Stacy's Paper Crafts

CFK Challenge #3 Grid Designs

Are you ready for another Counterfeit Kit Challenge?

Today's challenge is to create a project using a grid design. You can incorporate the "grid" using elements, photos, or the paper on your project.

Don't laugh... but I literally sat over four hours staring at these photos trying to figure out how I wanted to arrange them. They were 4x6 prints, but after trimming them down some I worked out a layout that I am happy with.

Wegman's opened a new store in my community. I love Wegman's. We have 3-4 other grocery stores in close proximity but I hate their produce. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to produce. Living in San Diego will do that to you. It's not uncommon for me to drive 25+ miles to get fresh produce.

I know it sounds crazy but I love my fresh fruits & veggies :) Now that Wegman's is only a 5 minute drive I'll have more options for fresh seasonal produce. Not only that, they have the BEST gluten free section of all of the grocery stores within 25+ miles from my home. Granted a lot of the offerings are junk foods, but it's great to have options.

Anyway, once I figured out how I wanted to place my photos, I matted them using white cardstock, adhered them to kraft cardstock, and then adhered them to the blue cardstock base using foam tape. I added a few embellishments and some alpha stickers. I've had those alpha stickers in my stash for at least two years, it felt good to finally use them.

I also rediscovered my Making Memories Magnetic Date Stamp set... remember those? I forgot how much I love it. It's another $10 goody I've had in my stash for a good 8+ years.

Thanks for looking!

I hope you'll get a chance to create something for this fun challenge.

CFK Birthday Party Challenge

Hi Everyone!

Today's Counterfeit Kit Club Challenge is all about 

Birthday Parties!

{Photo Credit}

I love those rainbow colors!

I decided to work with the dominant colors in my kit this month...  kraft, pink, light blue, dark blue, & white. This layout showcases photos of Virginia Beach, Virginia, one of my absolute favorite places to be!

 My next project is a card, inspired by the heart place cards in the photo.

I die cut hearts from kraft, pink, & blue cardstock and adhered them to a white cardstock panel.

I then added some mini sequins and popped up the heart panel using foam tape, and then adhered it to the blue cardstock base.

You can check out this Pinterest Collection to select a photo to use as inspiration for your challenge creation. Don't forget to add your creation to the October Linky collection on the CKC Blog.

CFK Challenge #1 Inspired by Jewelry

Hi All! I have a card to share that I created for Counterfeit Kit Club's first challenge for the month of October.

CFK Challenge #1: Inspired by Jewelry 

The challenge is to use a piece of YOUR jewelry for inspiration!  Tell it's story...use it's design...and make sure to show us a photo of your inspiration, too.

This was certainly a challenge for me. The only jewelry I wear on a regular basis is a pair of gold hoop earrings and my wedding rings. I decided to play off the gold color & ring shape of my jewelry and created an anniversary card.

Unfortunately I'm not the greatest photographer and had a terrible time capturing the true colors, but trust me when I say this card looks so much better in person :)

I took a piece of white cardstock, adhered Mod Podge to it and then sprinkled on some gold glitter. I set it aside to dry and then added another layer of Mod Podge to seal the glitter onto the cardstock. After it dried, I cut rings from it using Nestability circle dies. I then adhered the rings to the cardstock base, and added some mini rhinestones to mimic the diamonds in my wedding band. The sentiment was stamped using black archival ink.

Thanks so much for looking!

How've you bean?

I sat down to create a card today using my Counterfeit Kit. I've had this coffee stamp set for awhile. I'll be honest, I haven't used it because it doesn't really stamp well. I remember creating a card using another image from this set, and it took a million tries to stamp an image that wasn't blotchy. I decided to try priming it to see if I could get a better stamped image from it. 

To prime it, I used a sanding block to gently rub over the stamp and that helped tremendously! It stamps pretty good now, I'm looking forward to actually creating with it! Here's a close up of the steam, I colored it using a clear Wink of Stella Glitter brush marker. LOVE it!

Thanks for looking!

 

Counterfeit Kit October Guest Designer

 

 

Hi Everyone!

I'm so honored to be a guest designer for Counterfeit kit Club for the month of October. This month we're counterfeiting the September kits from Cocoa Daisy kit club. There are several kits to choose from and it was hard to narrow down a choice, but I decided to counterfeit the "5th & Main" Kit.

The first thing I do when assembling my counterfeit kits is check to see if I have any specific kit contents in my stash that are included in the kit and add those first. If I don't have any, I begin with the patterned paper choices and build around them. I'll usually choose patterned papers that are in the same color family first, and then select papers that also have a similar pattern.

Then I choose cardstock that coordinates with the patterned papers. I try to choose embellishments that are similar to those in the kit, and if I don't have anything similar I'll choose embellishments that coordinate well with the patterned papers. For this particular kit I knew that I would want more embellishments so I added some extras.

So here's my kit. I don't normally use stickers other than alphabet stickers so I didn't have anything that would work to replace the sticker sheet. I may create additional DIY labels with text and/or images instead of stickers. I was really surprised that I did not have any dark blue alphabet stickers in my stash. I use blue a lot so maybe that's why. I pulled out my Quickutz Chicago dies & some extra cardstock to create some alphabet die cuts to use instead of the stickers. I have several types of label stickers in my stash but none that coordinate well with the patterned papers I choose so I used some label stamps & ink to create some.

I may add some additional ink, color mediums, stamps, stencils, and/or dies to create die cuts using the cardstock & patterned paper already included in my kit if I need it. This is what I'll be working with this month. Please check out the kits the kits the design team has assembled...

Angela http://colestoucan.blogspot.co.uk/

 Dawn  http://dawnsscrapbookcottage.blogspot.com

 Jemma http://just-jimjams.blogspot.com/

Julene  http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com.au 

Lesley G.  http://ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem.blogspot.co.uk

Lisa H. http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com/

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

Lynnette http://sassyscrapper2010.blogspot.com/

Millisa http://millermall.blogspot.com/

Stephanie http://skylinepaperie.blogspot.ca

 

Will you be joining us? We'd love to see what you create with your Counterfeit Kit.

More Sept. CFK projects

I can't believe it's the last day of September. Between my son & I being sick, I just didn't get a chance to create much with my kit this month, but I did manage to squeak out another card and a few tags yesterday.

Although my kit did not have winter theme, I was able to make it work for these cute snowflake gift tags.

Hopefully things will be calmer & healthier for us, and I'll be able to share more during the month of October. Thanks for stopping by!

Another Layout!

Well I surprised myself and was able to whip up another layout using my Counterfeit Kit. It's an 8x8 very clean & simple layout... but it's a layout and it counts! LOL

I pulled out my Dymo lable maker to add the "hello" sentiment, and used my Quickutz Jacqueline font dies to create the "Atlanta" portion of the title using white cardstock; and then I added a little shading to them using a little bit of kraft ink. I added a journaling tag  and tucked it behind the photo.

Over the summer we drove from Maryland to Montgomery, AL for a funeral for my husband's Uncle. This photo was taken as we passed through Atlanta,GA. I drove! Which is crazy, because the last time we drove through Atlanta all I could do is close my eyes and pray... from the back seat! LOL It just seemed like there were SO MANY CARS and they seem to be driving at least 90 MPH! This time around traffic was relatively light, and most people seemed to drive very leisurely. It was a bit strange. It happened to be a beautiful day, so maybe people were just enjoying the sunny drive? I'm not sure, but I'm thankful I got through Atlanta unscathed! LOL 

I hope your week is off to a great start, thanks for looking!

Summit Lake

Happy Monday! Hope you all had a great weekend.

Today I'm sharing a layout I created using my Counterfeit Kit.

In the county I live in, 6th graders in public school participate in "Outdoor Education," where they get a chance to go camping a few days with their classmates, teachers, school administrators, and parent volunteers. It's curriculum based, but the kids have a lot of fun.

I sent my son with great reservations. All of a sudden he's developed asthma, and a host of other allergies. We moved to a different county and region here in Maryland about four years ago so that may have something to do with it. I'm not exactly sure.

Anyway, right before he was supposed to go to camp, his allergy test results came back. Basically he's allergic to everything outside except for grass. Summit Lake Camp, where Outdoor Education was held, just so happened be surrounded by nearly everything the poor kid was allergic to!

After talking with his Pediatrician we agreed that we'd let him go, packed with an arsenal of medication & a nebulizer, and if he was absolutely miserable, or if the conditions triggered an asthma attack, I'd just go and pick him up. It's only about an hour and a half from our home.

So he went and had an AWESOME time despite three days of constant itchiness, swollen & bloodshot eyes, and being asked 50 million times if he was ok by friends, other campers, & teachers!

Whenever he looks at the photos he took, he asks if we can go camping there again. He took the photos that are featured here on this layout, including the "self pic" :) with a disposable camera, and without any editing too! Disposable cameras have come a long way!

If you asked him, he'd tell you that he isn't an "outdoorsy" kind of guy, but almost every photo he took at camp were of the camp grounds! LOL He kept telling me how beautiful and peaceful it is there.

BTW, Tim's doing just fine now. His asthma seems to be well controlled now thank God :)

So that's my layout & story. The Alphabet font I used was not included in my kit, and I hated to cheat! LOL But I remembered that I purchased those alphas specifically for this layout so I went ahead and used them. Everything thing else used was included in my original kit.

Thanks so much for looking!

September Counterfeit Kit

Happy Labor Day!

Doing anything fun today? I'm moving kind of slow today. I'm having my morning coffee at 3:30pm :) I don't think I'm going to do much of anything the rest of the afternoon other than laundry & cook dinner. I put together my kit for September's Counterfeit Kit Challenge. I'm going to sit down and create some things after DS goes to bed.

It's a little bit smaller than my kit from last month, but fun nonetheless. This color palette is a little softer than what I normally work with, especially for scrapbooking but I have at least one idea for a layout using it. I'll have to dig through my photos to see what else I can come up with, but I think that I'll be creating a lot of cards using this month's kit.

 

The kit selections are from July's Citrus Twist Kits. I chose products for my kit from my stash based on their Project Life kit.

Other than the products shown in the photo, I may pull out some stencils, additional stamps, coloring medium(s), glitter, and dies to create shapes and/or alphas using cardstock in my kit. That's my plan & I'm sticking to it :)

Two more cards

Today I'm sharing a few cards I made using the last few sheets of cardstock & patterned paper from my August Counterfeit kit. I created a 6th one and forgot to photograph it before mailing it... which is actually a good thing because it means I didn't wait until the last minute to mail it! LOL Sorry about the shadows, it was so cloudy when I photographed these cards. If you click on the photos you can enlarge them for a more detailed view.

First up, a slightly shabby thank you card, perfect for teachers & school administrators. I added a lot of kraft ink to distress the edges of the card, the focal image panel, & the doily. I also added kraft twine & a mini button to embellish the card.

I created this card for my son who's b-day is in a couple of months. I'm still trying to figure out where the time went. I will be a Mother to a teenager... craziness! LOL I let the patterned paper take center stage as I usually do when I create masculine cards. I added  foam tape, distress ink, and a mini paper clip to embellish this card.

The concept of creating a kit really helped me to reduce how much time I spent trying to decide which products to use. I ended up creating 4 layouts & 6 cards and I still have some paper scraps left over.

Did you create a kit this month? I'm looking forward to creating again using September's kit, maybe you'll participate too?

 

It's Back to School Week...

and so far Tim has had a great week! My son does not like school. He would tell you the best thing about school is Band class, P.E., Lunch... and 2:45pm when the school day is over! LOL Sometimes I wish he loved school, but I've accepted the fact that he just doesn't.

He's so smart and has a different way of thinking about things, which keeps me on my toes! He's taking several advanced classes and is thrilled about playing the French Horn in the Wind Ensemble this year. I'm so proud of him and I'm happy that he has at least one class that he will look forward to going to several times a week.

For the most part I always loved school. I didn't mind most of the work... except for Math. I never did learn to love... or even like Math for that matter! I can add, subtract, multiply, & divide well. But you can forget those ridiculous useless word problems, linear equations, and all the other stuff I have never found a need to use in my adult life... so far! I probably just jinxed myself! LOL

Anyway, with it being back to school week I decided to jump right in and get Tim's "First Day" pic scrapped & into his School scrapbook. If you click on the photos you can enlarge them for a more detailed view.

I'm still using contents from my August Counterfeit Kit. I added a mini paperclip & a button from my stash on this layout. The tag tucked behind the photo on the right side holds a little journaling about the photo.

I also used a lot of foam tape, applied some ink around the journaling card, and distressed the edges of the kraft cardstock base to add texture & depth to my layout.

I'm still loving that gold glitter & those mini wooden veneer stars :) I have a few more projects I'm going to share that I created using my counterfeit kit, but I still have a few sheets of cardstock, and some patterned paper scraps that will be left over. The color scheme & patterns are perfect for Tim's school album so I'm going to add my left overs to my school kit. You might see bits and pieces of them throughout the upcoming year.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

 

August Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop

Hi Everyone! Welcome to August's Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop! This month's challenge involves Geocaching... to add something hidden on our projects.

I added hidden journaling on a tag for my project. I wanted to keep the journaling private, but it basically talks about how my cousin & I reconnected after losing contact with each other for quite a few years. Love her ♥

I did cheat a little bit and added some paper doilies to my layout. It wasn't apart of my initial kit, but hey! I don't get to create layouts with a feminine touch very often, so it was a well deserved cheat :)

I used a lot of foam tape to add dimension to this layout. I also added some stitched holes around the top portion of the page & underneath the title.

I had so much fun with my kit this month. In total I created 3 layouts and 6 cards! It's been a long time since I've been this productive! I can't wait to create and work with September's Kit. I hope you'll participate too! Thanks for stopping by!

Leslie S is the next stop in the blog hop...

http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com

 

Here is the list of all of the participants, be sure to visit their blogs too :)

CKCB    http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com

Lesley     http://ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem.blogspot.co.uk

Lisa    http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com
Isbaha    http://isbahashome.blogspot.fr

Dawn    http://www.dawnsscrapbookcottage.blogspot.com

Leslie S    http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com
Bridget    http://sobejoss.blogspot.com

Milissa    http://millermall.blogspot.com

Jemma    http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk

CKC cards

Cards,  yes today I have some cards to share. One without any stamping, and one with a tiny stamped sentiment.

I cut a few of the little frames from the 6x6 version of this print...

to create this card. I added a wood veneer heart, applied red Stickles over it, and stamped a tiny sentiment below it. This card took me 6 minutes and 27 seconds, start to finish, minus the drying time for the Stickles.

I'm entering it into Paulina's 10 Minute Craft Dash, she's celebrating the 1 year anniversary of the 10 minute craft dash challenge. So fun! I love this challenge even though I've only participated a couple of times.

I love these little 3x4 snap cards, they are PERFECT for quick & easy cards. This card was also super quick & easy, 8 minutes 49 seconds! I cut down the 3x4 card featured a little bit, matted it on white cardstock, adhered a coordinating print, also matted on white cardstock, and slid that underneath. I then applied some star wooden veneers, and adhered some tiny rhinestones to them. I added foam tape to both cards to give the focal areas a little more depth.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

CKC layout #2 Tourist

Hi All today I have another layout to sharing using my CKC Kit.

I used my gold glitter again, but I also added red Stickles to the heart wood veneers. Love those little wooden pieces!

Thanks for looking!

CKC Layout #1

Hi All! I am sooo loving working with a kit. I've already complete two layouts & two cards! I used to subscribe to Self-Addressed back in the day, LOVED that kit club. Unfortunately they aren't around any more.

I once served on a design team for another kit club, sadly the owner had so many issues with receiving materials in a timely manner, her business folded too. She had some great kits!

After that I stopped receiving kits because unfortunately the scrapbook industry tends to cater to girls. It just seemed like all the kit clubs were offering flowery, glittery, kits. There are some designers who can work wonders with those types of materials & themes to create some awesome masculine pages. I was not one of them! LOL The industry has gotten much better in recent years, masculine & gender neutral patterned papers and embellishments are much more accessible compared to 5+ years ago. I may consider joining another kit club again in the future, but for now I'm going to enjoy creating my own kits.

Which leads to today's layout that I put together using inspiration from this month's Counterfit Kit.

I've been challenging myself to use items on my layouts that I typically don't use. I use glitter a lot on cards, and occasionally on layouts. If I use it on a layout it usually has a Christmas or winter theme, but I really wanted to find other ways to use it that would keep the masculine feel of the layout. I think this one is a winner :) You can click each photo to enlarge them.
Over the last year or so there have been several deaths in my family, and it really has made me think more about why I scrapbook.... to share our story. So I've been making more of an effort to journal better. Normally my journaling consists of a date, place, & title... which is usually enough, but I'm working on digging deeper.

I LOVE history, I love reading about the lives of people. I'm that person who often wonders what happened to the people at the end of a movie or book. I find that thinking about the questions that cross my mind when I look at photos of strangers, especially older photos of people who have passed, helps to guide my journaling... and talking to children. Children seem to have a natural way of asking the most honest and meaningful questions.

Thanks for stopping by today! I'll be sharing creations using my kit all week, I'd love to see something you've created that is inspired by my layout, or a kit you're using.

August Counterfeit Kit Challenge

This summer is just flying right along. I always think that "once school gets out" I'll be able to craft more. It has not been the case for me this year. I tend to be more productive late at night, so getting up early is NOT fun for me... or DS either when I'm working on 2 hours of sleep. Needless to say I try to keep those super late night craft sessions to a minimum during the school year. So I'm counting down to the first day of school! Just don't tell DS :)

A few weeks ago my new friend Valerie shared with me some layouts she created for the Counterfeit Kit Club I heard about CKC several months ago and loved the concept! Basically the club features an actual kit club, and challenges crafters to create a similar kit based on the kit contents, theme, color scheme, ect, using products they already have in thier stash. Genius if you ask me :) So this month I decided to play along! Here's the kit that I created using items from my stash.

Kit Contents:

12x12 cardstock {Brown, green, cream, orange, black, white, & kraft}

12x12 Sn@p Life Basics Patterned Papers

12x12 Patterned paper from Stampin' Up

24/Seven 6x6 Paper Pad

Letters Sn@p Alpha Stickers

"Rainboot" Thickers

Basic Grey Hey Boy Matchbook Alpha stickers

Labels Sn@p Stickers

Snappy Sayings 3x4 Sn@p cards

Studio Calico Hearts & Arrows Wood Veneers

Studio Calico Tiny Stars Wood Veneers

Dylusions Spray Postbox Red

Martha Stewart Gold Glitter

My goal is to use only the contents of my kit to create layouts and cards, but I may use some stamps & ink, coloring mediums such as Copics/BIC markers, watercolors, and/or oil pastels. I also plan to use some mini rhinestones, and use stencils, dies, & punches to create additional shapes & letters if they fit my project. So stay tuned, I've already completed two projects I just need to photograph & upload them to the blog.

Do you subscribe to a kit club if so which one? If you don't, is there a kit club that has caught your eye recently?