November Counterfeit Kit Challenge member blog hop

Welcome to this month's Counterfeit Kit Challenge member blog hop. Happy to have you here.

I'm the first stop on the hop this time around but you can find the full list at the end of the post and next up is Tina.

We were challenged with the following prompts:

• Challenge #1:  Be Inspired by Pinterest: use something you have found on Pinterest to inspire your project
• Challenge #2:  Decorative Doors challenge: get inspired by all of the beautiful doors that make people feel welcome to our homes
• Challenge #3:  Cards that Pop: create a card with dimension

I decided to go for the Pinterest challenge because I'm ALWAYS pinning inspirational layouts, sketches and details but transforming them into layouts is another thing!

I picked out this sketch...

Citrus Twist sketch - Pinterest find here

and was inspired by these layouts ...

Kim Jeffrees layout - Pinterest find here

Mona Lisa at Studio Calico - Pinterest find here

to create this layout...

Counterfeit Kit Challenge November kit, Bonfire

I know you need to use your imagination a little to see the inspiration, but it's there - can you see it?

Now, off you go to check out what fabulous ideas Tina can inspire you with and here's the full list in case you get lost along the way.

Thanks for dropping by and please make sure you let me know you were here and let me know what's inspiring you today.


CKCB       http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com 
Lisa          http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de
Tina          http://tinasscrapcorner.blogspot.com/
Susanne   http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com
Elaine       http://chidkids26.blogspot.co.uk
Julie         http://jsquaredscrapspot.wordpress.com
Janine      http://rachauscratchpad.blogspot.com
Julene      http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com.au
Kate         http://www.kateblue.blogspot.com/
Leslie       http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com

14 loves {November 2014}

Welcome to the next in the series {14 loves} for 2014 based on the original concept by my beloved friend, Pam, back in January 2013. I enjoyed sharing my loves so much through the year that I decided I needed to continue through 2014. I hope you will come back each month to see if there is anything in my list to inspire you. You can find previous posts  {here}

I hope there's something in here to inspire you or maybe just make you smile.

Another busy month, another late posting. But I'm trying to keep up and that's the main thing. September's {14 loves} is still in the works. It WILL come before the end of the year I promise!

one

I saw this layout on Pinterest from Studio Calico (see here) and knew right away that I had to find the supplier for the gorgeous constellation paper. I tracked it down to Studio Tekturek in Poland and ordered the full collection pack as well as the matching flair buttons. The paper is glossy, thick paper so I'm not 100% sure how it will work with my style of scrapping but man, I love the designs! I had to navigate the shop in Polish but their customer service was great and they kindly communicated with me in English! I'll let you know how the collection works when I've cut into that precious paper. Oh yes, and it was SO reasonably priced too, even with the international postage.

Studio Tekturek One Way Ticket collection

two

This year marks 100 years since the start of WWI and a particularly moving Remembrance Day. It's not so easy for me to commemorate this memorial day living where I do, but my best friend sent me a whole set of photos of the incredible ceramic poppy installation at the Tower of London and my very good, blogging friend and fellow Master Forger, Lesley sent me a special anniversary poppy pin which I wore with pride. 

three

This pile of empty packing boxes were the LAST to be unpacked. I'm not saying there's not still a whole lot of chaos going on round here but there are no more boxes at least. 

four

This is the evening we "found" our new home under the debris. Makes me happy.

five

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and the Weihnachtsmarkt is a coming. It will be opening this week but the preparations of our (new) local market makes me happy each and every year. The Essen Weihnachtsmarkt has always been one of my favourites and I'm thrilled to be able to experience it up close this time around.

six

This pin from the Gossamer Blue team really inspires me. I think I need to make this layout. Isn't is a stunner?

Pinterest source here

seven

The red cups are back. Need I say more?

eight

I had to get my grubby little hands on these Pebbles candy cane beauties as soon as I saw them in the Scrapabilly shop! They are just delightful and can be found here.

nine

I have been monitoring the supply of these Studio Calico vellum sheets in the Scrapabilly shop since I discovered that I could use on them practically any layout I wanted. The last time I counted Sylvia still had five. Then last week, she was down to four! That was the sign for me that I had to buy all of them :-) I think they'll work really well with the Studio Tekturek papers, don't you?

ten

I love vellum pockets and was happy to have the chance to put one to good use to hold a handful of confetti on this wedding layout. I love it when a technique works over and over again. 

eleven

October was of course LOAD2014. This Scrap Happy member-only month of daily inspiration was fantastic as always! Leslie and Lynnette did a great job with 31 School Days based prompts and I followed most of them. In total, I managed 34 layouts in 31 days which was fabulous and filled me with creative fulfilment! My layout pile made me smile and of course, featured on my final layout of the month.

twelve

We have lights! It's taken a while to get around to the little jobs around the new flat, but in the last few days, we have light in all but one of the rooms. It really helps with these dark evenings.

thirteen

As part of LOAD1014, there was a special offer for A Flair for Buttons. I love this shop! Lots and lots of the most gorgeous buttons and you can even mix and match flair from different collections to make up your own selection. Of course, I couldn't possibly pass up on the whole NYC collection. It will go into my mini-kit that is currently under construction for when I finally get hold of my NYC photos off my back-up drive.

fourteen

Our new local café and ice-cream parlour (La Luna) serves delicious caffe latte with a teeny tiny ice-cream cone! Worth the extra pennies from time to time for a treat!

All in all, a pretty good month, don't you think? Full of inspiration and little bits and pieces to enjoy and bring a smile to my face. What have you been loving this month?

I’d love you to share your own {14 loves} lists with me. Why not link up in the comments below?

{14 loves} is a series that will feature on my blog each 14th of the month

Scrapabilly November kit shares (part 2)

Back again with the rest of my Scrapabilly November kit shares.

Just to remind you, here's the fabulous kit (details of the content can be found on the Scrapabilly site) or if you pop back to Wednesday's blog post (here) you can find my original post and kit description.

You can find the kit here on the Scrapabilly site

As mentioned before, I made a total of five pages and a card. I shared the first two layouts on Wednesday so here are the remaining three.

I think this is my favourite layout of all! Our niece came to stay over at our new home for an evening of playground (right outside our flat), movies (Epic and Over the Hedge), mini-book making and even some feeding the ducks.

I had punched a bunch of hearts out for another layout (didn't use them in the end) so it just seemed a good idea to find a use for both the hearts and the negative strip here on this girlie page.

I wanted to make a small banner with some of the mini tags and some messy, fun twine seemed the perfect addition. It softened it up as well as making the page less serious.

We have what they call a "park" area right outside our new home with some water. There are lots of ducks and rather loud Canadian geese there making their presence known! I love it and am always a bit thrilled when I come out and find them all hanging out on the grass.

This is possibly my least favourite but it captures a moment when we had worked so hard to clear the living room of the moving debris as we had friends coming over to dinner. The result was worth it and it turned out to be a wonderful evening. I will add some journalling to the cards in the little (love those!) kraft bag.

Thanks for dropping by and don't forget you can find all the Design Team creations over at the Scrapabilly gallery (here) or directly on their blogs (see sidebar).

There's a lot to share right now after LOAD'ing all October, so I will try to get more posts up over the next week or so - watch this space!

Scrapabilly November kit shares (part 1)

November's Scrapabilly kit is chock full of gogeous papers and products from Jillibean Soup's Soup Staples III collection. Warm browns and creams, soft blues and creamy yellow and some calm greys all go together so well that it was hard to decide which side of the papers to use! One of the papers had a B-side covered with small 3x4 blocks to cut apart and which featured a few extra colours such as a hint of pink which of course, was perfect for me and proved ideal as journalling cards. Add into the kit mix:

• a roll of kraft paper tape (you get loads!)
• two alphabets
• woodgrain printed Polaroid frames
• two super cute mini kraft bags
• a handful of tag cards
• a long length of ribbon
• some stick pins
• an exclusive Scrapabilly flair badge
• some gems
• a fun key-shaped paperclip
• a small charm
• a mini-stamp set 
• cardstock of course 

and you have enough to keep going and going!

I decided to add in an additional set of AC Thicker's in a cream and soft kraft diagonal stripe, "Printshop" (see here) to give me long title possibilities and then all I needed to finish all my projects was some gold and cream twine and inks for splatting with a few sheets of background card stock. A wonderfully harmonious and easy to use kit!

Here's the original kit and link for you to get your hands on your own!

Get your kit here

You can find all the Design Team projects over at the Scrapabilly gallery (here) or on their individual blogs (see my sidebar!). 

I'd like to share two layouts and a card I made with the kit and will post the remaining three layouts at the end of the week. I think the photos are not as good as they could be due to the lack of good daylight at the moment! With the shorter days, I struggle to catch the time to take pictures but I hope you'll forgive me...

This first layout was created during October LOAD (LayOut A Day) for the prompt, Everyday Routines. While I was working in an office for two years recently and not out and about teaching English, I really noticed that I never once had the time to just pop into Starbucks for a coffee. Yes, I had them at the weekends but I was in the office every day and there was no free time to just sit and watch the world go by. So on my first day back at teaching English, I once again found myself with a little time between lessons and this was the first thing I did!

I added in a little gold thread in with the cream twine for my messy cluster. The exclusive Scrapabilly flair was perfect for this subject. I think I need more!

The key paper clip was perfect for this layout about our first night in the new flat where all we had were our giant "fat boys" (beanbags), some music, a few candles and a bottle of bubbles. I've seen several layouts online recently with this type of page division and wanted to give it a try. I like how it turned out and the ribbon was a fun element to mark the page break.

Oh yes, I did add a few veneer stars to this layout too!

I found a last tag card caught up with left over papers and thought it would work so well on a card. I'm running out of handmade cards right now so it was the perfect time to add to the pile. With the small pair of scissors charm, I thought it would be fun to make a pun sentiment which makes this card suitable for all sorts of occasions.

 

In total, I made up 5 layouts and a card but I'm sure I could have made at least two more layouts with the paper leftovers I have. :-) If I do manage to pull a couple more out of the hat, I'll be sure to share!

I'll be back on Friday with the rest of my creations.

In the meantime, happy Hump Day!

Counterfeit Kit Reveal November kit reveal blog hop

Happy November 1st!

November is going to be a great month - I can just feel it. After my sister named October "Awesome October", I think that November is going to be "Incredible November".

Hopefully, you're here for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge November kit reveal and have reached me via Margie at her blog (here). If not, why not go back to the beginning over at the Counterfeit blog and while you're at it, don't forget to drop by our wonderful Guest Designer, Binty (here). She's a very talented scrapper and we are delighted to have her on the team this month.

Our inspiration kit is the gorgeous Scrapbooks & Cards Today's, Crop & Create Delivered kit which is full of wonderful autumnal colours and so many beautiful bits and pieces.

I've noticed that some of the other Master Forgers pull their kit together by looking at the inspiration kit and just jotting down the words that come to mind which are then used to form the new kit.

I wrote down stripes, doilies, dots, flowers, leaves, autumnal elements, rich saturated colours, tags, labels and more leaves.

Knowing that the only element of the original kit that I had was a scrap of the leaf print paper by We R Memory Keepers, I decided to build it off that. Then I pulled papers and lots of embellishments which matched the list of key words I'd noted down.

The result is a kit that's very much me and which is named it after Guy Fawkes night - a fabulous firework-filled UK November celebration I miss a lot now that I don't live there!

Lots of papers - another huge kit - with some favourite colours! Pinks, golds, vellums and rich woodgrains. Scrummy!

I've included quite a few sheets of BasicGrey's vintage Indian Summer including a lace paper which I am determined to find a use for.

That vellum with the words? It's at least 7 years old! I had several sheets and now it's time to say goodbye to the last of them.

I had quite a few die-cut leaves left over from another kit and as they match that scrap of feather paper, I added them in to get them onto pages. The die-cuts will be a challenge as they are very vintage and even Valentine themed. Let's see how I get on with those.

Twine instead of ribbon and lots of Polaroid frames as well as, of course, enamel dots.

Tags and washi tape will be sure to find a place on a layout or two. No kit is complete without them!

There are plenty of alphas (I can't seen to find a burlap printed one I have somewhere but that will be added in when I do) and some decorative brads complete the selection of embellies that I need when making pages.

There's a good mix of newer and older products here as well as my - at the moment - signature gold so I'm sure that I'll have a lot of fun using up the kit. Watch this space!

Thanks for dropping by and a comment to let me know you were here would be marvellous. All you need to do now is continue along the hop, starting with down under (depending on where you are!) to check out what Julene has rustled up for us this month.

Binty:  http://scrappingpluv.blogspot.com
Margie: http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com
Lisa: http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com
Julene: http://julenebydesign.blogspot.co.uk
Susanne: http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com
Lesley: http://ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem.blogspot.co.uk
Angela: http://colestoucan.blogspot.co.uk
Lynnette: http://www.sassyscrapper2010.blogspot.com
Leslie: http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com

And don't forget to join in on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge member blog hop this month (on 24th). Check out the Counterfeit blog posts for the kit reveal as well as each of the three challenges for details. We love it when YOU join in too and share what you've been making with our inspiration!