Counterfeit Kit Challenge prompt #2 - Mix and Match Title

Hopefully you remember the kit I made up at the beginning of the month - Heatwave.

It was full of brights and bolds so when you look at the layout below, you might wonder how that happened! But first let's remind ourselves of Cindy's challenge to us this time around.

She asked us to be inspired by a mix and match title or journalling. "We have them in our stash - alphabet stickers, word stickers, stamps, dies and even punches. The challenge is to use at least two different alphabet styles for your title or journaling." She's also created a Pinterest board with inspiration for you which you can find here.

This is right up my street as I usually include several alphas in each of my kits with different fonts and sizes and love mixing them up.

Here's my layout.

I started off by looking into my kit to see what wordy elements I had and discovered that the b-side of the large floral was a lovely handwritten design featuring a repeated "weekend". I built the rest of my layout around that word which I fussy cut and used that as a starting point. I have really limited letters in the alphas I included in the kit so I had to get a bit creative with the words I made up! So too many e's or s's but to be honest, that helped me make my title even more mixed up as each word came from a different letter sticker according to which letters were available. 

I also fished out other wordy items in my kit and added them as embellishments.

I decided to use the hexagon paper by MME and that set the colour scheme for the rest of the layout and I picked out all the blues and greens so that it turned out to be a really toned down layout rather than the hot shades in the original.

The little clipboards were on the b-side of the red paper from my kit and I thought they worked nicely to feature as a mat for my photos as if they were really holding the photos.

Then I just decorated using black, green and blue and tucked my journalling onto a few of the hexagons. I tried to scatter the embellishments into different corners of the page to add dimension and interest and even though the photos are bright and Christmassy, the whole layout is much calmer and softer which pleases me!

I love how versatile my kits are when I look at the backs of the papers that I picked originally! In effect, you get the a-sides, the b-sides and then a mix of both - three kits in one and limitless possibilities!

Have a great day everyone and don't forget that we love it when you share your own projects inspired by any of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits, prompts or mini-kits. You can share over at the blog, in the FB community or on Instagram - whichever suits you best!

In the meantime, head over to the blog to see what the others have produced with this fun mixed-up font prompt and you can share here:

• the Link-Up page here on the blog
• the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook Community Group 
• Instagram (find us @counterfeitchallenge and share with #counterfeitchallenge )

Mail Art Exchange

The delightful Ginger organised another Mail Art Exchange recently and I was happy to get involved again. It's something a bit different to the usual scrapping that I do and pushes me to try something a bit different.

This time around, the theme was words so I used a whole load of tissue paper, from Starbucks of all places, to cover the envelope I would be sending and then dotted it with words cut from a couple of second hand books as well as some rub ons. I included a butterfly banner made from book pages too which I was particularly delighted with and now need to make myself one too! Of course I forgot to take photos of it but the recipient, Alexa, wrote about it {here}. Alexa has such a wonderful minimal, clean and simple style that I was nervous to be sending her something in my busy, distressed, layered style but to be honest, that is part of what this Mail Art Exchange is all about - giving and receiving art in many different styles.

And then in the first week of May (yes, WAY behind on my posting here) I received my happy mail from Sandie over in the UK.

Now I'm not sure if Sandie knew that I am a Brit living over here with a penchant for a taste of home but her happy mail certainly hit the mark with me! Look what I got.

The set had the most lovely tape measure stamping on it, a really pretty card with such a lovely quote and a gorgeous book mark with a reminder to create. But on the other side, it had paper covered with stamps, the largest of which was a British stamp complete with the Queen. Love it!

With this year being the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, I'm all about the symbolism of home right now and this was just the most lovely gift that now has pride of place in the Queen's biography I'm in the middle of reading. Talk about the perfect combination :-)

Thanks Sandie for a wonderful Mail Art Exchange and once again, thanks too to Ginger for organising it. Looking forward to the next one.