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?