Wonderful, wonderful ...

Welcome to the final post of the October CKCB Members' Blog Hop; if you didn't reach me from Raelene then you might want to start at the beginning with Lisa (the full hop list is here).  We had a choice of three challenges to use for the hop (#1 Snip, Snip! , #2 Balance The Scale, #3 Paying Dress Up) or indeed, anything made from this month's kit.  I've already joined in with #2 with this page, and decided to finish off the Danish part of my Scandinavian road trip album by putting the remaining Copenhagen photos onto a double page spread:

Despite putting loads of navy alphas into my October Counterfeit kit, I didn't have enough letters to spell Copenhagen ... so two "3"s had to do duty as "E"s and that "A" is an upside down "V" with a cleverly positioned heart ... my thanks to Lesley for suggesting this!

I've room for a little journalling with some memories of a lovely foot and bicycle friendly city with a wide range of things to see and do.

We'd love it if you joined in next month's hop, so why not keep an eye out for November's  Kit-to-copy on November 1st and sign up by November 18th.

Aperto for Business!

Welcome to the final post of the August CKCB Members' Blog Hop; if you didn't reach me from Salla then you might want to start at the beginning with Lisa (the full hop list is here).  We had  a choice of three challenges to use for the hop (#1 Happy Sandcastle Day, #2 Outside The Stash, #3 Sounds Foreign To Me) or indeed, anything made from this month's kit.

Using my August Counterfeit Kit, I used Italian to title my double page spread about a surprise tour of an Italian castle!:

The blues and browns of the kit were the perfect mix for both interior and exterior shots of the Catello di Torre Alfina.  We've visited this quirky town many times over the years - it has an excellent Gelateria!  The castle, however, has always been a mystery.  Never open to the public.  Until this time!

We don't read or speak Italian so we weren't quite sure if we were allowed through the open door ... but others were wandering around taking photos so we joined in!

People then started gathering around a staff member, but we still had no idea what was going on and hoped we wouldn't get chucked out.  However, another member of staff worked out that we were "foreign" and we ended up having a private tour for two of the newly-opened-for-occasional-tours castle!

We were so happy that we'd been cheeky and walked through the green door ... it was a fabulous experience.

I hope you enjoyed the CKCB Members' Hop this month - why not join with a page next time?

Whimsical Musings #200

Many congratulations to my fellow CKCB Master Forger Lisa who runs another challenge blog - Whimsical Musings - she and her team are celebrating their 200th weekly prompt!

I've watched WM from afar and admired their sustained creativity but the celebration has finally given me the impetus to use a couple of their older prompts and some of my older Counterfeit Kits to make a dent in my photos.

First I found WM#146 Be Inspired By Buttons (probably my favourite embellishment) and used my November Kit (which still had plenty of buttons in it) to make a DLO for our Scandinavian road trip album.

I had visited Stockholm's Skansen 30 years earlier so it was fun to re-visit in 2013 with Hubby.  Not a huge amount had changed (well open-air museums don't do they?!), but there were living history guides to explain the exhibits and demonstrate skills which made the day really interesting.

I particularly loved the house on stilts ... which would be at snow-level in the winter!

I find DLOs are a great way to combine a bunch of un-related photos from a day out.  Those ice-cream spoons didn't deserve their own page, but they still make me smile so I wanted them in the album somewhere!  I took loads more photos of course and I've scrapped some of the animals we saw in the zoo section here.

Another half-finished CKCB kit got a final pounding for WM#136 Inspired by Woodgrain as I scrapped another open-air museum we'd visited.  This one, Vallby, was on the outskirts of the town where I lived in Sweden and I remember going there around the mid-summer celebrations which are a BIG thing in Scandinavia.  Nothing quite so exciting this time, but we still enjoyed seeing the various buildings and listening to the living history guides.

I didn't have a lot of paper left from this kit, so I've had to get creative with a border punch and paper strips.

Plenty of woodgrain in those photos - I'd been fascinated by all the fencing methods too!

See that wooden board on the bed ... it's the bed-bug remover!  During the day, they would hide in the holes drilled into its surface and they would then be killed by holding the board over a fire - yuk!  I get itchy just thinking about it :-(

Monster Park

How suitable for Halloween: a park in the Sacred Wood, full of weird and wonderful monstrous (as in large as well as mythical creatures) sculptures. Last year's trip to Italy yielded a morning's visit to Bomarzo where there is a very old sculpture park from 1522.  It was neglected for many years and evntualy restored (after a fashion) in the 1950s.

I did start attempting the 3rd Challenge from the CKCB with this spread - to use Just One Thing other than photos, cardstock and paper - i.e. the semi-transluscent leafy washi tape which gave different effects depending on the background surface. However the giveaway pile at my recent Bloggers' Retreat yielded the most perfect giant gromlet that I had to interpret the challenge as just one thing that wasn't in my original October Counterfeit Kit!

I'd printed photos specially for the retreat but had somehow forgotten to select the bottom left one (of me in the mouth of a picnic cave) so I had to use a scrap of cardstock during the weekend.  I'd used it to practice with the MS border punch and liked the effect so much that the final photo had to be given a border too!

The sculptures weren't that scary after 500 years, but I certainly wouldn't fancy going walking there this evening!

Spring Perspective

Welcome to the start of April's edition of the Members' Blog Hop from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog.

I've been creative with my April Counterfeit Kit to make another Disney 2004 album double page spread ... and use up a bunch of square brads from my stash!  Inspiration came from Challenge #3's Spring theme and I met the challenge by matching the fresh and vibrant patterns and colours from my kit with some orange cardstock.

It feels good to stop hoarding those brads and get them onto a page!  I made the smaller letters for title from three layers of cardstock to match the chipboard "g" of Gatorland using Blossom Quickutz dies.

As I've been so bad at blogging recently, I'll share another page from the kit with a totally different vibe featuring a different tourist attraction and a more recent holiday:

Edinburgh's Camera Obscura has 5 floors of optical illusions and amazing immersive entertainment!  We took dozens of photos of all the madness there including these shots of Child No.3 & I playing with perspective!  More black cardstock for my title, this time with Sizzlet Go Go Boots dies plus a little washi from my kit to separate it from that eye-watering black & white chevron pattern!

Next stop on the Members' Hop is the lovely Sherrie and you can find the full list of participants Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog today.

Two For One

Welcome to February's edition of the Members' Blog Hop from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog; our guest designer Doris started us off and now you have me!  I've been a bad blogger again, so today, you'll get not one but TWO layouts made with my February Counterfeit Kit!

The first was done for Challenge #1 this month - use something sheer or transparent on the page.

I'd included some brightly coloured vellum and used it to mat one of the journal cards from my kit which formed the title to a page from last summer's road trip with fellow Master Forger Lesley:

A "random" sprinkling of sequins from the kit added some texture above and below the vellum.

In fact Lesley "features" on my second offering for the hop because I borrowed her Sizzlit Notecard alphabet dies to make the title feature on this double layout from my Scandinavian album:

I often do a double page in holiday albums to include lots of photos of architecture or views from the cities and attractions that we visit, giving a feel for the place rather than telling a story.

It was a little tricky with this month's kit as many of the papers were from a 6x6 pad, but careful use of strips behind the photos gives you the impression that I used larger pieces!

Next stop on the Members' Hop is the lovely Tina and you can find the full list of participants Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog today.

Matchstick Museum

Hubby had a must-do on our Scandinavian road trip last year and I had a must-see: I wanted to visit the match museum in Jönköping! Not that I'm an arsonist with a fascination for matches, you understand.  No!  The one thing that I could remember learning about Sweden in school Geography lessons was that matches were manufactured in Jönköping.  Only I pronounced it "John-coping" in those days because I didn't speak any Swedish; nowadays I know that it's pronounced "Yearn-shurping".  I spotted the name when planning our route between Malmö and Västerås and when I saw that there was now a match museum instead of a factory it seemed an ideal place to break our journey.

I have a thing for mechanised processes and was fascinated by the match dipping, drying and boxing machines that were on display.  These particular machines were a mixed blessing for the locals; they reduced the risk of Phossy-jaw for the workers, but they also took away people's jobs and caused hardship.

Hubby and I spent a good while there enjoying the displays and videos (thankfully in English as my translating skills are beyond rusty), admiring the myriad matchbox designs and making our own match packages from paper (and in true scrapbooker fashion I've included the packaging stamp on the page).  

The sculpture was part of an art exhibition ... there was a film clip of a replica (or the original) burning to nothing.  After giving up on a Google search, I've just found out the name of the artist via Facebook (!) - Jill Lindström - the full video is here.  It takes 4 minutes for the statue to collapse and 10 to burn out!

I've used the Teresa Collins' My Name Is Collection along with some grey cardstock, fabric Thickers and made a little dent in my collection of brads!

Very Versatile Vellum

My first DT post over at S J Crafts has just gone live ... I've been playing around with the most versatile product: starry vellum from the Crate Paper Boys Rule collection.  I'd already used it once for this page to tone down the bright stripy paper, but I found another four fun ways to use it, including a pocket ...

... which helped me squeeze 14 photos of No.2 Son with crazy cartoon characters (from our Florida 2004 holiday) onto a double page spread:

{click on the picture for a larger view}

The title letters are cut with Sizzlits Round-a-bout dies but the page is so busy that I had to doodle around them to help them stand out a little more.

I had originally planned to spread the word "Characters" across the two pages, but annoyingly the word wouldn't fit without leaving one letter across the page join or another obscuring part of a photo!  Once I'd decided to split the word and keep it on the RHS, I hated the empty space left on the LHS ... and added the word "toon" in an effort to balance it all a bit.  Ggggrrrrr!!!!  Next time I must remember to plan my title a little better before sticking everything down!

The page supplies, including the starry vellum, are all from Crate Paper's Boys Rule collection (see here for details of the products and all the other ways that I've used the vellum).  While you're over at S J Craft's blog, don't forget to check out their March Prize Challenge - the deadline is March 31st.

P.S. I've already made a Lean Mean MAXI book with these photos for No.2 Son, but now we get to keep them in our holiday album too.  Do you ever scrap the same (set of) photos again?

Secret Style Swap

Lisa recently asked the whole Master Forger team over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog to define our scrapbooking "style" by answering a questionnaire.  She mixed the style sheets up and supplied us each with the answers provided by another Master Forger.  We were then challenged to make a page in the style of our secret swap partner.  I was hoping I wouldn't be required to scrap with too much pink or florals or glitter ... and luckily I did manage to avoid all of those!

Today the Master Forgers are sharing the results of the style swaps and you may have arrived from Dawn (especially if you started on the CKCB here).

While I was waiting for my style swap partner's questionnaire I had a bash at scrapping according to my own answers:

• started with a sketch
  (#6 from Scrapbook Generation's Travel Sketch Book)
• used a colourful, cardstock background
• chose several event-themed, cropped, standard-sized prints
• stuck to straight lines and geometric patterns
• kept things clean & simple with no messy techniques
• placed elements off centre and used visual triangles
• distessed/sanded/inked/torn/stitched edges
• used classic products from a variety of collections
  (my October Counterfeit Kit)
• mixed up my title letters and added handwritten journalling

... and because I had answered that I occasionally do double pages (and that book of sketches is crammed full of brilliant ones), it seemed appropriate that there was a second page of photos from our free walking tour of Copenhagen this summer:

... making a double page spread that I recognise as mine, but is probably a little cleaner and simpler than most of my single pages thanks to the number of photos:



Then it was time to have a go with my style swap partner's answers:

• start from a single momentous, standard-sized photo
• use a neutral, patterned paper background
• feature clustered angles and visual triangles
• strike a balance between sticker sneeze and clean & simple
• centralise the main elements
• keep the tones muted with organic and girly patterns
• use classic products from a variety of collections
• mix up the title letters and add handwritten journalling
• distress/sand/ink/tearn/stitch edges

I think I managed most of the instructions: a single, cropped, photo from No.1 Son's recent holiday in Thailand, using muted papers and mixed-collection embellishments from my November Counterfeit Kit along with a scrap of girly (?), swirly patterned paper.  The title is made from two different alphabets but I have yet to add the journalling because No.1 Son can't remember the name of the restaurant they ate in ... I shall have to call his girlfriend and find out.  To be honest, I forgot about the edge distressing and struggled with the angled clustering, but I really like the use of a neutral patterned sheet as a background and will definitely be trying that again.

Now all that remains is to guess just whose style I have counterfeited ... I was torn between Lynette, Milissa and Stephanie because most of the other Forgers love getting messy with inks ... but I have to choose one, so I'll plump for Milissa!

I wonder who Julene was swapped with ...and whether she had trouble adapting her style?

Ups & Downs

I'm not really here ... this is a scheduled post.  I wanted to share some more funky chevrons with you (made like this, but with varying width strips).  This was for A Trip Down Memory Lane when I was their Guest Designer back in March 2012.  Unfortunately their DT gallery had a melt-down shortly afterwards and they haven't reinstated the pictures from March 2012 or earlier!

ATDML were kind enough to send me a selection of Echo Park About A Boy papers and stickers and I had fun making 5 pages from the supplies, including this double pager about Parc Güell in Barcelona.

We had a lovely day there in the Spring of 2011, celebrating our Silver Wedding with the whole family.  We even saw a Google bike surveying the park ... AND it saw us!!
The images appeared sometime this year on the park's Streetview and I can see our group buying earrings at the top-most viewpoint and I'm caught on camera again taking photos of the view further downhill with my (im)patient family in the background about half an hour later!!!  Shame that the photos have to have the faces obscured.

I also wanted to remind you that the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog's first August challenge is up today.  If you fancy joining in with the Member Blog Hop on August 24th - this is the one to look at!  I'll definitely be having a go, providing I can get some good photos while I'm on holiday!  Hope to see you there!

Wet & Windy

It's wet and windy today which reminded me of a page I did a while back as J for Julie's A-Z.  At least I can stay indoors today, but back in 2002 we were all hoping to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee with a street party so wet and windy was most unwelcome!

We started the day dry ... and it was certainly warm enough to wear shorts and T-shirts ...

... but shortly after the children had polished off their food ... the heavens opened, giving everyone a good soaking.  We even had hail!

I've used a Sketch Support travel sketch, various Papermania Portobello Road papers and some Bo Bunny Christmas alphas :o)

The story of the day was blogged one Sunday in June back when this year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations were in full swing.

I Was A Mummy ...

As children we don't always think about our parents as real people - they provide & protect, comfort & cajole. Their lives surely revolve around us: we are the centre of their world :o)

Eventually as we get older, realisation dawns that our parents were alive. Just like us, they studied, travelled and partied; they were not always so staid, so stay-at-home; they might even have a tale or two to tell.

Those two paragraphs are written on one side of a tag on this page in my Book Of Me - an 11.5"x8" album that contains pages about me and my past.  On the other side of the tag is one such tale, about my fancy dress exploits in Sweden, prompted by the photos which recently surfaced on Facebook!

Drinking in Swedish pubs was shockingly expensive so it was perfectly normal to have a few liquor-store-bought drinks at home with friends before hitting the town. The prices encouraged us to host and attend parties most weekends and these were often themed to spice them up. Here we are, a mix of Brits and Swedes in the lads' house in Bjurhovda in 1982. I can remember thinking that Karin's carrot outfit (an orange sheet and a plastic fern) was simply inspired, whereas my bandages kept slipping and gradually revealed more and more as the night progressed!
Fun times :o)

The photos and story were committed to paper (made with the remains of my October Counterfeit Kit) thanks to inspiration from the UKScrappers Cybercrop - just about finished now - though there are some "use your left-overs" classes to come today.  And this post is part of  Siân's Storytelling Sundays - there will be lots more Sunday stories here (all comers welcome)!