Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Forgery on the Fourth

I'm back today with my Forgery on the Fourth for Counterfeit Kit Challenge September kit.

You can find out more links and other forgeries from the team over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog here so don't forget to head over there to see what's on offer :-) 

A reminder of our personalised curated kit for September's inspiration courtesy of Khristina Sorge from the Secret Not Secret Kit Club (you can find details about her club online here) who is also our wonderful Guest Designer this month. 

This is the kit she made for us.

My eye immediately went to the die cut viewfinders and the outline plane embellishment. I knew I could come up with something similar using my Silhouette. It took me a couple of minutes to find some viewfinders in my library so I was on a roll but a plane? I had to use a cluster embellishment and ungroup them to have a single plane to use.

Next up was to resize a bunch of them, position them in a similar way to the original in the kit and then work out how to connect them. Merging them was tricky and it took a long time to get them perfectly positioned so that they touched but didn't go "into" the neighbouring shape. While that looked ok as block shapes, once I worked out how to create an outline shape, I could see that when they overlapped too much, the outline wasn't solid but rather had openings where they touched. I went online to find out how to create an outline cut from a solid shape (apparently it's offset and I worked out that an inside offset was better). Then I kept nudging the shapes around, merging, offsetting and checking the form before undoing all those last steps to nudge the shapes around again and continue through that iterative process until I was relatively happy with the result! It's not perfect but I'm happy with it and I think that no-one would notice the imperfection. This is a screenshot of how my template looked in Silhouette before I sent it to cut.

I used a thick white cardstock and it came out perfectly. It really took a long time but I learned about offsetting shapes and am gradually building up more than just the basic skills that I've had for some time now. When I use my Silhouette, I'm always thrilled with the result and just purchasing this shape might have been a whole lot easier but I've got a lot of satisfaction from creating this die cut myself.

I also thought I'd give the epoxy stickers a go. I liked the simple white on black form with the non-uniform white outline and thought I could recreate something similar. I used an almost black paper and them white heat embossed some motifs from a travel collection stamp set and a few phrases that were the same as the original set. I cut these out using three different sized dies and then cut a set of white cardstock circles too. I mounted the black paper onto the white cardstock in different ways - sometimes using a larger white circle and sometimes, the same size. I moved the shapes around so that there was a different frame of white on each one.

Then I covered a few of them with Mod Podge Dimensional Magic, laying them out on baking paper first so that they didn't stick. I tried to get right up to the edges and knock out the air bubbles before leaving them for 24 hours to dry.

The final result isn't perfect as there were definitely some bubbles still left in the glue as well as some rough edges as the glue settled and dried. I was also a little disappointed that the white cardstock appears less than white now. The Dimensional Magic is not 100% clear but at least the white of the cardstock is now the same white as the embossing!

Just for comparison, I also did the same thing to a few with Glossy Accents. As you can see, the white cardstock appears a more true white but the surface is certainly not as smooth and glossy or as dimensional.

I've left a few without the "epoxy" effect and no doubt all my faux epoxy stickers will get used up on cards at some point.

If you have some clear epoxy stickers, you can of course make your stickers in an easier way than this. I've included a YouTube link over on the CKC blog today for different ways to put your backgrounds together for these.

In the past I've also talked about making complete copies of sets of word-based Thickers using my Silhouette (you can find examples here and here).

Why not try your hand at making your own embellishments for your own kit? It can be a lot of fun learning new techniques and trying different things out to achieve the results you're looking for. Not all of my "forgeries" are successful, but I love giving it a try!

Don't forget that there's a whole load of inspiration over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog and we always love seeing how you've been inspired. 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 #ckcseptember2019).