Creative Scrappers #189 with Counterfit Kit

I had a lot of fun with this layout! I'm really loving the mix of papers here, very different than what I would normally use. One of the challenges over at Counterfeit Kits is to use sketch #189 from Creative Scrappers to make a layout using our January kit. Here is the sketch:

and here's a bit of a close up of some of my embellishments and machine stitching:

I love this photo of me and Ailis, it really shows her playful nature! I wanted to write a heart felt note to let her know that she's the one that cheers me up whenever I'm feeling blue, but maybe I'll save that for another day, and another layout, haha! I left the journaling at this: "Every day with you is a party. Just want to say... It's as clear as day. You deserve a pat on the back." The first sentence can be treated as the title, and I cut individual words out of an old book and inked them with Distress Ink (not sure if you can see that bit). The other bits are cut from a piece of Echo Park paper. I tried my hand at a visual triangle with the Prima canvas key, clock, and dress form - did I succeed? Looking at it now, I think I may go back and put a pale blue half-circle under the key with the date - first I'll have to find the date, though! What do you think?

Anyway, happy Monday and thanks for looking! I'm feeling optimistic that this is going to be a good week, not sure why, but let's go with that feeling for a bit!

Supplies: MME, Basic Grey (misted), Theresa Collins, Echo Park and K&Co patterned papers, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist, Tim Holtz Distress Inks, Prima canvas embellies, Coredinations cardstock, Cuttlebug embossing folder, Close to My Heart stickers, book paper, doily

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Smash Book Post #2

Quick post today, just wanted to show you a couple of pages from my Smash book. This first one is one of the first I started. I was eager to try out some new things after Christmas, so I cut some wrapping paper with my new Lifestyle dies and used my IRock to blingify it a bit. (Apparently "blingify" is not a word, but I think it should be, how 'bout you?) Ailis has a heart of gold and was very upset that she couldn't buy Christmas presents for anyone, so she drew us each pictures and wrapped them up with some money she found laying around. That's the drawing she gave me on the right side, along with a recipe she wrote for reindeer food. Here's a closie:

Keep in mind she's only 6 and in French Immersion, so her spelling needs a bit of work! It says: Oats, love, sugar, dried berries. Gotta love it!

And here's a Roxy page:

A couple of semi-recent photos of me, a 12 year old gymnastics postcard that my parents picked up in Sydney, a couple of business cards, my top books from last year, and I thought that tag hanging down the center was pretty cool. It came with a pair of Converse sneakers that I love, and the date on it says 1975, my birth year (uh-oh, I just aged myself)! And I filled out a couple of journaling cards from my Smash pad, and it's done! From my last Smash post, I know there's lots of people out there with the books, so are you filling them up? If so, make sure you post your pages, I would love to see! Happy weekend, everyone!

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Layout #4 - Do You Remember?

After having so much fun making my last layout, this one seemed like a real chore, I gotta tell ya! It started off going great - I had the photos, the papers, a concept in mind, and this sketch from Get Picky:

I started scrapping away and then thought, "Oh no, my layout is totally bottom heavy!" I was really stumped, and that's when I added a couple more clouds and the bubble wrap/paint stamping, but ugh! I don't know, am I wrong?

The other problem is that the journaling is really faint, but here's what it says: "Grandma likes to tell us about how her mom would do these finger curls in her baby brothers' hair! It didn't ever work for Nolan or Ailis, but Brenna's hair did it! We all laughed and called her "Elvis Baby"!"

I must admit that I loooooove these photos, they really show Brenna's personality even at 11 months old! Along with Get Picky, I'm entering this layout in three other challenges:

Scrap Your Crap wants to see us scrap with 50% of our newest products along with 50% of our oldest stash. Well, those buttons, sequins, and Prima flowers are VERY old, as is the mulberry paper I used for the clouds, and the papers I used are among my newest purchases.

Scrapbooker's Anonymous A-Z Challenge is on letter F this month, and I used two Fancy Pants papers from the Baby Mine collection for this page.

Bird is the Word's prompt is "Remember". I knew I had a "Remember" stamp in my stash somewhere, and I found it and realized that even though it's one of my older sets, it's never been inked up!

Supplies: Fancy Pants and Webster's patterned papers, Kaiser jewels, Queen & Co sequins and brads, Close to My Heart ink and stamp, Sakura pen, DecoArt paint, Prima flowers, unknown buttons and mulberry paper

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November Project 12

Wow, I had a lot of fun making this page, but there sure is a lot going on here - do ya think you can handle it? Here's the sketch for November's P12:

And here's what I made with my Counterfit Kit:

It's pretty busy, but I think I like it! The sketch had so many photos in it, but when I was looking through my November file, I hardly had any decent shots, and not a single one of me or Nolan! Must've been a pretty blah month, as November tends to be. So, I used up my quilted paper to replicate the idea of lots of small prints, then I added my favorite shots (matted so that they would stand out on the busy paper) and some heavy duty embellishments for a fun look that's quite different for me. Here's a close-up of the left side:

I wanted to mist a canvas key, so I used it as a mask on the patterned paper and really like the result. (Plus, now I can enter this page over at Scrapbooker's Anonymous!) The background paper has some light misting, and I also misted some paper doilies and layered them with cut up Maya Road trim and cute buttons. Here's the right side:

There's the misted canvas key, and an inked canvas lock under the photo of my mom with Brenna.

Well, the weekend is pretty much over, and I'm happy to say that the weather has warmed up considerably and everyone's a lot happier, especially the poor doggies! Yesterday morning, though, I learned of a mill explosion in Burns Lake, our old town!!! I spent a lot of time on Facebook trying to gather details, but it sounds like the mill is completely destroyed, 19 seriously injured workers and 2 missing. I can't even imagine what the people of Burns Lake are feeling right now, and my thoughts have been very preoccupied with this tragedy. Not only will the injured and missing individuals and their families be affected, but it's an incredible blow to the economy of the town. This will be felt by many for a long, long time.

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January Counterfit Kit

As if my obsession with "smashing" wasn't enough, now I'm in love with Counterfit Kits! Have you heard of this site?! Every month they post several kits from one of the top scrapbook kit companies, and they encourage you to pull things from your stash to make a similar kit. They also post tutorials and links for making your own embellishments and papers! Well, this month is the first time I've played along, and I must say I'm loving how my kit turned out! Here's the inspiration kit from Cocoa Daisy that I've chosen to copy:

I was really drawn to the vintage feel of this kit. Plus, I have one of the papers already in my stash, and I just bought ruler print and banner print papers, so I figured it would be easy to match at least some things. It was a little trickier than I thought, because at first I wanted to match every single item. Once I got over that and decided to go with the vintage theme, then it was easier, and this is what I came up with:

Here are the 12x12 papers I had in my stash which seemed to match. The top row is old Close to My Heart stuff, and the bottom row is brand new - the three on the left are MME, then Theresa Collins and Graphic 45.

Then I saw this great idea from one of Counterfit Kits' Master Forgers, Helen, on how to duplicate the October Afternoon paper Attic Trunk:

I used 1.5" squares of some CTMH Notebook and Blue Ribbon scraps, as well as some other unknown scraps and inked book paper, and glued them to a 12x12 sheet of cardstock to make this bright patchwork quilt type paper. Pretty neat, thanks, Helen!

Then I pulled out some more scraps, a new pack of Prima mistable canvas, some Prima flowers, a Tim Holtz stamp, some postcards, doilies, shipping tags, trim, and 6x6 papers I won to add to the kit:

I also printed out some vintage images that Counterfit Kits linked up on their site. I'm planning to use them as journaling cards or tags.

And finally, this bunch of stuff:

The top row is left over stickers from CTMH's Notebook line, and the bottom row is an embellishment pack I won from Lovely Bug Bits 'n' Bobs - very cute buttons in this kit! Now I just have to use what's in this kit, and I've already started by working on November's P12 layout with it - I think it's going to look really cool!

Now here comes a bit of a rant, so fair warning - I won't be offended if you skip this bit, and I'll try to keep it short. P12 is changing its format, and I'm really disappointed! Previously, they put out a new Becky Fleck sketch for us to work with each month. They've done away with this, there will be no new sketches. Instead, we are to use old sketches from the past two years. We can use whichever sketch we want for whatever month we want to. We can also incorporate the color suite challenge into our layouts if we want. I don't know why I was so disappointed, this seems like a lot of freedom to do it however we want, which should be a good thing, right? Maybe I'm just PMSing, or maybe I look forward to the new sketches and reveals more than I thought, or maybe I just need more direction and structure, but I'm not excited about this new format (or lack of format!) and I don't think I'll be playing along. Instead, I decided this morning that I will make a counterfit kit each month and use that to do my own month-in-review layout. Feel free to join me!

Okay, that's the end of Roxy's Rant! It is very cold here, (-36 C or something) and the school buses aren't running, but I made my kids go to school anyway. Call me mean, but I think they'll have more fun at school than doing nothing here! Plus, when I'm stuck at home with Brenna, we like to lounge all morning in our PJ's, and the older kids being here would cramp our style! What do you like to do when it's too cold to go out?

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Christmas Past!

Did you hear the sad news? This is the last challenge for Sketchy Thursdays! I am completely devastated!!! I had a private dream that one day I would be a Sketchy Thursdays Fave, but alas that dream is no more! (Unless they pick me this week, and although I love how this page turned out and it means a lot to me to scrap this photo, I have my doubts that it's "fave" material.) Anyway, here is the sketch:

I stuck very closely to it, and used a new kit I won from Simple Stories - Love. It. I had a hard time figuring out what papers and stickers to use, because they're all sooooooo yummy! I think I'm going to put aside the rest for next year's December Daily. I'm also entering this page over at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge, where they've asked to see a photo of a Christmas in your past. This photo was the only one I could find of a Christmas with my Nana in it. She lived in Australia with my Papa, and although I've been over twice and they came over a handful of times, there was only this one Christmas with them. Now that she's passed away, the opportunity for more Christmases with her is gone. (I'm not sure where Papa is at the time of this photo - did he take it, or is he just out of the shot?)

Well, I hear Brenna screaming at me (why is she always screaming, she sounds like a stuck pig up there!) so I better end this now. Goodbye, Sketchy Thursdays, I'll miss you, sniff!

Supplies: all Simple Stories except CTMH cardstock, Tim Holtz Distress Ink, and Creative Memories pen

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Creative Accents January Challenge!

This month at Seriously Creative Challenges, the prompt is "Let it Snow"! You can make a card, a layout, or any other project, as long as it involves SNOW!!! It has been a very strange winter in our neck of the woods, with not much of the white stuff - in fact, I just heard that the annual dog sled race that happens here has been canceled! We are supposed to get a dump this weekend, so hopefully there will be enough for the Cariboo Marathon, which is a big cross-country ski race that happens here in February I believe.

Anyway, here is my project:

These photos have been in my "To Be Scrapped" pile (do you have one of those?) for a while, and they were taken close to four years ago now, but honestly, they are the most recent snowy photos I could find! I love them, because they show us on one of our many family walks in one of my favorite places in the world, Dawson City. I'm not sure why I loved it there so much, as it's one of the coldest, darkest places you can even imagine, but there's no accounting for taste! A close-up of the journaling:

Uh-oh, I just realized I made a booboo on the last line there, and I wasn't even drinking! And here's a close-up of some misting I did using a doily as a mask:

I did this on purpose so I could put this layout in over at Scrapbooker's Anonymous - they want to see some masking this month, with paint, ink, or what have you. I wish it turned out a bit darker, but, on second thought, that might have been a bit overwhelming. I used white paint on all my paper edges for a bit of a snowy effect, and I also painted my chipboard letter stickers - some are green, others are pink, but you'd never know it! To finish it all off, I made some bling swirls with my IRock tool and a Bazzill template by two of the snowflakes. I was going to add a third by the far left snowflake, but my batteries were dying and I needed to get this in on time. What do you think, should I add more bling, or leave it as is?

Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and please mark this challenge on your list of "To Enter" challenges for January - if you do, I'll love you forever!

Supplies: Coredinations and Bazzill cardstock, Echo Park patterned paper, Heidi Swapp chipboard letters, Sakura pen, Imaginisce IRock tool and gems, Bazzill swirl template, Maya Road doily, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist, unknown die cut snowflakes

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Happy Birthday Sarah!

Here's a card I've been working on for a few days for a fellow Seriously Creative DT member, Sarah. Now if you think you're having deja vu, you are because this card is very similar to the last one I made! I kept my Kraftin' Kimmie Roxy stamp and MME papers out, and built on the design of the last card. I was pretty content to work on this card for a while because I got to use my new Lifestyle Crafts dies and my iRock tool. Check out that bling! You could light the northern night skies with this puppy! I didn't have enough matching cardstock or patterned paper to make a card base with, so I inked and stamped up some plain cream stuff with the matching MME stamp set and some Broken China Distress Ink. And then on the inside:

Voila! Another Roxy Rolla! I thought that turned out pretty cool, but I don't know that I'll do it all the time, as it's a lot of work, but seeing that Sarah got shingles over the Christmas holidays, I figured she deserved a little something extra! Oh yeah, and it's her 30th, too, so that's a pretty big deal, right? (Just because I don't want to even think about my 30th, ahem, Jason, doesn't mean I can't appreciate the fact that it's a big milestone for other people!) Anyway, Happy Birthday for Saturday, Sarah, hope you get some wonderful scrappy goodies, and I'll get your card to you soon!

Well, I missed the sketch challenge at Sweet Sketch Wednesday, but I can still enter this card over at Kraftin' Kimmie. This week's prompt is to "shape up" and use 3 or more shapes on your card. I've used a rectangle for the card base, dies cut scallop squares, and flowers (I hope flowers count as a shape!) Thanks for looking!

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My first SMASH book!!!

Oh my, I think I've found a new obsession! And no, it's not the man you see in the pages above (he's my old obsession, haha!) It's SMASHing! I'd heard of these books and items from K&Company before, but when I saw them at Creative Accents during their HUGE Boxing Day sale, I knew they were right up my alley. I bought the orange book and a "Family" Smash pad, and got to work almost right away. This is good for me because I keep EVERYTHING as souvenirs, and now I can have a place to put it. At first I struggled with how I was going to organize my book, but now I'm into just placing things more randomly. This is the first page I've filled up completely, and I think it's pretty neat! It's got some old passport photos of Jason that didn't get used in a passport, a tag from when he took Nolan to Bowron Lakes, a couple of photos from his last birthday, another photo I printed off last year of the Irish cream he likes to make for Christmas and didn't include in my December Daily, some sticky tabs (including chest hair, ew!) from when he went to the hospital last year with chest pain (they didn't find anything, maybe it was a panic attack?), etc. You get the picture! Another thing I'm loving about this project is that I can use up old supplies and scraps, like the Heidi Swapp decorative tape I've had for years, and the Creative Memories letter stickers I bought as a consultant and still have three partial packs of! I can also bring this project with me to the kitchen whenever I want and work on it with minimal supplies, which is fabulous when Brenna's constantly into my scrap stuff in the basement and can't work down there! Anyway, this is an ongoing project, so if you like, I can post pages throughout the year as I finish them. Thanks for looking!

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Happy Birthday Jenn!!!

I had to take a break from December Daily to do some card making, especially when I heard it was my bloggy friend Jenn's birthday coming up! I "met" Jenn 2 years ago when we both joined a group through Close to My Heart. Everybody from the group set their own goal, declared it on their blog, and we supported each other by commenting on each other's posts and linking everyone up on our sidebar. Through these past two years, the group has changed a bit, some members have blogged more than others (and I think some have disappeared from blogland forever!), but Jenn's been a constant. She's been with me through the birth of a baby, my husband losing his job, and a move, and always with a positive and uplifting comment. So, even though we've never met in person (and I don't even have her address!) I think of her as a true friend! Happy Birthday, sweetie, and as soon as I get your address, I'll get this bad boy in the mail for ya!

So, onto the card. Jenn's a big Kraftin' Kimmie fan, so using a KK stamp was a no-brainer. I decided to pull out ol' Roxy for the second time, and coloured her up with Copics to match this My Mind's Eye patterned paper. I used this sketch from Seems a Little Sketchy (new site I found!):

Flipped it and changed it to a rectangle, but it's still basically the same. Then I had to break in the new i-rock to make a little flourish (can you tell it's a flourish?) I had big ideas of doing up the inside, but after making some HUUUUGE mistakes, this is how it ended up:

Now I just have to write in it (how am I gonna do that? Hee hee!) and mail it! I'm also going to enter this one over at The Pink Elephant, they're having an "anything goes" challenge this week.

Speaking of challenges, I am challenging myself to create 52 layouts, 12 fancy cards, and 24 simple Christmas cards this year. I'm also hoping to finish some mini albums I started and didn't ever complete, not to mention this darned December Daily! How about you? If you need a little kick in the pants (or just want me around to comment on your each and every post!) why not join in on our 2012 Challenge? We'd love to have you!

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December Daily Day 16

I didn't really have much to say about December 16th, so I made this spread about the cards and pictures that we made and sent.

Here's the left had side:

Isn't Ailis cute making her cards? Everybody was very appreciative when she gave them out, it was really sweet!

And here's the right side:

I used a piece of vellum for this one, and at first I was kind of bummed that the card front I attached doesn't really go with my colour scheme, but it's kind of grown on me, and I felt it needed to be included in the album, so...

And here's the back side:

It worked out that the three wallet size photos fit perfectly onto the same spot as the card! I know I'm a bit biased, but I love these photos, I think my kids look just beautiful! (And I know it's virtually impossible to get them to smile into the camera like that, so kudos to the photographer!)

Well, I had planned to do some sort of New Year's Day post, to kind of sum up the year and lay out my plans for 2012, but I'm just not in the mood! So, thanks for looking, I hope everyone had a lovely New Year's Eve, and I will get to that more personal post soon - my Christmas tree is begging to be taken down, and seems like it's not going to do it all on its own! Virtual hugs to all of you, and thanks so much for making 2011 an enjoyable blogging year for me!

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