Counterfeit Kit Challenge August kit reveal and blog hop

Hello to August and to what should be the height of summer even though we've been melting here in Europe over the last month or so already. We've had record temperatures and this month's Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit is just about as summery as you can get. 

But I'm running ahead of myself!

Welcome to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge August kit reveal and blog hop. 

Hopefully, you've arrived here from our power scrapper Julene and her no doubt huge, fun kit and up after me is the prolific Lori who is bound to delight with her supplies!

This month, we are delighted to have Kate Blue back as our Guest Designer and it's always a joy to see her fabulous kits and super layouts so make sure you don't miss out on visiting her too (here). (The full blog list can be found at the end of this blog post.) 

And once last announcement - this month we also have the talented Shannon Allor playing along on her YouTube channel here. She's part of the How to Kill a Kit with Style team and this month she's taking our kit - or rather our inspiration kit - for her set of videos! What fun! Check her out here.

MF Cindy picked this sweet kit for our inspiration this month - Citrus Twist's main July kit, "Best of This Life" which you can find here.

There's also an add-on kit which can be found here.

You can find links to unboxing videos over on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog reveal post today.

This kit sums all the wonderful colours and designs of summer and my starting point was to find as many pretty, summer shades as possible. My kit is a little brighter and bolder than the original but first, let me show you my Paris inspired kit, Macarons.

I wanted to bring together some happy, bright, summery colours and mixed together some new and old papers to get a good, vibrant mix. Instead of the black and white diagonal stripe, I decided to include three sheets from a new Polish collection (Piatek Trzynastego) I picked up recently featuring constellations and moons. They are heaven and thought they could provide a great contrast to all those pastels. 

Once I'd pulled all the papers together, I decided that it reminded me of all the delicious macarons at Laudurée in Paris where I just happened to be a few days ago! And hence, the kit received its name.

Once I'd picked out all the papers, I added in a bunch of embellishments to give me a lot of possibilities. Two packs of die-cuts with whimsical as well as summery motifs.

Enamel dots as well as heart puffy stickers - both picked up in the UK and non-branded.

A fabulous set of Thickers, some leftover chipboard pieces, two sheets of sticker from the moon papers and the American Crafts Shimelle sticker book which I also picked up in the UK and have been itching to use up!

Last but not least is a bunch of printed and fussy cut labels to match up the items in the original kit. 

I haven't included stamps as I don't tend to use them even if I put them in the kit but you never know, maybe this month is the month! I did actually use stamps on a layout recently... And I've also resisted adding in pocket cards but let's face it, there's a whole lot of paper in here so it's a really big kit anyway.

Now, you might wonder why on earth I've made up such a big kit when I don't seem to be scrapping as many layouts as in the past?

Well, maybe this is an answer for you...

When I was making up my kit for today, this was my pile of old kits that were still "in use". I realised that I've really been uninspired by each of these recently and therefore, I decided to break them all back up into my stash and start again. I do this once a year or so and mostly decide the time is right for this action when I can't find items I know that I have but suspect that they are "lost" inside those boxes! I love my kits and am more than happy to use older kits for a LONG time (these dated back to spring of 2018) but once I find myself rummaging through the boxes for missing items and also opening up ten boxes before settling on a kit to use for a layout, it's time to start afresh again. 

So I worked through the boxes, emptying and sorting as I went and then worked on my new kit. 

I now have a single, large kit on my shelf and I hope to find a lot of inspiration in there to keep me going for some time. I realise that I have layouts made over the last month or so that I haven't shared, so maybe that will happen too. Fingers crossed.

Here's the blog hop list in case you get lost along the way:

Counterfeit Kit Challenge - https://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/
Guest Designer - Kate Blue - http://kateblue.blogspot.com  
Cindy -http://cindyscreations-cinmfoster.blogspot.com/
Julene - http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com/
Lisa - http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com/
Lori - https://loriannie670.blogspot.com/
Laura - https://instagram.com/mrsp_scrapsandtea/


Don't forget that we always love to see your work, so please share your kits and projects with us.
You can use our Monthly Link-up page, post them in our Facebook Community, or share them on Instagram (we are @counterfeitkitchallenge or tag us using #counterfeitkitchallenge and #ckcaugust2019).