The Paper Girls Challenge #198 Girl Time

Hi Lovelies!

It's challenge time again over at The Paper Girls Challenge Blog and Challenge #198 is all about Girl Time. 

This might mean different things to different people, but whatever you enjoy doing with your besties is something to treasure. 

In the current climate of Covid-19, remembering the days we could get physically together with our friends and go out can be bittersweet, but it wont be too much longer I hope.  As someone whose health depends on everyone doing their part to adhere to lockdown restrictions, I'm very thankful to each of you playing your part.

In the meantime, I treasure the moments of the past by documenting them and staying in touch by virtual means.
 
Pretty much exactly a year ago, my sister and I enjoyed a spa day together, and this is the first of a couple of layouts about this trip to a town famous for its day spas.

If you are taking Shimelle's Start with a Sketch class and think my take on sketch #5.1 looks awfully like Shimelle's example in terms of supplies then you'd be right.



I tried various lines of paper that combined some florals with an autumnal colour palette, but they didn't have the vibrancy and fun I was looking to convey. 






See here's the thing.  Autumn in nature is beautiful, but in craft supplies it often seems to translate to orange and/or brown and of all colours, I rarely use these unless I'm working on a boy page maybe.

I only have the paper pad and some embellies from Paige Evans' Truly Grateful line, so my choices were slightly more limited, but seeing that beautiful bold floral in the background of Shimelle's page meant everything else paled in comparison.  I was also inspired by two of Shimelle's choices for the angled paper strips and while not identical, they are similar.

I was very pleased to use TWO words/phrases from those Thickers sets we all seem to buy byt struggle to use.  These ones were from Shimelle's Head in the Clouds line supported by some small puffy alphas from PinkFresh Studio.

There are several places where things didn't quite go to plan, but overall I'm fairly satisfied with the way it turned out. 

I was in a hurry to get it finished and cranky with the way the first official day of remote learning for TallCraftyDude was unfolding,

I guess I will have to wait and see how sketch 5.2 turns out!


 

Rise + Shine For There Are Adventures to Be Had

Love and scrap all the things!

Arty Divas Design Team Project 10 March

Hi Lovelies!

Today is Challenge 17 at Arty Divas.  This is a FORTNIGHTLY "anything goes" (any type of project and any theme) challenge with a design team who makes projects showcasing the sponsor who often offers PRIZES!

This week's sponsor is Jan's Digi Stamps
Online Shop - https://www.janmahew.com
Prize:



I wasn't entirely sure what I'd make when I chose the coffee cup image...only that...coffee-all-the-things! 🤷🙈🤣

I also knew I didn't have a whole lot of energy and even less workspace for this project until Operation Study ➡ Studio is complete...or Stage 1 at least!  This is what I'm dealing with:

 

At least most of the new storage is here so I'm getting along with that as fast as Arthur* will allow.  Which isn't really that fast!

I found an unopened jar of Stampin' Up mixed beads (circa 2004 🙈) in my organizing and there was one container in earthy tones, so a shaker it would be.  I added a bit of Spiegelmon Scraps sequins in Black Magic and Midwestern Harvcst to lighten and brighten.

My cutting the frame for the shaker was less than ideal, (but I was working on the floor) so it was probably a bit more challenging to construct the shaker than it could have been.  At least once it came to adhering the little corrugated holder (which I concertina folded) and the leaf sequins from the Midwestern mix, I could get back to using Glue Dots instead of the red tape (which I hate only a little bit less than wet glue!)


The cold Autumn mornings here gave me inspiration for the colours and the shot window when a major coffee chain sells pumpkin spice something (which I've never tasted and the acronym always makes me think of PMSL 🤷🙈🤣)

I'll add it to a card at some point (probably to a fellow coffee addict enthusiast) and that being the case, only a snarky sentiment will suffice.  I wonder if it's co-incidence that my fellow coffee girls are as snarky as me? 🤔🤔🤔

Coffee Cup Shaker

Anyway please enter the challenge and if you want me, I'll be making another coffee!

*Acronyms and other oddities in left side bar

Love and perfect cremas, 

CKC October Forgery

...on the fourth...ish. 😕

At least it isn't the fourteenth like last time, right? 😜

Part of the issue is that I'm not currently getting along with my Silhouette right now.

I managed to cut these (and some extra leaves) before it started misbehaving again.

If you watch the video of the kit unboxing, there is a cut file included which looks like a wedding ring quilt.

I have a similar cut file and also this one designed for stitching, so I thought I'd continue with the quilting/sewing/stitching vibe and cut a similar pattern by Paige Evans and stitch it instead.  I have to pop out a few more of those stubborn dots, though.

The other cut file is also by Paige Evans and it's an example of how Autumn and Spring are colliding - leaves in more Springy colours.  Not that you can't use leaves for Spring, but they are synonymous with Autumn so we're going with that.

I will definitely pull out some coffee themed stamps.  I have a lot...and I mean a LOT.

I might even tinker more with various pens in the Silhouette pen holder to see if I can get a good pen and paper combination which gives a crisp finish and no bleeding.

Not much to forge and to be honest even this is probably pushing it!

Now to make some layouts and try not to drop the ball on adulting and everything else!!


Love, and fabulous forging!

Counterfeit Kit Challenge October Kit

 I can't believe how quickly I have to do this again!  Well, if I'm going to be honest September was almost half gone before I even got my kit made and blog post up.  Then another couple of weeks before I even started using it, but September was a funny month. 🤷

World Cardmaking Day was on 6 October and our wedding anniversary was on 7th, so while I started hunting and gathering at the very start of the month...here I am 10 days later.  NOT the plan! 😖

Whatever are you talking about, PinkCraftyMama?  

What is a Counterfeit kit?  Click on the link and learn more!  The lovely graphic on the right is from their blog.
 
So this month the kit chosen for everyone to counterfeit is a Wild Hare kit.  It's a really interesting choice since Wild Hare are one of the few, but increasing number of companies who offer curated kits.  Here are the items from the very kit being "counterfeited" this month.

The particular example to be used is what I would call a "clean and simple" kit in the same spirit of the design style.  Clean and simple both in quantity of items and the style too.

Once I recovered from the horror that was only NINE papers (not ninety!) I realised that I would need to counterfeit a kit that was curated for someone like me.  A kit with say...ninety papers! 😂. Curating is what we already do at CKC so it's double curating!

I was so excited to see Becca Sadler was the guest designer for October!  I have got to know her through some great chats (and enabling of BIG kits) over on the CKC Facebook Page.  Once I went and saw her kit, I was happy enough,  It pretty much resembled mine exactly! 😳😂

Now we do what we always do and analyze the kit.  Sometimes the embellishments show things the papers don't, so it's always worth keeping them in mind for a balanced kit.  In the interest of breaking up this looong blog post (for which I cannot apologize enough!) I'll START with the embellies right here!

Also...if you click on the image, a larger more detailed pic should pop up.  I'm going to try to use smaller ones to keep this post a bit shorter.

Embellishments:

← ← ←Thickers. 
Yes there are a lot, BUT they are mostly messed up packs that desperately need to be used.  I added the coppery ones from last month and the woodgrain and colour ones I didn't use last month, but they seem to suit the feel of this kit even better!




Word Thickers.  → → →
Again a lot.  But I HAVE a lot and need to use them so I need to challenge myself (not mention needing variety and having commitment issues! 😂)

← ← ← Stickers.  

Lots of stickers!  These vary from almost finished sheets that I want to get rid off to ones from last month's kit to ones I struggle to use.  Many have been gathered from a pile of embellies that I had pulled at some stage and not put away.

I included stickers with a more coppery/rose gold finish to help me succeed with the rose gold Thickers.  Actually the sticker sheets from Shimelle's Go Now Go was one thing I really wanted to use last month but struggled so I'm giving them another try.

 
Sticker Books.  → → →
Several of these include both rose gold and coppery gold foil finishes to help with the above mission! 


← ← ← MOAR Stickers! 
Quite a few are seriously messed up sheets which need to be used.  Also trying to use up that scary sheet that screams AUTUMN!  It should be fine scattered among the less autumnal tones, but as I've said before I can easily scrapbook autumn photos since I'm not a chronological scrapbooker. 




 
Chipboard Stickers. ↓↓↓
I love the dimension of chipboard, but only seem to use the smaller elements with ease.  I picked some with the shades of gold I'm trying to match and am challenging myself to use more of ir especially the larger pieces.

Flat Alphas. ↓↓↓
There are a few above and I'm including this book of transluscent Amy Tangerine alphas which again are not as easy for me to use as other alpha stickers. 

Also, a Dear Lizzy double sided sheet in coppery gold.

I decided not to pick other flat alphas, but pull from this box that sits on my desk.  Anyone remember these?  Used back in the day for floppy disks. 😂 

The stickers in here are cut down and small sheets.  Larger sheets of flat alphas live elsewhere and get reached for first, so this month I'm making a real effort to made a dent in these little sheets.  ↓↓↓

ALL.THE.THINGS! ↓↓↓
Here is everything else!  The cork shapes remind me somewhat of the framed text embellies in the inspiration kit.  You might even identify  some things from last month like the fabric tickets and bows.  Plenty of puffy stickers and messed up dimensional stickers and word stickers and rub-ons and so much more! ↓↓↓ 

I like to analyze the motifs and patterns first, so that when I pull papers for colour, I can keep the motifs in mind to help narrow down choices.

I decided to recycle some of the papers from last month and vowed I would only choose the remaining papers from a growing stack that has been accumulating for months and not been put away.  The only exception was a few PinkFresh Studio papers (two were the same as in the inspiration kit) because I felt they were quite instrumental to the overall feel of the kit.

Patterns and Motifs:

Stripes (horizontal and diagonal)
Woodgrain
Watercolour
Chevron
"Retro" style patterns
Blocks
Stitching
Text (scripty and handwritten)
Bicycles
Large florals
Plus signs
Washi tape
Small scale geometrics
Scattered images
Cameras
Hearts
Flowers
Leaves
Coffee paraphernalia
I also added apples since there is at least one more layout I wanted to make with them and they seem to fit with an autumn-not-autumn type of kit such as this one.

Colours:

Hues and tones vary quite a bit for each colour and my interpretation of the kit tends to have an even greater variation

White
Grey
Black
Brown
Green
Blue
Yellow
Orange
Red
Pink

Now onto my kit...since last month my kit was called "Falling Into Spring", this month we'll go with "Spring into Autumn" since the kits are related and I didn't want the Autumnal feel to be so strong that it doesn'y acknowledge that we are well into Spring here in Australia.

Spring into Autumn

The first think I have to say that this kit is monstrous and I didn't even take a photo of everything together,  Not much point since the papers wold be totally obscured!  Now a PCM* rule when making up kits is that single sided papers from paper pads only count for half a sheet!

So...here are my papers mostly grouped by colour.  In the paired sets of pictures, the top image is the side I chose for the kit and the bottom image is the other side which often works equally well as you're about to see.

Black and Grey Double Sided Papers

Black and Grey Single Sided Paper

 

 

White/Cream and Woodgrain Single Sided

White/Cream and Woodgrain Double Sided Papers. 

Pink, Peach, Red, orange and 

yellow Single Sided

 Red and Pink Double Sided Papers

 

 Peach/Orange and Yellow Double Sided Papers

Green, Blue and Aqua/Light 

Blue Single Sided Papers

 

Cut-apart, multicoloured and 

"themed" Single Sided

Green/Teal and Aqua/Blue Double Sided Papers

 

Scraps from last month 

and one other piece

Multicoloured and "themed" Double Sided Papers

Apple, 'plus sign' and PinkFresh Studio Double Sided Papers

There is a lot of green compared to any one of the other colours in my interpretation of the kit (ranging from mint green to a light grass green to emerald green to teal), and more pink in my kit than in the inspiration kit (of various shades from a warm, peachy pink to a slightly cooler baby pink to a few bits of almost-hot-pink).  This helps the "Spring" aspect of the kit come through among the autumnal tones.  

I also included a lot more paper and embellishments with florals for the same reason.

Finally. my kit includes a few more embellies: 

Doilies and Frames 

 I have loads more frames to choose from, but picked a sampling of the sizes I'm most likely to encounter and happy to change any over if I come up with a better option.  I don't use them as much as I should, so any frame that ends up on a layout is progress.  I also found some random bits of twine salvaged from actual kit club kits from a good 5 years ago!

 My trusty snack tray 

 

Last month's selection of die cuts and 6x6 pads

 My partially used, random, dots and gems

 

Box of random leftovers

 

Phew!  

Well done on making it this far!  Even I'm ready for a cup of tea and some headache tablets! 😝. 

At this point I'm not sure whether I'll be forging this month, but I confess I did enjoy it last month however late it was!  

 

Thank you so much for stopping by and hope to see you again soon!

* ← ← ←Acronyms on left

Love, and crazy curating!

CKC Sept and Layering with Shimelle

Yes yes I know it's already October here, but not in the northern hemi and since that's where CKC is based...and I legit finished this layout yesterday.

This one is based on Prompt 16 of Shimelle's Layer On Layer On Layer class.  I knew I needed some apple layouts and I have at least 2 pie layouts and one about the OTHER kind of Apple. 💚💚💚

I managed just this one, but I'm planning to use whatever is left from this crazy kit as a jumping off point for the next one.

Infact I have a pile of pulled papers I have yet to put away so what if I limit myself to those? 💭

I'll decide that tomorrow when the CKC October reveal happens and this time I'll get that kit made nice and quick.



I also have a week to get an anniversary card done.  I have some experimental ideas for this one, but we shall see if eventuates the way I hope.

Oh right...I was talking about a layout, wasn't I?  Soz!

This layout started so well...I was really enjoying it, but had to pull off a bunch of things, move around and re-do large sections of it...like three times at least. 😫


 
I'm still not thrilled, but much happier than I was before the last and most drastic re-do.

I even managed to include three decent sized acetate butterflies for the RYS September challenge.

Missus Pie

Love and quick kit collating,