Rediscover Your Stash Challenge #3 and January CKC Kit

I know,  February is grinding to a halt and I'm finally using my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit from JANUARY and completing challenges from JANUARY'S spending freeze over on the RYS Facebook Group run by Sara Scraps and Khristina Sorge

So what was Challenge #3 for January I hear you ask?  It was about being a "copycat" aka scraplifting someone's work you like.  And here is a link to my kit reveal for January.  In that blog post I talk a little bit about the inspiration behind the kit and one layout I already planned was inspired in both colour and style by THIS ONE by the lovely Shimelle.  It was her page that helped me come up with pink and peach to go with the minty green.  That blog post talks a bit about that too.

Since January (and pretty much all of February) has come and gone, I decided I would use my kit as a starting point, but if I wanted something else that wasn't there I would just use it and not count it or anything like that.  These pages are too important to not use what I really want to.   There are lots of little details (aren't there always?) on this layout and pretty much all of them have relevance to the story.  You'll have to indulge me in going through them in detail for this special page!

I knew I wanted to use green since it's Joy's favourite colour (and a challenge for me) and she would do the same with pink.  I liked the idea of including some pink since this particular page is about us.  After watching Shimelle's YouTube video, adding peach struck me as a really lovely idea for something a bit different and the paper that looks like mermaid scales brings pink, peach and orange together.

This colour combination was further extended by incorporating  Echo Park's I'd Rather Be Crafting line.  Shimelle's layout was one of few that use themey papers and this one needed craft themed paper since the photo doesn't show this part of the story.  Joy and I met in Shimelle's Scrapbook like a Superhero Facebook group and the embellishment in the top left corner is a nod to that.  The one Shimelle used in the same spot was smaller and that's my only regret with this one since it competes with the title.  There were tiny versions among the stickers and die cuts from the collection, but they were too small and I needed to change the "my" to "our" in any case.

For the background, Shimelle used a pattern paper that was already made up of 2 patterns on the diagonal.  I've never been able to get my mind around it so I thought I'd try.  I did decide to use 2 different papers rather than a pre-printed version (one of them was actually the deeper turquoise from the same Dear Lizzy paper Shimelle used, because I couldn't find one that was exactly right),  I also felt that stitching was absolutely essential and partly due to the papers not lining up exactly.  Getting an exact cut on the diagonal isn't as easy as it looks!

The frame from American Craft's Autumn Crisp worked well with everything else,  I did mean to use more of it, but as it was I had to leave off so much that I hoped to include.  At least I have a few more stories and layouts to try to use more on.

I wanted to use that journaling card on the right, even though it probably takes up a bit more room than is ideal.  For some reason, printed accents like stitches or staples bother me, so I stitched over the dotted lines (ok so not exactly printed stitches, but it was a nod to the ones I used on the background) and used the Tiny Attacher to go over the printed staples.  I also added staples to the "superpower" accent (and stitching too) for the same reason.  Even though it was well into Autumn when we had our outing, it was quite a warm/hot day.  The card summed it up beautifully and oddly, the colours on this layout aren't totally UnAutumnal...at least not to me anyway!

I love punny titles or alliteration, so this one worked well,  The "Let's Go" was from Shimelle's A Head in the Clouds sheet of word Thickers which can sometimes be a challenge to use so I try to when I can.  And the word "JOY" was from a similar set of word Thickers from Shimelle's Little by Little collection now that I think of it.  TWO in one layout?  I'm on fire! 👍👍👍

See that wrinkly map above?  It's a blast from the past (FabRips by Studio Calico) which I kind of  scrunched when I stuck it down for extra texture.  I added a little bit in a few other spots.  It's meant to be subtle, but the idea of both local travel that day and international travel for Joy is the inspo behind it.

I absolutely had to include the graphic of Shimelle and a "glitter girl" sticker considering how Joy and I met!  Plenty of wordy stickers everywhere relating to friendship, adventures and having fun. ➡


While Joy doesn't come from London itself, I'm sure she will forgive me for using a double decker bus.  I have a few of these with little opportunity to use them.

A map of Australia would have to suffice to represent me (although I don't feel Aussie - is that odd?).  I'm always trying to find opportunities to uses globes and I thought I'd be able to add more.  Well there are several more layouts in this series so as long as I don't forget...

If you watch Shimelle's video, her page has lots of detail, while still remaining light and airy.  This one is definitely not airy, but I do love that all the "stuff" has meaning.  Even the roses - they are fairly synonymous with England (being their national flower and all of that!), but there are certain motifs that I consider fairly general and work well without specific reason,  Flowers are one of these.  I love flowers and roses are a favourite of mine too.

I hardly ever use a white pen for journaling, but I really wanted to this time.  There was plenty enough going on and it really didn't need weighing down.  The journaling itself may or may not make sense on its own, but a second page with a lot more detail and background info will be either to the left or right of this one.

A crafty motif tag on top of crafty
motif patterned paper?  Admittedly, more of that paper ended up being covered than I expected, but I used it as much for the phrase as for the motif.  Can you see more FabRips here?  And more word stickers and roses and gold mist and the coppery geotag (naturally not pointing to any specific location) and other sparkly bits (to the left of the photo) and in most of the other areas of embellishment.  That Maggie Holmes sticker book really got a workout!

...oh...and did you notice the small stickers saying "Joy"?  there are surprisingly many of such stickers and die cuts across many scrapbooking collections.  I did it because I could and it's such a beautiful name!

Let's Go On a JoyRide

Well done on reaching the end and I hope to see you back for the facing page in a few days.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to do something a bit different!

Love and crafty catch-ups!