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Around the Block, August CKC

Tuesday 12 March 2013

House Guests

This weekend I had overnight guests. A pixie and a leprechaun. The pixie needed a faiery coat. So I made her one.
























The leprechaun ran about playing tricks and making silly faces.



See that quilt? It is making a special hidy-hole between the banister and the sofa. Leprechauns love hidy-holes

And did you know that pixies love to play "monster"? You run about, taking turns being the monster and chasing each other. It is like tag, with lots of roaring and stomping.

Pixie and Leprechaun had to go home. I miss them. The house is too quiet now.

Monday 4 March 2013

Go Town!

My oh my, did I get inspired this month by Counterfeit Kit Challenge. The inspiration kit is from Noel Mignon, called Soda Shoppe.
This is a huge kit. Over twenty sheets of paper and cardstock. A bit of technique products and lots and lots of embellies. Just the way I like it. Problem is, I can't see the trees for the forest, so I took a hint from Lisa H. and made a pintrest board based on the list of papers. I don't know how to do a screen shot but the link should take you to it, if you are interested in the details of the kit papers.

So after several hours of hunting down and pinning photos, and day dreaming about papers when I had to go do other non-scrappy stuff which unfortunately is expected of me sometimes, I got down to the seriously fun job of shopping my stash to create my kit.

"Go Town!" is the favorite expression of two year old granddaughter, Rebecca. "Town" to her is play group, visiting her great-oma, Mommy-and-Me exercise class, library hour and swimming. No wonder she gets up each morning and starts insisting to her mommy that they "Go Town!" The anticipation and excitement for her is probably much like the feelings I get in building my kit and then getting to scrap with it. When a phone call from her this morning started with "Go Town!" I knew I had the name for my new kit.

First I decided to incorporate what I could from the remnants of previous kits.  I went though my scrap box and pulled in any part sheets and strips and remnants that tied in with the colours of the kit. So there will be bits from Summer Breeze, Twig and Petal, and Frosty Days Cozy Nights and other stray off-cuts that happened to be in the scrap box.





The next step was to flip through my drawers of patterned paper. They are divided mostly by colour. After I had worked my way through almost every drawer, (black and purple are not represented in the kit, so they were left alone) I had over 50 sheets for the first round. Curiously, very few of them resembled the patterns in the inspiration kit so my normal literal translation of the kit was not going to work this time. Could it be that working with CKC is depleting my paper stash? One would hardly think so by merely looking at the volume of my collection. Perhaps it means that my stash is getting too dated to match up to the more current kits. Either way, I truly enjoy the process of choosing the papers knowing they will be incorporated into beautiful layouts as the month progresses.

The final cut resulted in a selection of 17 papers.

They are:
DaisyD's, Bull & Finch Pub
American Crafts, Play, Cats Cradle
KI Memoirs, Elsie, Jack + Abby circle Quilt
MUK (manufacturer unknown) from the Ebay stash procured at the beginning of my life as a scrapper, around 2006-2007
Echo Park, Life is Good, Fancy Border 
My Mind's Eye, Stella and Rose, Mable "Little Lady" Fine Flowers Paper
Tinkering Ink, Wellington, Ginger
K& Company, Kazoo Kids, Circles
Tinkering Ink, South Hampton, Fern

The dark one with blueberries or currents is MUK
Echo Park, Bella Road, For the Record,  Teal
Some fun border possibilities with Kaiser Craft, Lush Collection, Maple
A part piece from Stampin' Up, I think it is from Urban Garden
Clouds sheet is MUK out of a stack I dismantled a long time ago.
Nikki Sivils, Something for Everyone, "For Hilde"
Cosmo Cricket, Fleuriste, Dew Drops
and the last one is MUK with no memory of how or when it joined the party.

There are four, very heavy, solid coloured sheets in this collection to start me off but more cardstock will be called in as needed.

After the back bone of  patterned paper for the kit is determined, then next step is embellishments.

Again, I pulled in left-over items from previous kits and stray orphans that spoke to me in the colour sequence and reflected the energy of the papers. The goal will be to deplete this assortment as much as possible.


 Creative Memories sticker sheet
sei Rhinestone Brads, primary
A piece of Basic Grey packaging
die-cut frame muk
paper clip bow, counterfeited for previous kit
flair buttons, rosette, and die cut flowers muk
Flowers from Bazzil, Basic Grey, and Prima.
journal cards and die cuts from a kit package with owls but memory fails me as to "WHO" it was from. 
couple of stickers with saying that go right back to my first foray into this craft.
epoxy brads, ribbon slider, stray buttons, butterfly muk
overlay, Penny Lane, Free Bird, Peace
H.A. Kidd & Co., Lady Fashion button card, originally 69 cents.
 




which leads to a couple of hexagon die cuts from a K&Company package that had about 800 little bits in it. (I only exaggerate a wee bit there)
A selection of ribbons, paper lace ones are all muk, gold lace, and mint with flowers is by Fancy Pants
In an effort to incorporate a messy technique I have included die cuts left from January kit, to be inked and\or painted into delightful items.

And for some product techniques, I have pulled together this:



Here we have from CTMH, an owl stamp and ink pads in juniper and sweet leaf
Two rolls of Washi I bought off etsy
Creative Memories chalk ink, Red Barn
Stampin' Up owl punch
and a date stamper from office supplies.

And then to round it out some journal cards I made last weekend and a piece of Prima Marketing packaging.


All together now!



Oh that is big, delicious and lovely isn't it? But wait! Why stop at enough, when you can have more than enough!!

Out of the original 50 pages pulled, some were so lovely but too multi coloured or too large a scale for a good match up. Won't they make a nice addition though? Add-on Part A is called "On a Lark"

Cosmo Cricket, Sew much more, Material Girl, boarders
solid green, muk
My Minds Eye, Stella & Rose, "Remember", Buttercup, die-cut
Ebay stash, muk
sei, Mimosa, Valencia
Fancy Pants, Fancy Aged Florals, Lavish
My Minds Eye, Bohemia, Boulevard, "My Little Prince"
Swirly with peacocks, muk
Anna Griffin, no name indicated
Kaiser Scrapbook, Esperance, Summer Breeze
My Mind's Eye, Stella & Rose, "so Sweet" Plait Paper, die-cut

And an  add-on for paper needs to be followed with an add-on for embellies. (we must strive to maintain a balanced approach at all times) Having taken advantage of a number of sales since last November, I wanted to bring in some of my newly acquired items before they become "old stash" Add-on Part B is called "All the Way!"


CTMH, Keyboard Kraft Alphabet. I will also be using random sets of partially used Thickers  in an attempt to use them up. Or at least, to use them.
CTMH, Elemental, chipboard die-cuts
CTMH, Dreamin', stickers
American Crafts, remarks, Friends, dimensional stickers
Bo Bunny, Petal Pushers iCandy, Chipboard, layered stickers
Bo Bunny, Ad Lib, dimensional stickers
MME Lost & Found 2, Rosy "Ordinary", decorative brads
MME Stella & Rose, Hattie "Happy", Bits and Pieces



MME, Stella & Rose, Hattie "Buddies" Layered Chipboard
MME, Stella & Rose, Mable "Play" Buttons
sei, Pearl Brads, Citrus
CTMH, Lucky, Chipboard Accents
MME, Lost & Found, Sunshine "Two of us" Frame, overlay
MME, Stella & Rose items:
Mabel "Joy" frame, overlay
Hattie "Family" Frame, overlay
Hattie "Buddies" Sticker tags
Mabel "So Sweet" Sticker tags
Mabel die-cut titles, "Little Lady" "Love" "Play" "Joy"
Mabel "Play" Tags
Hattie "die-cut titles, "Boy" "Remember" "Buddies"
Mabel, "Little Lady" Frame
Hattie "Boy" Frame
So there we have it. My March 2012 CKC kit, "Go Town!" with add-ons "On a Lark" and "All the Way!" is ready to roll.

Whew, I think I need a nap.