June at Scrapabilly #2

Back again with the second half of my shares (the other layouts can be found here) for the June Scrapabilly kit featuring the Paige Evans Fancy Free collection for Pink Paisley. Here it is as a reminder.

I explained on Monday that I knew I wanted to be inspired by Paige Evans's style even though my layouts don't look anything like hers. But lots of white and Cameo cuts were in my mind from the very beginning.

This next layouts started off with the die cut roses and built up from there.

This journalling card is part of the tag pack that I added in to my kit.

This next layout was in my mind from the very moment I first saw the papers. I knew that I wanted a full background die cut to show off the gorgeous colours and designs of this water colour paper. This time I really just couldn't cover up too many of those roses and tucked my story, photo and title into the corner leaving the roses to shine.

Of course, I couldn't resist a bit of fussy cutting too!

Last but not least is a page I've already shared over at Whimsical Musings for the prompt WM#213 inspired by the selfie.

I'd challenged myself to a month of selfies, managing a total of 25 in 30 days which wasn't too bad and which fit perfectly onto one 12x12 page. This allowed me to add a 12x6 for the title and journalling. There wasn't much else to add as the photos were pretty busy leaving little room for embellishment.

A simply beautiful kit and one that was so very inspirational.

You might be lucky to find one or two still available over at the Scrapabilly kit here and of course there is a gallery full of layouts and projects from the whole team. Go and be inspired!

June at Scrapabilly #1

This month at Scrapabilly, we were all thrilled to receive our Design Team kits full of the gorgeous, and rather difficult to come by over here, Fancy Free collection by Paige Evans for Pink Paislee.

Here's the kit photo and I have to admit that it was really hard to pick one side of the paper or the other sometimes. The Thickers in white as well as the mini sunny yellow alphas were perfect as I knew I wanted to be inspired by Paige Evans' style with her white backgrounds and sometimes longer titles.

Like I mentioned, I knew that I wanted to take Paige as inspiration and really go to town with stitching, paper "piecing" and get the Cameo going too. This first layout combines all those elements.

I cut up the square patchwork printed paper and then placed them to form a chevron going across the page, stitching each line down. I tied that in with some white cardstock rose die-cuts backed with some of the pink paper from the collection (#11) which I added in to the kit. 

It was difficult to justify covering up the papers but four small photos told the story I wanted to tell so I had to accept that not all the pretties would show!

Here you can see the pink paper backing the roses. It's subtle but still there if you look.

Next up was my idea of cutting out all the circles from paper #3 which made me realise there were definite colour groupings. Seeing the collection of blues and greens I decided that this would make a great banner and page background for a page about my wonderful nephew.

I also added in the pack of collection tags to my kit (tags here) and the puffy stickers (here) which really gave me a wide variety of items to add to my layouts.

I stitched up the circles to form a loopy banner along the top.

And the exclusive button seemed ideal here - both colour and sentiment!

And here is the other technique I did with the circles. I folded up all the pinks, reds and softer tones in half and then layered them back up into full circles again which I stitched along the middle. This allowed the sides of the circles to lift and you can peek inside. Great dimension without the bulk.

You can't really see her in this photo but the layout features our baby, our boxer dog Blossom who loved looking out of the window to see the world walk by (and barking loudly at them for the nerve of walking past our window), but especially waiting for me to come home from school. It was such a wonderful greeting at the end of a long day.

Come back on Wednesday for the second half of my Fancy Free Scrapabilly kit. It would be great to see you again.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge June member blog hop

Welcome to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge June member blog hop. Nice to see you here again this month.

I'm kicking off the hop this morning so if you get lost along the way, head back to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog or you can find the full blog hop list at the end of this post.

Next up on the hop is Elaine so make sure you go over there and say hello - she always has such lovely projects to share!

This month, the Counterfeit Kit Challenge offered these challenges to inspire us to use our stash:

• Challenge #1 - Inspiration Board
• Challenge #2 - In Quotes
• Challenge #3 - Everything Old Is New Again

I decided to go with Challenge #3 - Everything old is new again. Give new life to the oldest items in your kit.But I have to say, all of the three challenges were appealing and I'm saving up the others to try to find time for.

First up, I looked through my June kit, Potpourri, and identified all those older items - frames and photo overlays as well as a bunch of chipboard die cuts, and a rub-on alpha. Some of those chipboard die cuts are SEI that I bought WAAAAAY back and they have a gorgeous copper metallic effect to them. And that gave me the idea of scooping up all the Theresa Collins die cuts that I couldn't imagine using and embossing them in copper.

I'm not sure if the embossing turned out as great as I had in my head but I'm happy with the overall layout using a photo I just took yesterday - love it when I get inspired like that.

It was great to find a place to use the leftover fussy cutting flowers that I had from the Scrapabilly June kit and also a few scraps from a previous Counterfeit kit that I threw into Potpourri to use them up.

I realised that you can't even see the copper embossing in the main photo so I tried to get a few shots to show the gorgeous rich colour. What I don't really like is the rough texture that I got - maybe I needed to do more layers?

Thanks for dropping by this morning. Elaine is next up, pop over and say hi! Here's the full list in case you get lost along the way.

• Lisa        http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de
• Elaine     http://chidkids26.blogspot.co.uk
• Natalie    http://thebigdills.blogspot.com
• Tina        http://tinasscrapcorner.blogspot.com
• Roxanne http://roxyrolla.blogspot.com
• Jemma    http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk
• Princy     www.kraftgali.com

June at Simple Scrapper #2

My second layout for Simple Scrapper this month matches up papers and embellishments from my Counterfeit Kit Challenge November 2015 kit, Remembrance (#8) with a current Story Starter on the topic of "Team Work" along with an older sketch.

It tells the story of the one and only time I was ever on a school sport team - many, many, many years ago! What is funny about this photo is that I found it in a box full of older memorabilia and hadn't even remembered that I had it. I scanned it for this layout and in the journalling, tried to remember the names of the girls not the team with me. It was only when I was putting the original back into the card folder it came in that I noticed a grid on the back of the folder with space for all the names! I at least have all the first names of the girls now. And I was wrong on one or two in my journalling. I will no doubt just correct the names on the back of the layout.

Scrapabilly shares coming up in the next days. Hoping to be more consistent in the weeks to come.

To find out more about the many resources and inspiration - including the sketches and story starters I use each month - available to inspire you to create beautiful pages and tell meaningful stories in a supportive, communicative community environment, check out the Simple Scrapper premium membership here.

June at Simple Scrapper #1

June at Simple Scrapper means another set of gorgeous sketches and a new list of Story Starters.

This first layout uses a current sketch along with a Story Starter from April 2014 - "Right Now". I adjusted the sketch to give me extra space for some longer journalling instead of a second photo.

I used my Counterfeit Kit Challenge May kit, Sprinkle (#3) and selected products which picked up colours from the photo as well as the accent gold.

Come back tomorrow for my second layout.

To find out more about the many resources and inspiration - including the sketches and story starters I use each month - available to inspire you to create beautiful pages and tell meaningful stories in a supportive, communicative community environment, check out the Simple Scrapper premium membership here.