Forgeries on the Fourth

As you might have noticed, I don't actually do much forgery when making my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits. I always tell people that I'm not crafty enough and that we have experts like Leslie who is truly a Master Forger. I bow to her craft!

But every now and again, I do have some ideas for making my own items and this is one of those months. Now, there's no rocket science in my forgeries but I'd just like to show you that it is possible to make your own items in a very simple way. So please let me present Counterfeit Kit Challenge Forgeries on the Fourth.

Logo "borrowed" from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog :-)

Here is the kit we were asked to be inspired by. There's a lot of room for forging items because of the fact that all the items are A Beautiful Mess exclusives. I can't wait to see what the other forgers have come up with :-)

First up, I decided that I wanted to include some pocket page cards in colours that would match the rest of the kit. I have a lot of cards but they tend to be more mint, gold, neutral and vintage colours so I needed some very bright reds, oranges, pinks and yellows. So I went through my 6x6 paper packs and picked out some Studio Calico and BasicGrey papers that seemed to fit the colours I was looking for. The grey and white paper there appealed because of the numbers. In the inspiration kit, there were a full set of cards with individual numbers and I didn't want to copy that exactly but having a card or two with the full set of numbers seemed about right.

Of course, I could have just cut the papers in 6x4" and 4x3" sizes with my paper trimmer but I have a Sizzix pocket page die set and decided to use those so that they would have the rounded corners. My square cards are hand cut.

I was really pleased with how they turned out - it was a bit of a squeeze to get two cards out of one 6x6" sheet using the dies, but I managed it and love this little bright collection to add to my kit.

Next up were the little vellum shapes. I had a few scraps of blue vellum, some green, a very small amount of yellow and of course, plain. To start, I just used three different punches (borrowed as I'm too stingy to have a full set of my own!) in 1 1/4", 1 1/2" and 1 3/4" to get a good mix. See, easy!

And then I moved on to my Silhouette Cameo and cut a whole load of different circles and hearts out of the rest of the vellum scraps I had. This was more difficult to be honest because my mat wasn't really sticky enough and the paper kept lifting and getting messed up in the blade! But I persevered with the settings offered by the Silhouette and am particularly pleased with all those circles. I think they'll be great layered up or sprinkled across the page. And I can always borrow those punches again if I come across any other vellum in my stash :-)

On to the photo overlay with the text on top. I didn't want to buy anything new for my kit so I compromised by deciding to use the black vinyl I have for the Silhouette. I could also have printed black (or a colour) text onto the overhead projector slides I used here but I hadn't done vinyl cutting before so I braved it - and learnt a lot!!!

First, I learnt the hard way that you don't need to stick vinyl onto the cutting mat when you are using the Silhouette Cameo. It sticks horribly and is not necessary - if only I'd watched the YouTube video I tracked down first (which I can't seem to find but just search for Silhouette cutting vinyl) or read these instructions from Silhouette here!

I picked out a range of quotes that I thought would work well right in the middle of a photo overlay and was thrilled to find two in brush script - so trendy right now - and a hand script. All of these can be found in the Silhouette shop. Again, I followed the settings Silhouette suggested and it cut so well and smoothly.

I cut the files, then transferred the vinyl onto the backing transfer paper. I really fought with the paper being sticky, the vinyl not coming off the cutting mat (my bad), everything curling up and sticking to itself. But I think that's just me :-) I'm not terribly dextrous and would no doubt manage better next time. I cut out some really small, intricate stuff that didn't transfer properly but I got four well cut, usable quotes and decided to make 2 A4 overlays and 2 6x4" overlays.

They each transferred onto the overlays perfectly and I'm totally thrilled with the effects. The vinyl is so thin that if you rub your fingers over the overlay, you can hardly notice it. A great result.

My last forgery is the washi tape. I didn't have any black tape which appealed a lot but what I liked even more was the handwritten text printed onto it so that's what I decided to copy.

I had a neon pink tape which I thought would go well with the bright colours of the kit so I taped some down onto some paper to try out a range of pens to mimic the hand-written days of the week.

I tried (from top pen to bottom pen) Uni-ball in black, Zig Wink of Stella Brush in translucent, Signo Uni-ball in white, Sharpie (twin tip) in black and Sharpie (thick tip) in gold.

The gold Sharpie and the Wink of Stella brush were total fails - just didn't really show up at all. The Uni-ball black was rather unsuccessful but the Signo white and both ends of the Sharpie in black worked well enough for me to consider them a success.

Top and bottom here is the thick and thin black Sharpie but the gold in the middle was too hit and miss. Sometimes it was ok but most of the time, you could hardly see it. Maybe it would work better on black tape.

The white was surprisingly even but you need to leave it a long time to dry. I think this might be my favourite effect.

Once I had decided on which pens to use on my tape, I then measured out 2" lengths and wrote out the days of the week with the asterisk between them to match the original Elsie tape in the Messy Box kit. I will now produce the strips as and when I need them and will no doubt make sure I have space to do an asterisk before and after the day. If I come across some black tape it will no doubt creep into my kit too - love the idea of trying out the white on black.

Not bad for someone who doesn't make her own embellishments! What will you forge this month? Don't forget to share over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog.