://www.karenscorneroftheweb.blogspot.com
Susanne    http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com
Virginia     http://celtichouse.blogspot.co.uk
Cindy        http://www.cindyscreations-cinmfoster.blogspot.com
Lisa           http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de

If you've used your Counterfeit kit to make a project using one of this month's creations, we hope you'll share over at Mr Linky!

LOAD214 shares using Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits

Just a few quick shares for you today with a combination of LOAD prompts and my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits.

I had 5 kits sitting on the shelf at the beginning of the month and as I'm writing this, 16 pages have been made using the contents of those boxes. They are mostly down to scraps now and no doubt I'll be breaking them back up into my stash over the next few days.

What's been interesting this time around is that I made a gorgeous kit back in September - Passport - full of lovely travel themed products, papers and embellishments. I loved this kit. But so far? Just a single solitary page made from the goodies I included :-( Every time I go to the box and open it up, there's nothing right in there. I have a good rummage and then back on the shelf it goes. It's a shame but it seems like it'll just be put back into my stash as it is. I'll give it another go later in the week but even though I had high hopes, it just hasn't produced results.

Anyway, first up is my November kit, Comfort lo#3. This layout was made for the LOAD prompt "Myth: every page needs journalling". As you can see, when you have a lovely photo, words are sometimes just superfluous!

And onto my January kit, Begin, for layouts # 4, 5 & 6.

LOAD214 prompt "Myth: All products have to be bought, ready-made". I don't know if you remember but some time ago - might be as long as 18 months ago, when the trend for feathers really kicked in, I made some CHA counterfeited vellum feathers. I don't go to the trouble to make my own embellishments very often, but had always intended on going back to this idea to make up some more. The LOAD prompt was the push I needed to do just that. Once I found a suitable shape, they only took a few minutes to finish off and then a few more mins for the glue to dry. I like them as a whimsical embellishment.

LOAD214 prompt "Myth: You can only use products on your page which you bought at a scrapbook shop". Much to Sylvia's dismay no doubt, I actually pick up a lot of things along the way to use on my pages - from the supermarket, the haberdashery department, the stationary store, even home decoration shops. Here I've used supermarket doilies, crochet twine, sewing thread and some wooden hearts that were a present but certainly didn't come from a craft shop. Oh yes, and dressmaking sequins.

LOAD214 prompt "Myth: You can only scrap the positive stories". Hidden journalling to tell a little snippet of our story. I will probably do the journalling again as it didn't seem to come out how I'd wanted. Another little task on my post LOAD list.

If I had to go looking for supplies each day during LOAD (as I've done in the past actually), I don't think I'd manage daily scrapping. My Counterfeit kits are time/life savers and look at all that stash being used up!

If you've never tried making your own kits, why not head over to Counterfeit Kit Challenge and check us out. It's a lot of fun and rather addictive to see your own (sometimes) neglected stash being actually cut up and used.

Wednesday Wonderland

Finding time today to run up some cards for the latest Jingle Belles challenge Rudoloph the *RED* Nosed Reindeer - with yes, you've guessed it, red featuring as a predominant colour.

It was interesting for me to note that my scrap box was definitely low on Rudolph's favourite colour but I came across these little sentiment tags from Cosmo Cricket and decided to go that direction. Matching it up with neutrals seemed to be the way to go.

While I was at it, I managed to make another two in another design so that's next week's sorted too which will ease my blogging schedule. I find it hard to fit it all in with LOAD taking up so much time - even though that's all good!

Counterfeit Kit Challenge #3 Ten Minute challenge

Oooo, that Bethany is a tough one! Ha ha! - not really :-)

This time around, she's challenged us to make a card in under ten minutes! We are allowed to collect our materials together but ten minutes is all we are allowed to make it up.

Not to be outdone by her wickedness, I decided to run with this one and make three - yes THREE - cards each under 10 minutes.

I cut up my card and papers from my February Nostalgia kit, and brought together a handful of items to go on the front, although I didn't exactly know how I was going to put them together. I had some hearts to use left over from a 12x12 sheet and decided to see if I could include cutting them out of the patterned paper in that 600 seconds too. And just to top it off, I was doing this at 1am! Yes a night owl some nights.

I had practiced with the type of card I wanted to make with one for my niece's birthday. I decided this was an ideal time to use up the rest of the bold heart paper, the bright red glitter card stock that was in my kit, a sheet of very pink card stock and a sheet of Love, Elsie paper that I could not imagine using on layouts any more. So, using this mismatched product, I had run up a pretty little card for my niece and then decided to time myself for the other three. All four cards were a bit different.

Here is my collection of items I'm going to use (bad photo is proof of the late hour!)

As you can see, I have done a bit of cutting but the hearts and printed elements needed to be properly cut out within the ten mins. I added in the doilies and a little washi tape (top right) but everything else was in the kit. At this point I knew what I wanted to use but not how each card would look.

And here is the first time point on my computer.

And the end of the first card - time and card

Ah, only 7 minutes!

I'd added in the washi and just layered it on top of the cardstock off-cut to help the hearts stand out a little more. In real life, the red glitter paper is very sparkly even though you can only see a tiny bit of it.

The end of the second card

Another 6 minutes!

Based on the same design, just a few adjustments to make each one unique

And the end of the third card!

Ok, just over 9 minutes. This was the card with the eyelets which I had to think a little bit more about!

Eyelets, fussy cutting and layering. It may have taken a few minutes longer but still way under ten minutes!

Mission accomplished! I took a few minutes at the beginning of the process to prepare my materials but then the three cards only took 23 minutes to complete!

My middle of the night photo.

And a better one in daylight. I think they don't look old and out of date! I'm hoping that the girlie recipients will love them too!

 They may not be super complicated but I like the way they've come out and that they've used up some older product which would never have made it onto pages - including TWO eyelets!

Won't you take up Bethany's Ten Minute Challenge and see what you can create when you are against the clock? If you do, we hope you will either link up at Mr Linky (here) or join in on our Member Blog Hop - details of which can be found at the bottom of every challenge post at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog.