July Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop Challenge

Hi and welcome to the July Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop Challenge! Thanks for participating in what I think is the best way to spend the 28th of every month. It is never the same hop twice! You should have arrived here from Christy's blog, but if not, head back to the Counterfeit Kit site to find your way.

This month the challenge was to create a layout using flowers in a creative way. I knew I wanted to go for the traditional red, white and blue theme and scrap some scenic New England 4th of July photos, but didn't know if flowers would work. I remembered back to a class I took at CKC where we used some of the Basic Grey paper circles to make large paper flowers and I decided to make some of those. They are actually really easy. You just need a bunch of different sized circles (I cut mine with my Cricut). You can crumple them up, distress the edges and layer as many as you want. I was drawn to the checkered paper and the cherry papers. Two other things about my layout. 1. I never write in cursive. Ever. But this layout was screaming cursive for some reason. I need to practice! 2. I ran out of the letter "A" so that is actually an upside down "V" in the title. Can you tell?

Thanks for dropping by! I hope you have fun on the rest of your hop. Next up is Alanna's blog.

July Counterfeit Kit Layouts #1,2 & 3

I'm back from vacation and and just trying to catch up on everything. Vacation was great - but not long enough! I was able to complete 3 layouts for my Lake mini album. These photos are from last summer. It was the first year we ever took the plunge and rented a boat. It was a 1970's special. Nothing fancy, but a lot of fun.

This year we decided to rent from a different place and go with a bit of an upgrade. Unfortunately, it was a complete mess. We only had the rental for 2 days. The first day everything was going well, but towards the end of the day the boat started acting weird. We called the company and they told us to bring it in the next morning. Well, on the way to return the boat, the transmission died and somehow a piece of the propeller broke off. We had to call to get them to come tow the boat. We lost the entire second day, which was paid in full, and had to pay extra to fix the propeller. It was a disaster all around and very disappointing for the entire family. It is a good thing I captured last year's happy times! Most all of my supplies are from my Liberty Shores Ad-On Kit.

July Counterfeit Kit

July Polka Dot Whimsy Inspiration Kit

My Counterfeit Kit:

Polka Dot Whimsy Liberty Shores Ad-On Kit

My Counterfeit Ad-On Kit

Gabrielle's Travel Kit

My Counterfeit Travel Kit

Happy July everyone! I have been eagerly awaiting the reveal of the July Counterfeit Kit and secretly hoping that it had something to do with red, white and blue! The Counterfeit ladies did not disappoint. They mixed things up a bit this month and decided to go with an older kit from 2010. The inspiration kit is a beautiful number from from Polka Dot Whimsy. I must say with all the great options this month, I've managed to put together 3 huge kits, but I'm not sure I'm actually going to get to use most of it. After a long winter, it is finally time for our annual vacation to the Lake! I know I'll take tons of new photos and I just ordered all my photos from 4th of July so I'm going to be a busy girl when I return.

Since I've got so many pieces in each kit, rather than go through all of the elements, I just want to call out a few highlights. The Liberty Shores ad-on kit is by far my favorite. I've got big plans for it. The top row of papers is from an old holiday stack I found. I threw in a bunch of 8x8 papers from a Paper Trey Ink Pad and I am super excited about all of the new Webster's Pages I bought at CKC in May. I love lobsters and the lobster sheet is my all time favorite. The Travel kit is mostly from a K&Company summer travel pad. I realized I don't have as much travel stuff as I thought and am jealous of those with fun travel stamps. I'm going to check out my Cricut carts and see what I have to compliment this kit. Can't wait for this month's challenges!

June Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop Challenge

Welcome to the June Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop Challenge! You should have arrived here from Helen's blog. This month's challenge was to make a page or mini album all about yourself with at least one "I" statement on it. I actually put together a whole "I" list. I ended the list with a beautiful quote that is painted on a wooden sign in my sister-in-law's house. I don't know who the author is, but these words greatly inspire me and felt like it was a good way to close out my list.

The layout design was adapted from an April Studio Calico Sunday Sketch. One of my "I" statements is I love the color Kelly Green. When I saw this paper in my kit, I knew this would be the base of my layout. I had so many beautiful flowers in my kit this month and just started arranging them on the page. One was a chipboard flower that I sprayed with Bonny Blue Mr. Huey Mist. I cut a single rose off my rose ribbon. Then I printed my statements on kraft card stock and cut each one out. On the top, I stamped and embossed a floral stamp and filled in the centers with blue eyelets. The final piece was adding the fun green ribbon along the side. My husband took this picture of me earlier in the year on my birthday - it was taken in our favorite restaurant.

Now it's time to head over to Becca's blog and learn more about her. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

June Counterfiet Kit Layouts #3 and #4

Here are two more 8x8 pages for my Lake album where I am capturing the beautiful scenery of the cottage and our summer family traditions. My goal is to have a 20 page album completed in the next two weeks. I've really been diving into my kit to make this happen.

For the Butterfly layout, I went with one of the pattern papers. I did add a sheet of black paper to my kit because I needed something to frame the photo and I knew I wanted to use the black lettering. I used Mister Huey Mist on the raw chipboard frame and then added a butterfly rub-on. I needed some orange so I snuck in one of the K&Co flowers.

For the Wave layout, I kept the K&Co flowers going. They came in so many great colors and I've enjoyed using them this month. I still have about a dozen pink ones left! I went back and forth on using the Scrabble letters, but in the end decided to go with it. Scrabble is also a Lake tradition, though I've never taken a picture of one of our very competitive games, the family will make the connection when they view the album. Plus, I had enough letters to complete the title so I took that as a sign. For the journaling, I used my Fiskars "wave" punch to add a bit of design.

Working on this album is getting me so excited for our upcoming summer vacation!

June Counterfeit Kit: Summer Sketch Challenge

I admit, when I first saw the summer sketch challenge I thought there is no way I can do that. It looked so complex with all those little pieces. Not only that, but I always use 4x6 photos. I have this mental hurdle when it comes to cutting photos down to a smaller scale. However, I had some duplicate copies of some summer photos and I decided to take a chance. I'm glad I did! This challenge was so ridiculously fun. I had a blast measuring, layering and choosing from my summer papers. This layout is a reminder to me that it is ok to step outside the comfort zone every now and then and see what else is going on out there!

June Counterfeit Kit: Ad Challenge

The first Counterfeit Kit challenge of the month was the ad challenge. Find an ad from a magazine, television, newspaper, ect. and use it to inspire a project! I am a big fan of white space so when I saw this Keebler ad I knew this was the one. My intention was to follow it exactly and use the same color patterns, but that didn't happen. I'm working on a mini album for a business trip to NYC that I took and was inspired by these pictures. The black buildings are Cricut cuts from the Winter Woodland cart.