Colourful Marvels

Did you have a good scrappy weekend?  The Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog hosted a weekend of inspiration and colour-themed projects.   I had a play with Challenge #4 to include all the colours of the RAINBOW of colours in a page.

Some photos of No.1 Son meeting the cast at Marvel Superheroes Island in Florida's Islands of Adventure certainly deserved a colourful layout and I had included plenty of colourful stash in my May Counterfeit Kit.

My page started life using the May sketch from Scrap365 but the use of the Boys Rule Race Track paper in the background led me to titling the central block, Time Tunnel style ...which is more fun don't you think?

Apart from that rectangle of rainbow striping I've written my journalling in a variety of colours and included plenty of other shades to the page.

P.S. The joy of this sort of page design is the ability to "gut" behind the large blocks giving me plenty of spare yellow cardstock and, more importantly, the centre circles of the Race Track paper to use on another layout!

Style-ish Scraplift

At my recent scrapbooking retreat I was getting to know my table-mates Karen and Michelle and admiring their skills with masks, stamps and inks for making beautiful backgrounds when Karen challenged us to get out of our comfort zones by swapping styles.  She reckoned it would do me good to get inky for a change and she might have fun trying out a more blocky C&S style.

The Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog had a challenge to add texture to your background which needed doing.  I also wanted to have a go with Scrap 365's March sketch and wondered if I could replace most of the layers of paper with layers of texture paste and ink ...

I used a 6x6 Crafter's Workshop punchinella stencil and some texture paste to add 2 strips of small dots across the page as well as a scrap of white card for an extra layer.  Once these were dry I added some colour to the background before inking through a chevron stencil right across the page.  This was then overlaid with the 12x12 version of the punchinella stencil and more texture paste.  Finally I added some ink splatters before layering up the photo on scraps of paper from my March Counterfeit Kit.



The page needed a little more colour ... a sun made from a spiral paperclip and some washi combined with a few of my kit's starry gems did the trick.

Hmmm ... it certainly is inkier than my normal but you'll note that I still had to have my layers horizontally placed across the page!  Karen adopted the blocky graphic style of one of my pages but couldn't quite resist adding a few trademark ink splats - we are obviously both creatures of habit!

ETA: Here is Karen's style scraplift of my original page.

Do you have a particular technique/style that you struggle to avoid?  Do you ever style-scraplift your friends' pages?

Zoom In Zoom Out #4

As promised, a happier ZIZO post from me ... and (nearly) at the beginning of Helena's weekly link-up for a change.

First there's a shot of a little flag cluster made last year at the Green Button's retreat using my October Counterfeit Kit after some tips on using washi tape creatively from my friend Jolene.

And if I zoom out a little ... there's the layout with the flags in the Readers' Gallery in the latest issue of Scrap365, using a photo from last year's Swedish road trip.  Along with washi tape covered die-cuts, I'm using one of my favourite stitching techniques to outline my title letters.

And while I'm, not so subtly, using ZIZO to blow my own trumpet :-D  I'd also like to share that I recently applied for the Design Team at the UK on-line store S J Crafts ... and was accepted!  Sarah broke the news here on her shop blog on Monday.  I'm looking forward to having a play with some of their lovely stash and working alongside a very talented team for the next three months.  Wish me luck!

Rain, Rain Go Away!

Challenge #2 over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog involved using at least three contrasting patterned papers ... something I wasn't very keen on doing when I first started scrapbooking, but, having put my Counterfeit Kits together, it's become much simpler to use multiple patterns as the hard work of mixing 'n' matching has already been done.  Here I have combined my March Counterfeit Kit with this month's sketch at Sketchbook365.

Can you count how many different patterned papers there are?  I make it ten, counting the vellum of my counterfeit  pocket.  I inked some BG White Chocolate Chip alphas to match the polaroid frame and cardstock.  This page was made during last weekend's Bloggers' Retreat and I was able to borrow all sorts of exciting crafting equipment.  My thanks to Ruth for her fun cog dies and curly border punch and Missus Wookie for her lovely stamps.

The page tells of our worries that the incredible downpour in the afternoon would continue and ultimately ruin our chance to see "Fantasmic" which we had planned for that evening .  Luckily, despite it raining on our journey to MGM Studios, we enjoyed a dry (if chilly) evening and a brilliant show!  My night-time photos were rubbish though so I'm glad that I could get the memory into our Disney 2004 album without them.

Late Night Caching In Vegas

 

Back in March 2012 I was visiting Las Vegas with some girlfriends and we certainly saw plenty of sights.  However there was sight that I did not see: the Bellagio Fountains from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

"So what?" I hear you ask.
Well, the thing was, I needed to photograph the fountains from the top of the Eiffel Tower in order to claim another of the virtual geocaches in the city.   Jacqui agreed to keep me company after our visit to see Penn & Teller (awesome show ... truly magical, highly recommended), while the rest of our group took a separate taxi back to the hotel.

Late night traffic was heavy and it was a slow drive to the Paris Hotel but there was no queue at the ticket desk to ascend the tower lift.  A cheesy souvenir photographer delayed our arrival at the base of the tower where there was a short wait for the tiny lift, guarded by a wonderfully knowledgeable pensioner in red jacket with gold epaulettes.  Only she would not let us into the lift!  No!  Some "priority" guests came up a private stair-case and were allowed to go first!  Right in front of us!

We Brits know how to queue; we delight in queueing; we don't like queue jumpers! However we Brits aren't that great at complaining, so we just stood there and rolled our eyes.  That'll teach 'em!!

We finally squashed into the lift and made our way towards the top.  We caught glimpses of the illuminated  fountains through the girders when suddenly we heard loud bangs ... gunshots? ... cannons? ... fireworks?  Our lift operator cheerfully informed us that this signalled the last fountain show of the evening, it now being midnight!  What?  How could that be?  Midnight isn't late?

We had a wonderful view of the fountains, duly photographed to claim the geocache, but they weren't actually spraying any water!!!

My page is based on this month's sketch over at Sketchbook365 and the remnants of my November Counterfeit Kit match the colours from UKScrappers' Simple Recipes challenge this month.

All That Glitters

Welcome to the second of January's challenges for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog.  This one was to add glitter, bling, sparkle, pizazz to your project!  But I had nothing glittery in my January kit - so I had to improvise in the way that we counterfeiters do LOL!

I took some unloved brads, and a beautiful, but not-the-right-colour star-shaped brad from Susanne's swap packaging and got busy with VersaMark ink, some glittery embossing powder and my heat gun:

Transformation complete, I set to work on my page.  Remember how I failed on my JYC?  Well I also gave up on my 2011 Project 12 after only 2½ months!  Which was a shame as I love my Project 12 album from 2010, and I love the year in review hidden tags I did for JYC 2009 and JYC 2010.  So I decided that I'd do a double page summary for the year, based on a lovely sketch over at Scrap365 magazine's website.

The year was a bit hit and miss with photos (hence the Project 12 fail so early in the year) so I couldn't find one decent photo for every month.   Instead I made sure we were all on there with a couple of feature photos representing some of our year's activities.

I had fun decorating each of the circles at the top of the tags - with snippets of my counterfeited Pink Paislee Mistable Ribbons, some of the contents of my counterfeited October Afternoon Flower Sack, a few buttons and the glitterfied brads.  My month names are stamps from a Scenic Route set and the free font is Veggieburger.

In my January kit I had two ways for counterfeiting the mistable ribbons - fabric (strips torn from an old sheet) and paper (border punched tissue paper) - and I promised to let you know how I got on with them.
I haven't tried actually misting on them (no mists LOL), but started by colouring them with two shades of Fiberscraps Tintz: dabbers which dispense a colour-wash a bit like very watery paint.  Both took the colour well, but the tissue paper distorted and crinkled really badly as it dried.  It took a while for the fabric to dry, but I used some of it on my 2012 goals page for the first CKCB challenge.

From top to bottom: un-touched original tissue or sheet strip
2 samples with Tintz
5 samples with Promarkers

Then I tried Child No.3's Promarkers out on them with much better results: a great range of colours with plenty of decorative potential using the blending pen and contrasting shades.  Being alcohol-based, the ink dried really quickly and the tissue paper didn't crinkle at all.  It does crease though - I'll have to get the iron out before using any of it!  The fabric has taken on a starchy stiffness after colouring with the Promarkers  - very different to the untreated or colour-washed samples.
On balance the fabric has worked better and if I had a die-cutting system that could cope with fabric my counterfeiting would be complete!

P.S. I haven't joined in with a Thirsty Thursday Challenge from A Trip Down Memory Lane for a while, but I reckon I've covered P for Polka-dot, Portrait Photos and Parents (that's us!) pretty perfectly ... as well as R for Red and Review!