Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Forgeries on the Fourth

You know me... I'm a bit of a lazy crafter. 

I love the forgery side of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge - the idea of making your own takes on kit items but using your own ingenuity and stash - but the reality is that I often don't make the time and often go for the printable options instead.

But when I saw the original inspiration kit this month, I spied the acetate words and wondered if that would be an idea for me to make. Then I took another look at the kit and saw that there were three papers that would be really easy to make a version of... or so I thought!

Care to take a trip through my trials and tribulations? 

I started with the hatch design paper by Pink Paislee - the blue/green one. I found a scrap of watercolour design paper to try out how I thought I could make it. 

First up was to draw some squares which were about 1"-

And then I used my ruler and a black pen to fill in the lines. Mmmm - not so good! The ink smudged and the lines were way too close together and then I realised that the original paper must have been 2" squares instead.

So I took another scrap of more greener paper - it was quite a large scrap to be honest but I'm planning to use it in smaller pieces on cards so it will give me a bit of flexibility.

Again, I started by drawing some squares - this time in 2" squares.

Then I started with the lines and used a Uniball rollerball pen which didn't smear. I began using a ruler and then realised that a freehand line would match the original better so off I went. Very imperfect lines but the overall effect is definitely close to the original. The wobbles and imperfections won't show up once it's all cut up for cards. That's what I call a success.

I realised that the white spots on yellow might be easy to create with a white pen or pencil. The pencil was a no no (you can see a couple of lines there on the right which didn't work well at all). Of course, the ongoing problem with my white pens (what am I doing wrong? why do my pens all dry up even though they are full?) meant that the spots and lines are again, not perfect. But for cards, I think the paper will work fine. Relatively successful and completed in just a few minutes!

The last of the three papers that caught my eye was the Pinkfresh Studio sheet with the strips of colour and some lines of text.

I decided to just use some thin washi tape to give the translucent effect that the original paper had and just stretched them across the paper randomly.

I found a few scraps of words in my box and added in a few to the strips.

Once all the edges were trimmed I was quite pleased with the outcome. Not exactly the same as the original, but definitely inspired by that gorgeous sheet of paper.

Giddy with the success I was experiencing, I decided to make some card bases (6x4") using some odd strips of paper from the bottom of my scrap box - many manufacturer strips that I can't bear to throw out! These three bases have already been transformed into cards so make sure you check out my mini kit reveal on Wednesday for the details.

The top base uses some of the washi paper from Crate Paper.

Last up was my original idea - the acetate words.

I knew I didn't have any printable acetate in my supplies and therefore decided to make some print and cut words on vellum. Sounds easy right? I've done it before and it was easy so this wouldn't take long... or so I thought.

I found some words in my Cameo library, added them to an A4 template, added the print registers and filled the words with colour. That was new for me and I loved the result! I knew the vellum wouldn't be as bright as this template but isn't it pretty?

First print out onto vellum was a fail. I have no idea what went wrong here but I just got a middle length of print. However, I loved the effect on the vellum so I knew I was on the right track.

I tried it out by printing on regular paper - should have tried that first! But it showed that it worked and showed me how great those phrases were going to look.

So I printed them out again - this time successfully, added them to my cutting mat and sent it to the Cameo and waited expectantly.

However, the Cameo couldn't find the registers and ended up cutting all these phrases about half an inch to the left. And of course the cutting mat was too sticky and all the vellum tore while I was trying to remove it.

• Tip number 1: if you are using vellum, make sure your mat isn't so sticky. Sticky enough so that it's firm on the mat, but not as sticky as you need for cardstock maybe! 
• Tip number 2: if the Cameo can't read the register marks, it might be that there's not enough light. I used my torch function on my iPhone over the Cameo and off it went without a hitch.

Look at this wonderful sheet - can you see the cuts?

I really took my time taking the vellum off the mat and taking out the tiny insides of letters or words. I am proud to say that I didn't tear a single millimetre of any word and was thrilled with how they looked!

Look at this - so cute! Can't wait to use them. I'm not sure if I'll be adding these into my full kit (which I revealed on Saturday) or my mini kit - come back on Wednesday for those details.

Another hugely long post so well done if you've made it this far. As and when I use my items featured here, I'll make sure to show you but in the meantime, make sure you share your kits, projects and forgeries! We LOVE to be inspired by YOU.

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Counterfeit Kit Challenge July kit reveal blog hop

Can you believe that it's July already? It's shocking but true so here we are with another Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit reveal for the 1st of the month. 

You can find the full hop at the end of the post and hopefully you came here from Lynnette's amazing reveal but then again, I'm a last minute entry to the hop because I'm actually on mini-kit duty this month and not full kit! Last Minute Lisa panicked and pulled together a full kit - at the, yes, last minute! - only to realise that only a small kit was needed this month! But made is made so I decided to just go with it and join in on the hop - I'll still pull together a smaller kit for the 6th so make sure you come back then! 

Of course, we also have a wonderful Guest Designer too this month - Megan Blethen who can be found over at http://www.craftymeggy.com/. Thrilled to have her with us this month.

Master Forger Kelly picked out this month's inspiration kit for us this time around and we all loved the fresh colours and pretty patterns - all those gorgeous yellows, greens and blues. It's the Cocoa Daisy August 2016 kit, "Walden Pond". Find all the details here.

Cocoa Daisy, Walden Pond - Aug 2016

My kit turned out less blue and more pink - what a surprise! But the fresh colours and designs are there if you look hard! Here's Sugar (as in "Oh sugar! I made a mistake!")

I started off with the same sheet of Pinkfresh Studio paper from the original kit which gave me the bright white base.

Cocoa Daisy's kit has plenty of Paige Evans for Pink Paislee and so I added in some of her papers from this year's collection - the flowers, the ombré (instead of the red design with circles) and the water colour stripes (for the blotchy patterned one).

I used a Crate Paper circle design and then two green papers with stripes to take the place of the blue/green stripe and the hatch style pattern. An older Pink Paislee yellow - which I've had a couple of sheets of and love - stands in for the darker yellow sheet as well as the diagonal stripe. Then I added in a couple of extra sheets of Webster's Pages sequins and Amy Tangerine's stars just to reinforce the circles and the blue/green combination that appear in the original selection.

Just for fun, I included a Crate Paper sheet of vellum. I'm already in love with the mix of papers and hope for good things!

I was able to match the original kit with some Paige Evans tags that I had left over from that original collection and the Pinkfresh Studio die cuts. I fished out a large shipping tag in yellow and added in a couple of lengths of pretty twine.

I was surprised to see that the Cocoa Daisy kit had quite a lot of buttons - something I hardly ever use in my kits or on my pages. So I fished out my pot of buttons and sorted out a large selection of sizes and colours which seemed to match. Let's see how many I use.

My eye fell on a small bag full of some random bits of ribbon and twine which looked interesting so I threw that in too, just for good measure.

A Pinkfresh Studio alphabet and some word stickers were also added but I forgot some smaller alphabets so I will add those in as I need them.

I have another idea or two of what needs to go into this kit so I will see how that works and if I can, I'll share later. After all, this is a kit that normally wouldn't have been made!

All in all, for a kit that wasn't planned, I'm quite happy with it!

Here's the full hop list in case you get lost along the way.

Don't forget to share your kits and creations with us and keep checking in to see those mini kit and the challenges throughout the month.

• CKC - http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/
• Guest Designer - Megan Blethen - http://www.craftymeggy.com/
• Julene - http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com
• Kelly - http://www.honeysucklehillcrafts.com/
• Leslie - http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com
• Lynnette - http://sassyscrapper2010.blogspot.com
• Lisa - http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de

Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Counting all those 6s!

Welcome back! Great to see you here for the second Counterfeit Kit Challenge prompt of the month and we are all 6s and 7s here today!

Master Forger Susan challenged us to use the number 6 on our layouts to mark the 6th month of the year and of course, I had to give it more than my best.

I'm currently on a scrap mini-retreat at the Dutch coast with two scrappy friends (hi Sylvia and Silvia) and what more inspiration does one need to make pages you love?  Well, I love this one!

I used this month's Blush kit (see here) to make this layout listing 6 things about what I'm feeling right now. I love these types of layouts and I also know that this is MF Susan's type of layout too so that's another nod to her :-)

But not to be content with the idea of including 6 things in my journalling, I decided to go for it and used 6 different papers and also 6 different types of product on my layout - die-cuts, buttons, sequins, enamel dots, alphabet and of course, my beloved patterned paper!

It's ages since I included buttons on my layout and I love how they look so I must remember to include them more often. Another reason to love Counterfeit Kit Challenge - I would have overlooked this packet of BG buttons over and over again if I hadn't decided to include some older items in my kit for dimension.

Thanks for coming over to my very neglected blog - I appreciate each and every visit - honest I do! Leave a comment to let me know you were here and don't forget to check out Margie's blog to see where Susan's inspiration took her this month. 

We love it when you share your kits and creations with us  - you can link up over on the blog (Link Up Page here) or in our Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook community group. We'd love to see you there.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge June kit reveal blog hop

Welcome to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge June kit reveal blog hop.

We are really excited to be sharing our kits with you today and hopefully you've reached me via Kelly's blog where she was sure to have a gorgeous collection of goodies to show you. Next up is Margie and even though she's been really busy recently with all sorts of graduation and family celebrations, I just know that she's got something scrummy to share too!

And of course, we are delighted to welcome Guest Designer Lea Rhea this month. She's a prolific scrapper - which of course, we LOVE - as well as a YouTuber, a blogger, Instagrammer and Facebooker! Welcome Lea and we are thrilled to get to you know you better.

The full blog hop list is at the end of my post.

This month's kit was selected by Master Forger Susan and of course, she's gone for something stylish, on trend and all round gorgeous! The April kit by Felicity Jane, "Willow" is just lovely. It's full of bright whites, soft colours and a healthy smattering of blue which I know the team were excited about.

Willow by Felicity Jane

There are plenty of other detail shots on the Felicity Jane website and also an unboxing video if you need more close ups of this stunning kit.

Now as I can't get hold of this kit over here in Germany (or at least I can't justify the postage costs over here!), I was excited to see what I could do to make my own. Obviously, all the products are exclusives so I was going to find similar tones or patterns in my products.

As a starter, let me introduce my June kit, Blush.

As always, it's not a lot like the original but the inspiration is definitely there.

I wrote a list of the colours I wanted to include and some of the patterns. I noticed there were several geometric designs, arrows, flowers, stripes, dots and a sort of doily looking lace. And that's where I started. I found a few sheets of paper - October Afternoon and My Mind's Eye - which gave me the lacy, soft patterned feel I wanted. But as they were not based on white, I knew that I would have to go with a cream or off-white background for all of my other papers. I worked through my stash, picking out greys, blues, yellow, florals, arrows and several repeating patterns. You might not be able to see it, but each of these matches one of the original patterns!

I have to confess that one or two of these papers have b-sides that I particularly love (maybe even more than the a-side) so they might make an appearance instead!

Then onto the embellishments. There were clips, washi, pocket cards, die cuts, an alpha, a stencil, puffy stickers and a stamp set. Knowing I didn't have any suitable puffy stickers, I replaced this item with some dimensional items - decorative brad stickers, buttons and clips as well as some sequins.

I added more pink and black into the kit with a good sprinkle of pocket cards and tracked down some rose gold paper clips which match my alpha and the sequins.

A few washi tapes were included in my ongoing attempt to actually use some of it up - again selecting those with a non-white background. To go along with my large set of rose gold Thickers, I added in a couple of mini alphas too as I like the variety.

I have included a geometric stencil and as I was putting the kit into a holder for the month, I threw in a stamp set - just in case.

All in all, I'm quite happy with this and hope that you can see where the inspiration from the original kit is - you might have to dig a bit! I really wanted to make something a bit more modern but this is where my products took me and the fresh white look can wait for another month!

Here's the full blog hop list in case you get lost along the way and don't forget to share your kits and creations with us over on the blog (Link Up Page here) or in our Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook community group. We'd love to see you there.

Here's the lineup for the blog hop:

CKC: http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/

Guest Designer Lea Rhea: https://www.youtube.com/user/learhea1

Clair: http://obstinatepursuit.blogspot.co.uk/

Kelly: http://www.honeysucklehillcrafts.com/

Lisa: http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de/

Margie: http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com/

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Counterfeit Kit Challenge - A Perfect Day!

I've been busy this evening and once again, it's late - hence the less than perfect photos.

But I decided I wanted to have a go at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge prompt #1 which is all about recording what a perfect day means to me. You can find the details of the prompt as well as the examples by other MF's over on the CKC blog here.

But I had only made a page kit for my mini kit example (see here for details) so there was definitely not enough there for a whole page. So I took the few scraps and elements I'd used for that original kit and then added in a few more items inspired by the original Gossamer Blue kit (find out details about our inspiration kit in this blog post here) to make up another mini page kit. You can see the supplies I brought together below.

You can see that I added a sheet of my Echo Park paper wit heart constellations in navy and a sheet of yellow toned paper which also seemed to match the original GB kit. But the remainder of the kit is pretty much what I had left over.

Here is my page which will be the accompanying page to a pocket page where I will feature small square shots of all the sights we saw in this pretty little German town of Alzey.

This is really what I consider to be a pretty perfect day for me. Just hanging out, wandering along the streets of a pretty old town, catching a few sights, stopping for a beer or a coffee and just being together.  Once again, I've needed to protect the modesty of my internet shy DH.

Those puffy elements! Oh my! I love them.

I did add in some word strips to my mini kit by Pinkfresh Studio - they seemed to fit nicely here.

Head over to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog for more examples of perfect days.

And don't forget to come on over to our Facebook Counterfeit Kit Challenge Community here and share your inspired kits and projects. It would be fabulous to see you there. The more the merrier!

Counterfeit Kit Challenge May mini kit and layout

Another last minute make for me this month. These deadlines come up so quickly and are so unexpected (she said sarcastically at herself!). So please excuse the rather poor photos. But let's have a look at what I'd like to share with you today.

This is the inspiration kit from Gossamer Blue that we are using over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog this month. Look at those gorgeous colours and patterns. Find out more about the kit, the pocket page kit and also what our Guest Designer, Christy as well as our Master Forgers created at the CKC blog here.

Gossamer Blue main main kit

Here's my version. I made a page kit and I have to admit that I love it!

I really wanted to make a blue themed kit as that is what had drawn me in from the start. I also loved that the inspiration kit had some gorgeous puffy stickers and lots of wonderful Shimelle products. 

So that's where I started. In fact, I picked out the Pinkfresh Studio puffy stickers first and then added in a sheet of matching vellum and a sheet of 6x6 paper from the same range. Then I went through my Shimelle papers and decided that I needed to use this gorgeous navy blue cloud paper and a cut apart sheet which also had some blue toned elements. Then the copper Thickers from Pinkfresh, the Shimelle clips and some enamel dots seemed the perfect finishing touch. And there you have it. A really, really tiny kit (for me!).

At this point in the evening - rather night - it was already really late but I battled on and decided to make a very simple page featuring my niece's delightful curls. The richer tones in the photos seemed perfect for the copper Thickers and I was rather chuffed with myself for making a very girlie page with not a single drop of pink. But all those blues and greys worked so well, that I just went for it.

Not only am I in love with those curls but I am head over heels with these puffy stickers. To quote my other niece from a family anecdote that has since gone down in family history... "I need MORE"!

This is also a LOAD517 page. Yes, it's that time of the year again too!

Thanks for dropping by and don't forget that we have more inspiration over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog coming up on the 12th and 18th when we present our challenges.

AND there's a little giveaway on our Facebook page to celebrate hitting 1,000 Likes! Go us. Head over to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook page to find out how to be entered into a draw to win a counterfeit mini kit based on this month's inspiration kit.

Go on! You know you want to...
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Counterfeit Kit Challenge meets "Last Minute Lisa"

Great to see you back here at my very neglected blog! I really must do better.

It's prompt #2 up on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog today and Leslie challenged me with the following:

"National Animal Crackers Day! This could take you in many directions. First might be a favorite childhood treat. With all the cute whimsical animals in the main kit inspiration you may have something in your kit that will inspire. Or that iconic box with the circus train car may take you in a whole new direction!"

I was last minute as usual and actually managed to make up a layout and photograph it just under the wire before I realised that I'd forgotten to actually WRITE my journalling! Doh! I'll get to that in the next few days for sure as I know that once you leave it, it never gets done.

I was inspired by the cute and whimsical paper I'd included in my kit from Webster's Pages with butterflies and birds. So there I have inspiration from animals #1. Then I found a couple of extra photos of sweet P, my niece, which I'd printed off but never used and thought it would be nice to bring them together on my favourite sort of page. Her nickname as a bump was always "Little Bird" and so that is also inspiration from animals #2. And what better title than the nickname itself. Inspiration from animals #3. 

I know that I've used this title on a P page before but these are different photos and I will make sure that I write something different for the journalling so that they don't overlap.

I loved the fact that everything in my April kit, Chirpy, seems to go together so well even though the items all come from different manufacturers and collections. This was a super easy layout together even though I helped myself by making it simple. I'll add the journalling at the bottom under the bow.

This chipboard banner fits the subject so well referring to a bird's wings as well as being brave. Little P is nothing if not headstrong and confident!

I have to admit to adding in the clips from the Paige Evans Take Me Away collection into my kit for this page. It was good to break into the pack and use one. Hopefully it will encourage me to continue as they are so cute.

Thanks for dropping by today. 

Don't forget to join in with your own kits and kit creations over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook Community and while you're there, head over to the main Counterfeit Kit Challenge Facebook page where we are heading up to 1,000 likes! We'd LOVE to hit that magic round number and you never know, we might even find a way to celebrate!