Snappy Scrapping

Welcome to the start of the May Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Members' Hop.  I picked Challenge #3: Escher Effects for my hop page this month - i.e. to use tessellation in my layout design with a photo from Gatorland back in 2004:

This was quick to do and brilliant for using up the scraps from my May Counterfeit Kit ... as well as creating more scraps if I'm honest!  I hadn't used any of the gold thread I'd included in my kit, so I decided to add a dash of inspiration from both UKScrappers (this week's challenge) and Whimsical Musings (WM#208 to incorporate string art) and added gold threads between my patchwork pieces.

Next on the hop is a regular contributor in our Counterfeit family - Tina.  The full hop list is published on the CKCB today.

Frohe Ostern

I had a wonderful time on Wednesday, meeting up with my fellow Master Forger Lisa who was visiting from Germany ... and taking her to lunch with an ex-Master Forger who just happens to live nearby, Lesley! 

And it was delicious thanks Lesley!

Lisa didn't come empty handed either, as I'd recently won a prize on the Whimsical Musings challenge blog that she runs.  So much nicer to have it hand-delivered.  Thanks Lisa

And of course we had to take a photo to mark the occasion.  There were phone selfies, but this was taken with my conventional camera, Lesley's (short) tripod and the self-timer that took rather longer than expected to fire ... the out-takes may yet make it onto a page!!

Happy Easter to all my friends, real and virtual!!!

Making the Most of My Kit

Welcome to the start of the March Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Members' Hop .  I didn't join in with the challenges this month, but took inspiration from fellow Master Forger Lisa's Whimsical Musings blog and used up some eyelets (WM#203).

I'm obviously out of practice because one or two got a bit squashed ... Making Memories made the hardest eyelets ever!!!!  The photos are ancient ones from 2004 and mean that I am very nearly finished with our Disney album ... but not quite.  We had a smashing if noisy airboat ride around Lake Tohopekaliga looking for crocodilian wildlife ... it dawned on me after doing the title that technically these were the alligator branch of the family!!  I added some toning washi tapes to just one sheet of 6x6 paper and one 4x6 tag from my March Counterfeit Kit ... it'll never get used up at this rate!

Next on the hop is a newcomer to our Counterfeit family, so please give her a warm welcome and plenty of comment lurve by popping over to see Sally.  The full hop list is published on the CKCB today.

A Fairytale Ending

Welcome to the final post of the February CKCB Members' Blog Hop; if you didn't reach me from Cindy then you might want to start at the beginning with Lisa (the full hop list is here but it's a short one this month).  We had a choice of three challenges to use for the hop (#1 Sappy Movie Inspiration , #2 Life is Just A Fairytale, #3 Say What?) or indeed, anything made from this month's kit.

Using my February Counterfeit Kit, I chose #3, taking some extra inspiration from Whimsical Musings #53 (Grids) plus the lovely February sketch from Sue's blog and I created a page to record the day Child No.3 encountered a real Fairy Godmother!

She'd agreed to promote our theatre's pantomime, posing in a "glass" carriage, chatting to children during a local town's festival of transport.  Unfortunately, mid-April was particularly cold last year and a sleeveless dress wasn't much protection against the chilly wind.  A passer-by saw her goosebumps, popped into one of the local charity shops and returned with a very pretty, and more importantly, warm, evening shawl for Child No.3's bare arms.  Truly kind!

Thanks for hopping around with the CKCB Members this month - it was very short but definitely sweet this month, so why not join in yourself in March - EVERYone is welcome!

P.S. While I'm challenge combining this might as well be my example for Scrap Like You Mean It which I have rebooted over on UKScrappers ... 48 weekly prompts from Shimelle's wonderful 2009 challenge ... starting with #1 Scrap in your favourite colour ... teal every time for me (definitely NOT pink!)

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 :-(