CKC Sep Challenge 2 and Layering with Shimelle

The second Counterfeit Kit Challenge for September was called "Autumn Equinox".  Not surprisingly it's all about what Autumn means to you.

Good thing I'm not a chronological scrapbooker since it's Spring here!

Now the thing is that pumpkins really don't mean Autumn to me (despite pumpkin soup being a year round family favourite)!  In fact, I didn't actually think I had any pumpkin photos!  Apples and apple pies are definitely more autumnal but I'm running with this for the challenge even though I have apple pie photos for the next layout on the agenda, but the colours aren't nearly as autumnal.

This is my take on Prompt 4 from Shimelle's Layers on Layers on Layers class.  One of my favourite from the class.  I mean Shimelle's design is...not my actual interpretation.

So the first step?  Cheat with a very typically autumnal paper for the background.  I was sure it had pumpkins on it, but it doesn't.  I'm running with it all the same.  Everything else was legit, though!

 This layout took me an awfully long time to finish despite being fairly quick with the lack of embellishment.  It was a matter of finding the right size pieces in the right colours and I'm not sure I nailed it.  It shouldn't look quite as chaotic.   I managed a whole one leaf from all my forgery and it wasn't even an acetate one. 😞




So an actual Autumn layout of a photo taken in actual Autumn and featuring pumpkins no less!

I even blocked out some superfluous words on an October Afternoon card and used it as part of the title.  Probably the only time I ever will!

Not a whole lot else to say about it - just that those 6x6 paper pads came in mightily handy for all the layers under the photo!

And here it is all finished.  Like the previous layout, I think I'd really like to try the design again.   I already have some changes in mind so I may come back to them after I'm done with the other prompts.

Precious Pumpkin

love and stacks and stacks of pretty paper!

CKC Sep Challenge 1 and Layering with Shimelle

Shimelle's most recent class called Layer On Layer On Layer and I figured using this kit for as many of the layouts as I could was a good idea.

For a few layouts I had specific ideas in terms of supplies, so I'm going to skip those since they don't work with the kit.

The first CKC challenge for September was a colour challenge where purple, gold and red had to be included on the layout.

 

Naturally I had no purple in the paper component of my kit since I swapped it out for blue, 😒 but a little in the embellishments.  I can always use ink and stamps and it's another reason I don't  put ink or mist into kits

I used Prompt 5 from Shimelle's layerinf class for this challenge and since it's the first layout back after a longish break, it was a bit like finding my feet again and I'm never completely happy, but not totally unhappy either. 😏



The first thing I did was cheat.  I pulled out a
sheet of navy cardstock and Sassafras stickers from my stash.  Shimelle used some precious "Foldies" which I have barely a singe sheet left and wasn't going to use them for this layout, but Sassa kept speaking to me. 🙉



I also pulled out a sheet of paper from American Crafts Soho Collection which I thought could be fussy cut.



 
Later I pulled out crochet trim, vellum and cardstock stitched banners.  Shimelle reminded me to use one and since I had plenty and loved the way they looked on the layout, I went with it.  Later still I needed more alphas.  Skinny ones to fit on the gap I had left so out came the gold Fitzgerald Thickers.  The flat stickers were in my kit at least!

The slightly odd title refers to The Mikado and this being a school friend of mine.  It will be clearer when all of the layouts from this event are done and story is complete!

The red gems came from a bag stuffed with random partial packs of gems and enamel dots (usually kinda messed up).  They sit on my desk and I go to them first.  This totally doesn't count as cheating!

I did use quite a lot of die cuts from my box, yet so many things I hoped to include like stamped images or adding ink to the cardstock butterflies.  They are really old - not sure where they came from, but they look a little bit like something from Jenni Bowlin, but I can't be sure.

I included two tiny acetate banners and remembering that product focus for September in the RYS Facebook Group is acetate, that this is my first layout for the month and that the date is the 27th, I better do better!



My last touch were a few of the Hambly acetate circles that I cut out using my Silhouette.  Thanks for getting this far and please visit again soon since I hope to have at least a few more layouts finished!

Maids From School

 

Love and legendary layering, 

CKC Forgery on the Fourt...eenth

OKOK Maybe sixteenth, but in my defense the majority of my forgeries did occur on the fourteenth!

It was the first time I'd tried to do a forgery and mixed results would be the right way to describe it! 

But first I must confess I switched my Amy Tan die cuts for some from my mixed stash.  I just wasn't feeling the former with all the other supplies.  And added two of my precious Hambly acetate sheets - one in gold and one in brown woodgrain...and some 6x6 paper pads to compensate for the lack of navy and pink. (sorry!) 

It looks like a lot of die cuts and while it is, there are also all the October Afternoon ones mixed in there, so it's not as bad as it looks!

Since my kit can't make up its mind what season it's from (and has a foot on both camps it seems), the forgeries would have to follow suit.


What I was most lamenting was the lack of leaves.  Glittery ones in particular, but leaves regardless.  While waiting for the Silhouette to finis one of her lengthy cuts, I pulled out those lonely Amy  Tangerine leaves.  I remembered I had some random bottles of Stickles and...well...I'm not entirely convinced.



  

Since I got my Silhouette, I have been collecting free cut files (and plenty of purchased ones too) whenever I see them and much to my disappointment surprise I already had plenty of leaves and didn't need to buy any more 😒

I made a collage of the best shaped leaves and started cutting.  
 
I love the way vellum leaves look, so I had a sheet of the gold marbled one by Pink Paislee...and anyone remember that aqua and green bokeh one that Maggie Holmes put out with either her first or second collection?






It was absolutely essential to try glitter paper next.   I picked a gold and more champagne coloured glitter paper to match the gold and rose gold that appears in the kit.  

 

After that, I picked "Hello Sunrise" which is an ombre patterned paper from  Amy Tangerine's "Hustle and Heart" collection.  It starts with yellow on one diagonal and going to red on the opposite side. 

  
Then this Echo Park paper which is a gorgeous spring green on one side and has pretty much all the seasons (especially Autumn) on the other.

I found a cut file which looks like a cut log and this reminded me of the One Canoe 2 paper.  Many attempts and much wasted paper ensued.  Because of the super thin strips, this was the smallest I could cut it.  I added some butterflies to use up the remaining brown sheet, but now I'm annoyed and think they are TOO big.  UGH!  I don't think I'll use these butterflies, though.  Maybe on a card or something.

 
Now to attempt cutting acetate considering the challenge from RYS.  No idea if the Silhouette can cope with it, but I was willing to try.  I picked two sheets, but then I thought they would look stupid cut into leaf shapes.  I just cut circles, butterflies (more forgery here!) and stars.

Upon seeing the result, I realized leaves would have been OK after all, but probably solid leaves would be better...so off I went and made another leaf collage.  I halved my brown and gold transparencies so I could cut fewer leaves but all at once on the same cutting mat.

 




I was wondering how they would look if I took some alcohol ink to them...this is how!  I recruited SmallCraftyDude to assist me.

Probably better to do it on the underside, since copious use of the blending solution dissolved the screen printing, but I stuck them to the cutting mat with the screen print up so the glue wouldn't tear it off and coloured the leaves while still stuck to the mat without pulling off the extra acetate around the shapes.

I didn't bother making more bows since I didn't want more paper ones.

I know it's a lot of leaves, but trees have them all year round (well except deciduous ones) and I'm not in any hurry to burn through them.  Could do with more butterflies, though.  

And all the offcuts?  Take a punch to them and use up every little bit.  

I even got more butterflies!  I like layering punched butterflies with the smallest one on top in a vellum and stitching the layers together.  This gives a really lovely dimensional embellishment!  

Time for layouts next and I really REALLY want to get at least a few done!  I'm completely spent, so I'm not going there today.  

I definitely will before the month is out, but I have spent far too many days writing up this post (while taking frequent breaks to throw food into the teenage pit).

Love and fabulous forging! 

Counterfeit Kit Challenge for September

September?  Seriously?

Not to mention it's taken me DAYS to finish this blog post up!  😒

It's 12 days into September and I still have an unfinished quilt (from LAST year!) and so much to do!  I may actually have to do some planning! 😲  And I've been working on this blog post aaaaall week,

It's actually Spring here in the land Down Under and while it's been a really cold start to Spring, it's finally warming up.

I'm trying to procrastinate with the binding on the above quilt, so I'm very close to the end, but I really hate that part.  I decided to play along with CKC this month in order to further disengage myself from this odious task,

Click on the image below to learn more about the Counterfeit Kit Challenge.

 

It's another Noel Mignon kit as the inspiration so I know my stupidly large kits don't look quite as crazy!  It's from 2017 and named Apple Crisp (although there seem to be more pumpkins than apples...) 

Sure it's Autumnal looking, but I don't scrapbook chronologically so it's not an issue for me.  My autumn photos don't have a lot of orange leaves and traditional stuff, so I'm keeping that in mind while I pull this together.,

I decided to break down the inspiration kit down not only into its constituent parts, but also into the colours, patterns and motifs.  This helps me decide how much I want to mirror and how much to change up.

So the colours of the inspo kit are:

• orange
• brown
• yellow
• green
• red
• aqua
• pink
• peach 
• bit of gold and purple

Mine has pretty much the the same, but with different proportions (less orange and brown) and med-navy blues rather than purples...and a bit of copper/rose gold in addition to yellow gold.

In terms of patterns and motifs there were

• Polka dots
• Woodgrain
• Floorboards
• Gingham/plaid
• Stripes
• Arrows
• Pumpkins
• Flowers
• Butterflies
• critters
• Leaves
• Trees 
• Mason jars 
• random bits like stars, coffee/tea, mushrooms and acorns

The first and most noticeable change I made to the kit was to swap the pumpkins with apples since they are more synonymous with Autumn here - at least for me!  And adding a few doilies and hearts rather than stars.

Now for the actual items:
There are 13 patterned papers in the kit (let's call it 15 😜)
5 sheets of cardstock (which I'm substituting with patterned papers)
That brings it up to 20, but we'll call it 25.

First step to actually gathering papers is pulling out some stupid number like 100 just to guarantee I'll have lots to put away.  😒

I managed to whittle it down to half that, but not beyond.  I'm going to roll with it, but it will mean embellishments will need to be about double too.

Here is the overview of my kit - let's call it "Falling into Spring" because I'm a klutz and...well...we ARE going into Spring while the top half of the world does Autumn or fall.

Falling Into Spring 

 

 The Papers

Each set of pictures shows the "front" of the papers in the top image ("front" being what I think will go best with the kit).  The bottom photo in each set shows the "back" and most of the time it's an equally good match!

 

 

ABOVE LEFT: These six papers are all from Shimelle's "Go Now Go" collection which is actually an Autumn collection with a travel feel...or should that be the other way around?? 🤔 Hmm...Both sides of the papers I chose went equally well with the colours and feel of the kit that I was trying to portray, so it was a bit challenging to nominate a "front".  At times I left that decision til all the rest of the papers were chosen and went back to fill in "gaps" in the colour scheme.

ABOVE RIGHT: The first three papers are Maggie Holmes and other two are from different Amy Tangerine collections.  This was another stack of paper where both sides suited the kit very well.

ABOVE LEFT: A bit of a random mix: * one from My Mind's Eye, two from Lilybee and two from American Crafts "Campy Trails".
ABOVE RIGHT:  The first four papers are October Afternoon and the remaining three are Fancy Pants.  The apples on the blue OA paper reminded me that I wanted to include more papers with apple motifs.  This does mean I need to remove the same number of papers, otherwise it will upset the nice neat, even number of papers.

 


















ABOVE LEFT:  Now here is a blast from the past! The first four are Sassafras from a few different collections, and the last three are Basic Grey from their "Out of Print" collection
ABOVE RIGHT:  These papers are all Echo Park from several different collections ranging in theme from Autumn to family to camping. These colours are exactly what I wanted, since they're brighter and more varied than the typical brown and orange of Autumn, so they'll work with almost any kind of photos.

 
 

















ABOVE LEFT:  Four from various Studio Calico collections and two from Jillybean Soup.  There was a bit of Jillybean and butterflies featuring more than once in the original inspiration kit.
ABOVE RIGHT:  These four papers are all from Bella Blvd which are well known for their very bright colours,  The middle two are from an autumnal collection, but I needed to mix it up especially given the back of the orange woodgrain paper.  The cut aparts are just not the kind of thing that is useful here in Australia even in the Autumn.

ABOVE LEFT:  The first three are Pebbles and the coloured hearts are Simple Stories.  The hearts look as though they have been stitched which is perfect since some of my paper choices feature printed doilies or other fabric detail.  This also works well with an autumnal kit since knitting and sewing seems to be a theme in those papers and colder weather certainly means wearing jumpers and scarves!
ABOVE RIGHT:  *My little problem!  Partway through photographing the sets of papers, I remembered I wanted more apple papers.  This meant something had to go.  I removed the pink MME paper, but didn't take the photos again.  Fortunately I had not yet got to photographing the Echo Park set so I removed one of those papers too.  This made room for the two apple papers which also happen to have perfectly coordinating backs,

 

 The embellishments

LEFT: THICKERS
I definitely needed more than the single pack included in the inspo kit.  Even if I had the same number of sheets of paper as the inspo kit, I'd still need more than one pack.  I like mixing fonts in my titles.

Initially I chose three packs which hadn't been used.  The Amy Tangerine ones are so pretty, but I find them hard to use.  I'm determined to overcome this issue this month (or however long it takes me to get bored with them)


I went back to my Thickers and pulled out a bunch of packs that were partly used and very worse for wear.  They have been stored fairly carefullt, but the chipboard ones always seem to fall off the backing causing a huge mess.  I kept the Amy Tangerine and some copper/rose gold ones since a few of the papers of have rose gold accents.


RIGHT: LABEL/ALPHA STICKER SHEET
One smallish sheet of stickers in the original kit is nowhere near adequate.I like a lot of options for small flat alpha stickers which I use in subtitles etc...not to mention needing plenty of camera stickers for layering.  When you take into account the number of things I pile onto my layouts, the proportions of my kit become more understandable!

ABOVE: ACRYLIC WORDS  
I have lots of these from various places and made of different types of plastic.  The product focus for September over on the REDISCOVER YOUR STASH group on Facebook is acetate and I declare these words count.  I'm also throwing in some shapes from Studio Calico, cameras from Maya Road and I think the two Polaroids are from Basic Grey.

ABOVE LEFT: PUFFY STICKERS
Shimelle's puffy stickers from her "Little By Little" collection work not only in terms of colour, but  bring in the critters that feature in the original kit.  The Daily Flash puffy stickers from October Afternoon are actually autumn themed!  I mostly chose them for the apples and baking motifs!
ABOVE RIGHT: WORD STICKERS
I went with gold ones by American Crafts and multi coloured ones by Heidi Swapp,  If I find I need some extra tiny stickers then I'll pull those in.  Normally word stickers live on my desk so I just pull out the right ones as needed.  I don't worry about going back into my stash because if it means a page gets finished then supplies in my kit will be reduced by definition.




RIGHT: STAMP SET
My stamp sets are stored in DVD cases.  I always squeeze in at least 2 sets and cut them up if needed.  This one is no exception.  There are 2 Amy Tan stamp sets (Possibly "Sketchbook" and "Ready Set Go")and a third smaller exclusive AT stamp set that came in a Studio Calico kit.  This type of stamp set is good to include in a scrapbook kit because it has a mix of words and images.




 

















ABOVE LEFT:  GEMS
I picked this lovely large packet of enamel dots by Pinkfresh studio which I have used before and it has me covered for pretty much every colour of the rainbow!  I also included a pack of glittery gems from Shimelle's "Box of Crayons"
ABOVE RIGHT:  DISTRESS SPRAY STAIN

I substituted the spray with an additional embellishment since I don't usually include ink or other mixed media (except stamps since I have plenty) in kits that I create.  I use them as needed and consider them in the same sort of category as my paper trimmer!  In this case I chose one of the American Crafts "designer" sticker books by One Canoe 2.  The original kit contained some papers by 1 Canoe 2, so this is a nod to that along with having good colours, outdoorsy motifs and plenty of butterflies and flowers.

ABOVE LEFT: PAPER BOWS
Since there is no shortage of paper in the kit, I went with fabric bows by Studio Calico from their "Atlantic" collection along with some fabric tickets by Websters Pages.  I have quite a few packets of these and really should start putting them on pages.  I love different textures on my layouts and fabric suits the feel of the kit very well as discussed earlier.
ABOVE RIGHT: WASHI
Can you believe I only picked a single roll of washi? 😲  I'm sure I'll end up adding more and I'm OK with that!  Really really ok! 🤣 It's even one of my "special" Hambly tapes! I also added two Maggie Holmes rub-on pens.  I always forget to use them.

ABOVE LEFT: TWINE

I picked some hemp cord which is lovely and rustic and the perfect answer to this kit along with a copper metallic thread for yet another texture!

ABOVE RIGHT: RIBBON

I do have orange ribbon,  I have all the colours of ribbon, but I'm just not a fan of ribbon on layouts.  I have seem some lovely ones...just not any by me! 🤣  Tulle does look gorgeous, though.   I had this weird lacy bit of gold and white ribbon which is kinda along those lines.🤷  I just can't explain why I struggle with ribbon on layouts, but not on cards.  

I also found this box of randomness -  it had some bulky fabric flower embellishments by Maya Road, a scrap of Glitz garland, and some rosette embellies that no longer have sticky backs! 

ABOVE LEFT:DIE CUTS
My die cuts used to be stored altogether, in just a single large container.  When they outgrew this  solution and it became too difficult for me to pick through them, I split them into rough colour groups.  I needed a fast and easy solution to take them from and put them away again.  I definitely don't have the energy for some kind of long and complicated storage system.  When I first open a brand new package of die cuts, I try to keep them in the original packaging for a while and only integrate them back into my stash once they diminish quite significantly!
The other thing I sometimes do is amalgamate die cuts from all different collections but the same manufacturer.  This is what I did with all my October Afternoon die cuts and the more recent Amy Tangerine ones.  They are both very different, so they should cover every style and theme of layout.
I also ended up choosing an unused sheet of Crate Paper "Acorn Avenue" die cuts for something quite autumnal, but with a lot of green.
ABOVE RIGHT: CUT APART SHEET
Any cut apart sheet or similar in my stash would have been cut apart a long time ago and integrated into my die cuts.  Instead I chose an October Afternoon sheet of label stickers, which actually looked quite like the original cut apart sheet.  I also picked this cream and copper sticker sheet.  It's one that i struggle to use, but the copper is so pretty and goes reasonably well with the rose gold elsewhere in the kit.



















ABOVE LEFT: GLITTER LEAVES
The kit has 6 and this pack of Amy Tangerine leaves also has 6 left.  But no glitter.  This will have to be rectified. FAST!   While I was rummaging in my drawer of leaves and flowers, I found a zip loc bag of random paper and felt flowers.  I know the felt ones are stampin up, but i'm not sure about the others.  The colours are perfect and I want them used and gone.
ABOVE RIGHT: ENAMEL PINS
No way would i ever use enamel pins on a layout!  My craft apron has a pin collection so if I have an enamel pin that's where it goes!  I went with this pack of embellished paper clips from Shimelle's  "Box of Crayons" Collection as a substitute.  Very summery, but I need to have some such things to balance the autumnal elements.  I also came across a bag of random flair badges.  There doesn't appear to be any pattern in their selection, but they do seem to work well with everything else.  

Remember this snack tray that has popped up in my kits over the past months?  It sits on one of side of the desk and I use it as needed.

Then I discovered my overflowing box of frames and pile of doilies....the same will apply to those I'm afraid.

So  congratulations on making it all the way to end!

September being almost half over, I have no idea how many layouts I will end up making. 

I need to go though my photos and make some concrete plans so I get as much done as I can.  And I still have to bind *THAT* quilt. 😖


Love and safe stash diving!