21 January, 2019

RYS Challenge 7

Well...I'm on fire.  No, not really. 😂

See I planned to have my workspace de-cluttered and almost functional by now and promised not to make anything until it was a good part of the way there.  🤷

Yesterday I succumbed to the temptation of a clean desk. 😳😳😳

I have a lot I planned to do in January.  There is of course my vert special CKC kit (and no still haven't done any Forgery on the Fourth) and there is also a LOT going on at the Rediscover Your Stash Facebook group run by my friend Sara and Khristina Sorge.

January is traditionally a spending freeze and to boost morale (because let's be real - a shopping hiatus is bound to induce bouts of depression!) there are challenges and giveaways (including one hosted by yours truly so check it out and enter my giveaway if you want to win a scrappy prize!!)

I know I can cross over at least three layouts from these two challenges, but for now I bring you challenge 7 from RYS.  It would have been much more organized to start with Challenge 1, but I wanted something fast since I hoped to finish it before the rest of the fam woke up.  Didn't happen that way, but I got one finished nonetheless.

This is the sketch that Khristina posted in the group for everyone to use as Challenge 7.  A bit of banter later had me challenging Khristina to a scarp-off using this sketch! 😂

The first thing I needed to do was to convert it to a 12x12 layout since I don't scrap 8.5x11.

I decided to move the strip on the RHS to both the top and bottom, and the shapes on the RHS reminded me of retro video game elements.

I just so happened to have a photo of SmallCraftyDude playing a 1990s Sega Game Gear which happened to be taken with an "Old School" Polaroid camera.

I have loads of boy papers and plenty of gaming motifs.  In the end, most of the paper embellishments were partly from Crate Paper Boys Rule from 5 years ago and the rest from what REALLY inspired me - The Boyfriend collection by Cosmo Cricket.  Oh how I miss Cosmo!  😭😭😭

There is a little bit of Echo Park, Carta Bella, Jillibean Soup and a bit of Kaisercraft and some Cocoa Vanilla too.


 What I really wanted was to use lots and lots of textures.  I used plenty, but so many more possibilities remain for another day.   I was particularly pleased that a pack of Basic Grey rub ons - FLOCKED rub ons - still worked just fine!  I forgot I even had them and would have been ok even if they applied imperfectly.  More force was needed than standard rub ons, but they went on reasonably well!

I used some messy stitching to adhere the strips to the top and bottom, a few paper layers behind the photo and bravely tried some random stamping - in Distress Ink to get a slightly fuzzy imperfect feel.  Since I didn't know exactly where the embellishments would go, I had no idea whether the stamping would look OK.


It did require some pulling up and moving around.  This sketch is pretty far removed from my usual - no distinct areas of embellishment clusters and no scattered line either.

I decided to work it more into a diagonal line since I planned to have some in the top left corner anyway.

All that remained at that point was journaling.  That changed everything.  It created a large block of trapped space because I didn't wrap it all around to the right,  Disaster!!!  😫


Once I decided for certain to fill the space, I went with an acetate arrow and vellum word.  It just felt less heavy than chipboard or stickers or anything more solid and it had the bonus benefit of having a place to add more messy stitching.


I added another vellum video game critter to the top left to have another spot for stitching and to try and rectify something that just didn't sit quite right when I looked at it.  I got there in the end!

Well, back to clearing the craftermath and hoping to finish all my projects before the end of the month!  Hete's the finished page:



Love and successful crafty cleanups,


08 January, 2019

J is for January Counterfeit Kit and...

...Joy!  It'll make sense later I promise.

That's the Sneak Peek of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge January kit below and you know I was going to get on board with this!


December is traditionally a month of rest over at Counterfeit Kit Challenge and instead of the traditional kit, there are (usually holiday themed) activities in the lead up to the various holidays.


Since I don't celebrate any of them, I thought I'd bust out a very special kit I had been saving for such an occasion.  The thing is that December had me running around and doing lots of things for the Coffee Lovers blog hop and finalizing the giveaway and I managed to enter Altenew's colour inspiration challenge not long before the deadline of 11:55pm 31 Dec EST.

I was disappointed that I didn't pull in my special kit during December how I planned.  With January and another inspiration kit for CKC revealed, I definitely thought it was a bust.  Seeing the images of the inspo kit from Felicity Jane (Hannah from October 2018) the the CKC blog seemed to support that until a scallop print paper got me thinking.
 

As usual I'm getting ahead of myself, and as usual there's a bit of a back story involved.  I suggest now would be a good time to get comfy!

In March last year I was very excited to meet my friend, JOY from the UK when she came to Australia to visit her son who lives here in Melbourne.  We first met in Shimelle's Scrapbook Like a Superhero Facebook group!

We spent a day shopping and trying to find the remaining few brick and mortar stores still around in (naturally the outer suburbs of) Melbourne.  Naturally the subject turned to how we were going to scrapbook our day out.  I decided to do my page (although by now the plans for one have morphed into at least 4) in mostly green since that was Joy's favourite colour and one I struggle to use despite liking it a lot.  Joy did the same with pink which was my favourite and a struggle for her.


I decided if I included pink too, it would look really good with green.  Perhaps a pink that leans toward the peach slightly?

Sometime after that I accidentally stumbled on American Crafts's Autumn Crisp collection among my stash, which incorporated these colours and more.  The only photo of the two of us has a lot of lovely blue sky, so the green needs to be able to work with that as it does with Autumn Crisp. ⬅⬅⬅


I was trying to come up with a placement i was happy with and a few short weeks later, Shimelle posts this video on her YouTube channel for her Walt Disney Wednesday series,  It's about meeting Ariel so the colour scheme is a lovely soft mint green and shades of pink, peach and orange.  Shimelle used some of Dear Lizzy's (then new) Stay Colorful collection featuring mermaids and...MERCATS!!! 

The b-side of the MerCat paper was a lovely pink and orange scallop reminding me a bit of the ones in the Felicity Jane inspo kit.  SO...the scallop made me think of mermaids which was a natural progression to the MerCats which naturally led to this special partially pulled together kit. 😹😹😹

When you consider that the "Hannah" inspo is effectively a two colour kit (dusty pink and "duck egg blue" in various shades) along with neutrals (dark brown woodgrain and lots of black and white patterns which are synonymous with Felicity Jane then it's really quite similar!

My kit is predictably (much) bigger, but nothing like the last few I think.  It also looks more colourful which is inevitable when you consider that Felicity Jane's kit contents are all exclusive and custom designed.

Much of what I include isn't applicable eg a sticker sheet which has some stickers that work well and others I wont use.  This in part explains the size of my kit because more stuff needed to be added to compensate for all the ones I wont use.

I started dissecting the Felicity Jane kit in the usual way: 

The colours:
Peachy pinks ranging from a soft skin colour to dusty pink to a burgundy
Blues from duck egg blue to navy
Dark brown, white, black

Patterns:
Large floral
Stripes
Chevron
Polka dots/circles
Cross hatch
Grid
Script font quote
Other geometrics

January Kit - JOYFUL


The patterns and motifs in this month's inspiration kit are pretty general and non-specific so they will be easy to include and in addition,  since Joy and I are both crafters (and several of the stories are directly related to crafting), I included paper and embellies from at least a couple of craft themed collections.  We also thought it might be nice to have at least one paper common to both of us which ended up being:

"Here" from "Go Now Go" by Shimelle (I also love the idea that I can use up some of the maps and travel themed supplies)


And the rest of the kit
Colours - Soft Greens, Peach and some Pink
12 x Patterned Papers -
*1 x 6 x 6 Paper Pad
(Paper pads are also the product focus of the month on the Rediscover your Stash Facebook Group so I'm picking two)
*Wooden Embellishments
*2 x Mists
*Texture Paste
*2 x Stencils
*1 x Cut File
1 x Washi Tape
Stickers
Alphas

I wasn't even going to try sticking to the paper quantities (Sorry Joy!)

The items I marked with an * will have to be put together as an add-on kit perhaps...and along with the stamp set (which IS part of the kit, but I haven't picked yet).  I don't usually add any ink or mixed media type stuff for a kit but rather just pull it in when I need it,  This time I'm going to since Joy uses them often and chose them for our kit.  I want to ensure I use them on at least one of the layouts I plan to make.

Quite a few papers I pulled out are from the 12x12 paper pads and so don't have a b-side.  The others seem to have b-sides that work equally well as you are about to find out!  I figured I'd photograph them too, but it makes this kit look much larger than it really is!




Where the Felicity Jane kit uses shades of warm pink from very soft all the way to burgundy, my kit uses pinks from light to dark (B sides on right)






and palest peach to a medium orange (B sides on right)










Where the Felicity Jane kit uses shades of greyish blue from very soft all the way to navy, my kit uses greens and a few blues) from the palest mint to a medium green (B sides on right)







and teals, pale sky blue to navy (B sides on right)






 
Neutrals were in keeping with the inspiration kit: woodgrain and plenty of black and white patterns for which Felicity Jane is particularly well know (B sides on right)








I also added some multicoloured papers.  The closest the FJ kit comes to this is the mermaid scallops.  I found a similar scallop in the right colours that would work with my kit too (B sides on right)






 Instead of a set of 12 3x4 cards, I decided to use cut-apart-sheers.  Two are single sided and two are doubles.  (B sides on the right)





 Die cuts (including some special ones by Lilybee with a quilty pattern and a paint palette by Amy Tangerine) 😉. The rest are 2 collections by PinkFresh Studio and both the tags and ephemera from Echo Park Imagine That! girl collection stuffed into one bag.


I definitely needed more than one set of alphas.  I picked one brown and one black along with some small blue and aqua ones.  I tried my best to go fairly neutral since I haven't planned more than one particular page in advance.


Two sets of enamel shapes were needed to cover all the colour options along with some PinkFresh Studio buttons.  I also added some random embellies from rub-ons to badges to bows to acrylic shapes.  All great stuff to add dimension and texture besides paper


There are no stickers or chipboard shapes in this kit, but I needed them so in they went.












As I was trying to get my craftermath under control and search for the remaining items to complete my JOYful kit, I came across these.  Both Felicity Jane and Joyful had washi on the list (which I forgot).  I rectified this glaring oversight by inducing TWO rolls for good measure! 😂😂😂   And this other scallop paper in the right colours.  Will I use it? I really don't know, but in it goes!

This next (and LAST) lot of supplies can best be described as a mixed media add on kit?  As I mentioned before, Joy uses it more often than I do (at least on layouts, but I'm trying to remember it more often).



I forgot to include tickets in my kit, so I will have to do something about that in a forgery perhaps. The ribbon bows were intended to replace the tulle ones, but the tulle bows are so cute that I think I'm just going to have to mess about with tulle to!.  I promise I wont leave it until the fourteenth, but I just can't believe just how much all those small distractions (like having to be the algebra police during the school holidays) take up!

I just realised I also forgot to include a cut file for Joyful.  Let that be another challenge to resolve along with the stamp set and forgeries!!

Well I better get this posted before another week goes by (although I truly did start pulling supplies and blogging on the frrst or second of the month

Love and PROMPT supply selection