Counterfeit Kit Challenge - January 2018 mini kit

I volunteered for mini-kit duty in January because I knew that I wanted to try to get ahead with my Project Life for 2017 and I've really been enjoying making up these smaller (though still pretty big!) selections that get used for a particular project.

I picked out the Cocoa Daisy November Fair Isle kit for us to be inspired because I loved the mix of wintery, Christmassy and neutral colours which could give each of us somewhere different to go.

My mind went in many different directions and it took me a while to settle on how my kit was going to come together. But when I looked at the patterned papers in the kit, my eye settled on the florally, leafy print in those gorgeous soft pinks, greens and shades of orange.

It suddenly reminded me of the BasicGrey Indian Summer collection from way back when. I pulled the papers in the collection and selected one sheet that then formed the centre point of my kit. So, from a distinctly wintery, Christmassy kit I've made a kit that's distinctly autumnal - perfect!

Here's my January kit, "Together".

It looks bigger than it really is! There's the one sheet of 12x12 and all the rest of the papers are from my scrap box and PL card box.

I added in a whole bunch of die cuts, a couple of tags from previous kits and lots of little bits and pieces that I could imagine being useful for decorating pocket page cards. As luck (or it *might* have been a little planned) would have it, the next spreads I need to do for PL will be September and October which of course are perfect for the colours and embellishments I've added in here.

I struggle with alphas for the smaller canvas of pocket cards so I added in a couple of smaller fonts so that I have more choice.

You will already have seen this die cut which I "forged" using the inspiration from the original kit. It also gave me the name for this kit (gather is a name I've used before).

Labels, die cuts, gems and nature inspired elements inspired by the original kit. I added in sequins rather than the gold stars and included a few bird veneers instead of more die cuts.

It looks like a lot and I knew I probably wouldn't use it all. I had two months in my PL album in mind to complete and I thought that I might be able to find a way to use this kit for both. Let's see how that works out...

Well, as it would happen I managed to get October 2017 completed using just some of the papers and embellishments and has enough left over to get September done (I'll share that if when I get that done)!

 

I feel like journalling is missing but to be honest, I wasn't sure about where to put it! This process is still not settled and it's not yet getting any easier for me. Nor am I any quicker. I think I need to think about this a bit more for 2018 to get it clearer in my head. But for now, I want to get 2017 finished so that I can move on. I think I have almost 7 months done now and quite a bit of September done too so it's coming along.

But when I look at the gorgeous pages out there and our very own Master Forger Susan's delightful pages, I know I have a long way to go! Ha ha.

More soon, but for now, thanks for being here today and make sure you play along over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog. All info about how to join in and where you can find us in on the blog here.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Forgery on the Fourth

Welcome and Happy New Year. As every year, I have high hopes of doing a better job of blogging and sharing so let's see how that works out for me. But in the meantime, great to see you here for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Forgery on the Fourth feature where we help you to see how the simplest of ideas can help you enhance your very own version of the original inspiration kit.

If you've missed the main kit reveal, it's a good one this month because we have a fabulous Guest Designer Julie, and new Master Forgers Lori, Laura, Tina & Cindy who have jumped right in with their own takes on the Cocoa Daisy November 2017 Fair Isle kit. Make sure you check out the blog hop over at the CKC blog so that you don't miss out on the details.

I was instantly drawn to the acrylic words "gather together" in the inspiration kit and wanted to find a way to bring that into my own kit. My trusty Silhouette seemed like the ideal solution and a simple word-art die-cut would be the perfect addition to my own kit and ended up providing the name too - "Together". You can find out all about my own mini-kit on the 6th - both here and on the CKC blog - but today I'm just sharing my take on the word embellishments.

I really liked that it was two words but that they had been cut together.

I searched through my Silhouette library and discovered several cuts with exactly the same words but none of them could be cut as one piece. I've been trying to experiment a little more on the Silhouette recently and decided not to let this get in the way of using this pretty cut file.

I brought the original cut into my design screen. Here you can see that it's two words and of course, way too big. No problem!

First I "ungrouped" the file which luckily gave me two individual words that I could manipulate. I moved the "together" up and overlapped it with the "gather" file so that it could be joined at the loop of the "g" and the lower stroke of the "r".

Then all I needed to do was make sure that both the files were highlighted and "merge" them. As you can see below, the red cutting line now shows that these two files are now fused together and will cut as a single die-cut piece. Perfect and simple! Sometimes it works so easily :-)

I resized it so that the length was just under 6" - perfect for a pocket page card and all I had to do now was cut it from a paper which didn't have a strong pattern so that the words could be easily read.

I carefully removed it from the cutting mat and picked out all the little insert pieces - I am always amazed when I get a perfect cut and I don't destroy the whole cut during this process! A thicker piece of paper might have been better but I love the delicacy of this piece and will definitely be using it for my mini-kit project!

Tune in on 6th again to check out all the details of that.

Are you making your own embellishments for your kit? Then be sure to share your ideas with us. You can link up by using the Link-Up page on the CKC blog, posting in the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook Community Group or on Instagram (find us @counterfeitchallenge and share with #counterfeitchallenge ).