Bah Humbug

The January 1 sketch at Let’s Get Sketchy is perfect for using 3X4 cards like the ones I forged for my kit.  I’ve had this LO in mind since I saw it but I’ve been distracted by other projects (including this one for Kraft+ using the same sketch).

I did quite well sticking within my counterfeit kit for this page.  I had no problem with alphas for the title, since that was provided by my 3X4 card and the only things I added were the white star stickers (I could have punched some from white card) and the Christmas tissue paper I used in my Traditions LO.  Even though they will be in different albums, I didn’t want this one to look too much like my Cocoaflakes LO, so I left a narrow border at the top left of the LO and added my journalling with white pen around the edge of the page.

I have two more large photo Disney LOs to share from this kit (both started on New Years Day) and then it’s about done and I’ll be ready for February’s Counterfeit kit.  Have you seen the sneak peaks on the Facebook page?  It looks like it’s going to be a pretty one next month.

Cocoaflakes

As soon as I saw the sketch at Let’s Get Sketchy I new that it would be a great use of a 3X4 card from my CKC forgeries. Then I saw the challenge at Kraft+ and I knew I had to use the coffee and twinkle lights card.  The challenge at Kraft+ is to scrap about coffee using kraft card stock for the base.  My CKC kit contained coffee cup pp and it was about time I used my coffee stain stencil.

I went with a photo taken at Costa during a Christmas shopping trip, of Strawberry’s festive chocolate flake cake and hot chocolate replete with cocoa powder snowflake.  I pulled in a doily and few stickers from Shimelle’s Glitter Girl collection.  I punched some mini snowflakes from the blue of the coffee cup paper and made some holly leaf embellishments using a stamp and some red gems.

It took me a long time to think of a suitable title for the page.  I eventually went with cocoa flakes – for the cakes and the cocoa snowflake in the photo.

My page was almost done when disaster struck.  Can you see it?  I dropped my ink pad on the LO!  The page was covered in inky splodges but these are straight lines and I needed a way to cover them up.

I wasn’t sure what to do about it.  The design didn’t lend itself to covering the area with patterned paper.  I slept on it and decided to try snowflakes punched from Kraft card.

I put a couple over the ink pad lines and then scattered a few more across the page. I think that does the job nicely.  I’m getting close to the end of my Counterfeit kit now and I did some more scrapping last night and this morning.  This is the title page for my Disney Christmas album, inspired by Shimelle’s Most Magical Scrapbook course.

I chose the pink snowflakes paper to co-ordinate with the pink of the castle and pulled in some extra stickers to cover the overcast sky and a shrinkles Santa Mickey as the focal embellishment.  I had to stick him to the white floral wreath card with diamond glaze because he wasn’t quite flat.  I’m linking this with Studio Challenges, using snowflakes/winter theme.

There’s just two more big photo pages to complete and a different version of the Lets Get Sketchy challenge to finish (so that I can link up to their site with that one, because Kraft+ don’t allow entries to be linked to other challenges) and then I really will be down to just scraps.  It’s all laid out on my scrap table and I’m determined to get it all wrapped up this weekend.  What do you have planned?

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Christmas in Birmingham

Christmas may seem a long time ago, but my CKC kit contains a few Christmas items so I decided to scrap the photos from our annual trip to the Birmingham German Market to get it used up.

The German Market is becoming a family tradition.  We always have a bratwurst and a photo with the Bull Ring Bull in its Christmas outfit.  I take very similar photos every year but I haven’t scrapped many of them, so I went with a 12X12 page and a 16 pocket divided page protector.

I used the 15 Jan sketch from Stuck?! and I’m really pleased with the way it turned out.  I made the 12X12 background with white card stock and gutted the plaid patterned paper at the beginning of the month; so that I could make my forgeries and cut out the little house for my 2018 Goals page.

I’m not quite so keen on the pocket page but it is growing on me.  I have eight more photos; close ups of the market stalls to fill the reverse of the pocket page, but I’m still thinking about what to do for the other pockets.

I’ve put the pages in my album for safe keeping and I noticed that the pocket page is larger than 12X12 and my American Crafts ring binder is only just big enough for it.  The divider is October Afternoon, so if anyone knows where I can get a slightly larger album than standard please let me know.I’m doing really well with this kit.  That’s 7 pages done and one almost there; plus another 5 half done.  That will be 13 in total when I’m finished.  I hope to get them all done for next weekend to share before the January linky closes.

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Inspired by Nature

Are you ready for Challenge 2 at CKC?  Inspired by nature is such a perfect challenge for this kit when it includes the watercolour and ink floral paper from Amy Tangerine’s Sketchbook collection.  And I knew exactly what I wanted to scrap about.

In August last year I took Strawberry to a sketchbook class at The Civic in Barnsley, taught by local artist Louise Wright. Her work put me in mind of that same Amy Tangerine collection.  She uses watercolour and detailed pen work, to create amazing pieces inspired by nature.  Here’s one of the pieces she exhibited last summer:

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A post shared by Louise Ann Wright (@louiseannwright)

I decided to go with a white cardstock background and fussy cut the flowers to frame a photo of Strawberry and Louise; taken on the staircase in front of one of her pictures.

I thought it needed some more layers, so I pulled another sheet from my Heidi Swapp September Skies pad to mat the photo and added a layer of vellum under that. I also put a strip of the Heidi Swapp paper to the right of the page to help ground the photo:

That’s better, but I was worried about filling the space between the flowers on the left, so I cut one more flower from the Sketchbook paper and grabbed a doily before I started sticking.

I wanted to try a hand cut title. My initial idea was to try emulating the lovely white script titles Miss Smith hand cuts for her pages.  I printed the title onto paper with the idea that I could put the pieces together somehow to form a single piece and then cut it from white cardstock.

I’ve decided that the black looks quite nice and I’m worried that if I try to use this to trace onto the back of white cardstock I will ruin both black and white versions and I’ll have to start again. Strawberry thinks that if I copy the title into Photoshop I can flip it and squish the words together so that they touch – then I can print it onto cardstock and cut it out in white. I think I’ll give it a try, but in the meantime here is my page as it stands at the moment:

I’m thinking maybe some splatters and enamel dots to finish it off?  Or maybe some Louise inspired doodling?  I’m also planning a pocket page to go opposite, with more photos, journaling, 3X4 water colour PL cards I made for the kit, Louise’s business card and my sketching from the day.

I have more nature inspired art for this section of my album. The following day we went to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Strawberry did more water colour painting and I took lots of photos.

If you would like to see more of Louise’s art, her instagram is @louiseannwrightartist.  Maybe she’ll inspire you to join the challenge too.

If you are in the area she is also exhibiting as part of the Vs David Bowie exhibition at The Civic, Barnsley until 25 February.  We’ll be going if we make it up there at half term.

2018 Goals with CKC

Are you ready for the first challenge of 2018 from The Counterfeit Kit Challenge?  I have to admit to being stumped for a while when I read the e-mail.  I don’t set annual goals as such.  Last year I had a general aim to be more creative, the previous year I decided I was going away for Christmas and there’s always a general intention to declutter!  I’ve had numerous trips to charity shops with trolley loads of unwanted stuff over the last 3 years, but I’m still surrounded by piles of it.  I decided that I need a reason to reduce the clutter and redecorating seems to be a good motivation.  I’ve lived here for over 10 years and the carpet, curtains and fireplace in the living room, which I hated when I moved in. are still there.

Before we moved in I had a new bathroom and kitchen, a new carpet in the bedrooms, wallpaper in my room and new doors at the back.  Other than that the decorating was cosmetic – just a coat of paint on the walls.  I’ve done odd bits since – Strawberry’s bedroom got a makeover in 2016 and last year the back room was transformed from a Harry Potteresque Room of Requirements to a functioning craft room.  I try to be realistic with the targets I set myself; to avoid getting discouraged if I can’t do it all.  So setting a goal to get the house straight with some specific tasks seems like a good plan for the year.

For the page I decided to use the Jan 1 ‘Stuck!’ sketch.  I wasn’t keen on any of the whole sheets left in my Counterfeit kit for the background so I went through the collections I’d used to build the kit and pulled a neutral grey from Heidi Swapp’s September Skies.

I went for stars instead of diamonds and fussy cut a heart and a house from the B side of a piece gutted from the tartan paper (more of that in another post!)  For the photos I went round the house and took some shots of things I want to change; the clutter in the utility room, the kitchen shelf, the corner of the living room and my decorating scrapbook, which already includes a mood board for the living room.

My to do list also includes decorating the hall, stairs and landing and putting up more shelves in the craft room.  After I’d finished the page I realised that I should have included papering the downstairs toilet and clearing the junk from the garage.  Maybe I should do a car boot sale this summer – I tried a table top sale in 2016, but sales barely covered my table fee and since Strawberry broke my windscreen while I was setting up so it actually cost me money!!!

As well as looking forward and planning for the next year, January is also a time to look back on the previous year. I’ve done year in review pages in the past, but in 2015 and 2016 I did a Project Life Light album, so I wasn’t motivated to do another summary of the year. I didn’t do PLL for 2017 so I picked a photo for each month and put together this page:

There’s not a lot of white space in this design so I felt more comfortable using the bright aqua cardstock from my kit as the background.  I’m running short on the letter e and had no number 2 s left, so I had to go outside the kit for alphas. And it turned out I was short of the letter e all round and had to get creative with the title.

Creative is a good way to describe 2017. We went to 7 Comic Cons, where Strawberry met her favourite You Tube artists in the Comic village.  We visited museums and art galleries when we went to the Cons in London and Manchester.  She had a painting and a sketching lesson and completed Inktober. I had a scrapbook class with Amy Tan, took part in a photo challenge and we went on a scrapbook retreat together.  I wonder what my 2018 year in review page will look like.  Will I have photos to show I’ve ticked off my goals?

Whether you are looking forward or back right now we’d love to see your pages in the monthly link up.

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January CKC Kit Reveal – Instarsia

Happy New Year and what a great start to the New Year for me.  I’m so excited to have been asked to be Guest Designer at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog (CKC).  I’ve been an intermittent participant forger for sometime and once before as a Guest Designer. It’s a great principle: each month there is a sample kit to recreate from your own stash.  This month’s kit was right up my street with lots of bold colour.  Here’s the original kit: Fair Isle, Cocoa Daisy’s November 2017 kit.

And here is my version: Instarsia

I’ve included a lot of really old product here, combined with the odd recent purchase and it’s real mix of manufacturers.  I followed my usual methodology; trying to substitute for each of the papers.

Instead of a green snowflake I have a regular mint pattern from SEI: Christmas Mint, Meringue

I didn’t have a car paper with the right colour scheme so I substituted the coffee cup paper from Shimelle’s Glitter Girl collection

The stripe is from Heidi Swapp, September Skies

The green foliage is from Paper Salon’s Ornamental Holiday collection, Spruce Sprigs

My red dot is more regular than the original; it is Studio Calico’s Abroad collection, Destination

The text sheet has a subtle green water wash and is from We Are Memory Keepers Love Notes

The Plaid pattern is from Simple Stories Home Spun

The water colour floral is Amy Tangerine’s Sketchbook collection.

I don’t use coloured card stock much; I included the aqua and red but substituted a green watercolour polka dot from Amy Tangerine’s Sketchbook collection – we’ll see if they get used.

I didn’t have a multi-coloured spot vellum, so I included a blue star vellum instead and threw in an off cut of pink snowflakes for good measure.

The red alphas are Forever Friends, Cosy Christmas and the die cuts are Kaisercraft; purchased in a long ago Paperchase sale.  The tags are odd ones I found floating in my stash.  I included some wooden gold stars and had to buy some red gems because I had used all of mine.  I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to find red gems like the ones in the kit – especially given how close it was to Christmas: I thought they would be everywhere, so I ended up with heart shaped gems from Hobby Craft.

The paper clips with red and white scarves attached in the original kit looked like an easy counterfeit.  I didn’t have a suitable red and white ribbon, so I used a blue and green tartan instead: complete with a fringe snipped into the ends.

Instead of a sheet of stamps I have chosen to include my American Crafts Christmas roller stamp.  I had a higher proportion than usual of double sided papers and here are the reverse prints – you’ve seen that cut apart in a CKC kit before – I had two sheets;I think that should give me sufficient variety for a month’s scrapping.  I have some counterfeiting ideas from the accompanying PL kit and a 12 X 12 page in my head already so I hope to see more of you this month.

Please follow the links below to join the blog hop and see what the Master Forgers have come up with this month.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog – http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com

Guest Designer – Julie – https://jsquaredscrapspot.wordpress.com <you are here>

Leslie – http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com

Lori – http://loriannie670.blogspot.com

Tina – http://tinasscrapcorner.blogspot.com

Margie – http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com

Cindy – http://cindyscrations-cinmfoster.blogspot.com

Julene – http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com

Kelly – http://www.honeysucklehillcrafts.com

Laura – https://www.instagram.com/mrsp_scrapsandtea/

 

P.S. you can see I’ve already snuck some extras into the kit.

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Gibson Girls Ice-Cream

And more Disney Pages

My first page from my counterfeit kit is also the first page from my Christmas Disney trip in 2016:

It was inspired by this LO on my Pinterest board:

which was uploaded by Timea Kele but there are no links to the original source so I hope that is the original artist.  That first LO got me on a bit of a roll with the 12 X 8 photos I had printed from that trip.  Here are the first two of those LOs; the section divider for Christmas Day, which I kept very simple:And meeting Minnie and Mickey:

Those little red Mickey heads created from gems look like they could be a constant through this album.  I have three more pages ready for titles, journalling and embellishment but they will have to wait while I crack on with my LO for Challenge 1 which will be with you on 12th.

Hope you’re having a creative start to 2018.

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Disney Catch Up (part 3)

I’ve been carrying on with my Disney scrapping.  I’ve almost used up my Counterfeit kit for September.

The last whole sheet was a chalkboard print but it had a distressed teal on the reverse which suited my photo better:

For my next two pages I went back to my 2006 Album and scrapped a couple of my favourite photos: one from the journey there, which was taken waiting for the EuroStar.

I went with a kraft background and my Disney papers to co-ordinate with the Meeting the Mouse page which sits opposite in the album.  I added some stickers from Starshine and Say Cheese III, plus a large red car with luggage on top, which was further embellished with Say cheese II stickers.

The second page is the two girls in the hotel room on the first morning The background paper is left over from scrapping some photos from a trip to New York.  I added some mini alphas to change the title to Hotel New York.  I printed a couple of photos of the hotel from the internet but they were very cool in tone, so I decided to pop them in an envelope with the map of the park.  There’s more Disney papers on here, with a Say Cheese II Bingo card, a Shimelle cut apart and some rhinestone Minnie Mouse embellishments.

I more or less have our first Disney album planned out now and I’ll be working through the pages.  Hopefully Santa will bring us a tripod for Christmas.  One to hold the iPad so Strawberry can record her art videos for her You Tube Channel and I can do a flip through of the album.

Hope you get all you wish for this Christmas.

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Disney Catch up (Part 2)

Posting my next batch of Disney LOs is way over due.  I’ve been scrapping in batches – doing a lot and then nothing.  I’ll show these pages from our Disneyland Paris trip in 2014 in album order rather than the order I made them and it was this first one which had me stumped for quite a while.

For the longest time it sat on my desk with just the background paper (Crate Paper’s Boys Rule collection), the strip from Say Cheese II and the matted photos and I just couldn’t think what to do next.  It was great to finally get it done, so that it could slot in before the following pages from that same evening:

I used my August Counterfeit kit for these pages and threw in some extra bits including Say Cheese III and other Disney phrase stickers.  The bright colours are perfect with the larger than life Disney characters.

Next page in the album is Minnie Mouse; yet another character from the same evening.

I’m trying to decide whether to scrap the photos of Strawberry dancing the Macarena for the facing page.

The next pages are from our last day in the park, using my September Counterfeit kit.

This was the first 12 X 8 photo i scrapped for the album and I’m working out how to add some journalling.  I may be brave and write directly onto the photo!

All of these pages have been inspired by the fabulous Magical Scrapbooking course run by Shimelle Laine.  But this final one is a very special page: made at a class with Amy Tan, organised by Birds of a Feather.

The colour palette fits in the album, but the style is a bit different form the other pages.  I think I’ll be looking for an opportunity to do another page with a border and a colourful strip across the top.

I think that’s enough for now.  I am still ‘stuck’ on my villains’ parade double LO which I started at my retreat in September and I have a couple of pages half done from our Come Dine with Us experience at The Beast’s Castle at Disney World.  Here’s hoping my mojo can get those finished soon.

Disney catch-up Part 1

I realised I have only shared one double page from my weekend away at the start of September, so I think it’s time I correct that before I get even further behind.  Here are my pages made that first weekend in September in the order they appear in the album.

I made this page for the sketch challenge.  It is page three in the album – meeting Mickey when we arrived at the hotel.

I created this page as a ‘filler’.  I had two double pages and only one photo to go between – this fills the gap and I have since added a layer of vellum under the photo.

It sits opposite this page, made for the ‘just one thing challenge’.  We were given a kit and allowed to use just one other thing from our stash.  I chose my Say Cheese III stickers.  The circle paper from Shimelle’s Go No Go was perfect to use with September’s sketch from disneyscrappers.ning.com.

I went with a grid design for my Disney Villains photos.  Strawberry suggested the title.  Although it is from a 2015 film and these photos are from 2006 I think I can get away with it because it is sung by the villains’ Descendents.

And this last page isn’t mine.  It was made by Strawberry for the sketch challenge – using her own sketches in the film strip.There is one last double page to share from that weekend but it’s not quite finished.  Since I have returned home I have added some extra photos in a 6X12 pocket page protector and I have the journalling and a little more embellishment to do.  I’ve also done more pages from my second Disney trip and I need to take better photos of those.

I doubt that I’ll get that done before Saturday, when I’m off to Chateau Impney for a class with Amy Tangerine.  I’ll be back after that with more Magical Scrapbooking.

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