Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop!

Hello! Welcome to my post for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop! You should have come from Glinda's Blog. If not, be sure to head over the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog for all the details on the hop and to get the entire list of blogs participating today. All of the projects along the blog hop today are showing off interpretations of the Scraps of Darkness sketch, which is the same place the kit for February was the Counterfeit Kit Challenge's inspiration for shopping our stash of supplies to make similar kits.

The sketch we went off of was the following:

And here's my take:

This marks the second project I have made with my February counterfeit kit. But even so, I found once again that having my supplies in a kit made for a fun challenge as I was limited in what I could use and it made me stretch my stash of supplies. Elements such as the flowers, heart brads and the papers have been in my stash for quite some time. And with already having it in a kit of papers that I felt went together, it was easy to use multiple patterns all together! (Look, no plain cardstock on this layout!)

The layout is about my sweet husband just from this past Valentine's Day. He made me yummy homemade pizza with all red toppings for dinner that night. It was a welcome surprise to come home to as I had class late that night. I love that we're able to have a little fun on Valentine's Day and really, every day. That's what I wanted to capture with this layout.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hoppers. You're next stop is Margie.

Thanks for stopping by!

WMS February Waltz - Buttons!

Welcome to my little blog during the Waltzingmouse Stamps February Waltz! Those of us that like the great stamps Claire comes up with always have a little fun the 17th of the month making projects with our stash of stamps. This month the theme was buttons along with WMS stamps.

I don't use buttons a lot, but they are fun. I was at a loss for what kind of a card I could make that incorporates buttons though. But when I needed to wrap up my husband's Valentine's Day present I had an idea that I thought would work for using some pretty cool WMS stamps and letting me get some buttons into the project too.

So here's what I came up with:

I used the heart from Celtic Heritage and one of the text background stamps from Text It. And tada! a custom bag fit for Valentine's Day. I'm picturing it here with the card I made and even posted about earlier (but hadn't specifically said it was for DH at the time...but who am I kidding, it was). It was my inspiration for making the hearts match the card with the white Text It stamp on top of the red.

I just used a mask with some scrap cardstock that I had stamped the image on and cut out. Overlaying that over each of the hearts on the bag made sure the text was only on the red. Imperfections I figured were just part of being homemade and rustic since I used twine in the buttons (no naked buttons!) and the bag handles were with the same type of material too.

Here's a detail shot:

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to see all the waltzers this month by heading over to the Waltzingmousehouse Forum. There's always lots of good dance partners at a WMS waltz! Now off to see what others did with the button challenge!

Hawaii Book, Post 5

This page is about our adventures along the northern part of Maui. We had some time to kill before the luau that evening so we drove up along the shore. It was really cool to view the rain in the distance and the resulting rainbows over the water, being blown away with the wind (very windy on that part of the island), and the homegrown pineapple stands. We saw some awesome views of the island geography too.

I kept the page pretty simple, but did use a fun laser cut I got at the Maui scrapbook store Island Paperie. The title is a long ago bought set of stickers. I thought it was appropriate. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Hannah as a Pirate

So over the weekend I had a little fun with my Counterfeit Kit Challenge February kit. But to be able to use these reds, pinks and blacks I needed a picture that was going to work with them. While going through my iPhoto app I spied the Halloween picture DH took of dear Hannah as a pirate. I remember that she wasn't very amused but it was just such a good shot (she actually held still long enough for it) that I wanted to make sure to scrap it.

To help with that, I found a bit of inspiration over at the blog Moments of Tranquility. I don't know her at all but I came across her beautiful pages with fun lacing and just had to try it. Course, for a page about a cat pirate mine would be okay to look a little rough. Planned it that way of course. And I was also inspired by the latest PageMaps sketch challenge, and even used some Basic Grey cause I had pulled some for my kit!

Here's my take:

Here's the sketch:

So with those three things to inspire me I set out to do this page about Hannah as a pirate! I even pulled out my Silhouette machine and with not too much headache made the little pirate flag and her name with that. My distress tool got a workout on the paper, I ran out of gold eyelets and had to get more (oh darn, a trip to Michaels), and maybe had a little too much fun with my antique linen distress ink and twine. But, what do you think?

The page is an 8x8 because that's the size book I have saved for Hannah. Yes, she has her own book! This is only the second page in it, but we have lots of Hannah pictures so I know that it won't take much to fill it once I start doing her pages.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

Hawaii Book, Post 4

Here's another fun Hawaii book page complete. This one is about our time at the luau that we went to one of our first days in Maui. We missed on doing this type of activity the first time to Hawaii and I didn't want to miss out on it this time. It's just one of those things you have to do, you know?

The show and food was pretty good. I also liked the leis of course...my favorite flower. :) We took a picture with our server who was also in the show as a drummer (the bottom picture). And while putting this photo together I noticed there was a lot of pictures of our 4-person group individually, but with limited space and wanting to capturing the essence of the luau, I decided instead to include a shot of the roasting pig. HAHA! The layer below the page is the program from the night. I thought it doubled as a good accent piece quite well too. The stamp border I used is another Island Paperie stamp.

More to come!

It's A Boy!

Ok, so we already knew it was a boy for quite some time now, but it is exciting once again when they are born, right? No, not me...two good friends in Minnesota had their baby early this morning. I've been thinking about them a lot today so I thought I should use some of my creative energies in making them a card. This should, if I can get it off in the mail here soon, make it in time for when they return to their home. :)

The challenge sketch I used for this card was the latest WMSC#33.

Ever have one of those cards where it turns out not quite how you were picturing, or even figuring it would go? This is one of those cards. But, I'm liking the result and just went with it. I used some Martha Stewart baby stamps for the main panel. The background and race cars are Waltzingmouse Stamps. And well, it just had to be blue!

So congrats, Mike & Katie! Can't wait to see the little one sometime soon in person!

Hawaii Book, Post 3

Here's just a fun little page I've done for the Hawaii book. This one is about our adventure playing mini golf. We passed this mini golf place every time that we went from the middle of the island to our hotel, so we knew that at one point we'd be stopping here for a round. Unfortunately we didn't know the hours of the place before we did finally stop and our round of golf was kinda crazy to try and get 18 holes in about 40 minutes, but it was still fun, and maybe that was just part of the challenge too.

I employed a fun circle stamp from Waltzingmouse Stamps' Faux Fun Circles set as my background. I've also had that "Good Times" rub on forever, and I figured a page like this was as good as any to use it!

Hawaii Book, Post 2

I'm back with another Hawaii book page that I finished. This one was super fun to do because it consists of the underwater camera pictures that we took on our snorkeling day. Maui offers great snorkeling just off of the beaches right by the hotels even. We took advantage of this one of the days with our snorkel gear in tow.

I used some embellishments my friend got me cause she knew I would be scrapping this trip. Isn't that super nice of her? I then went with the orange and blue theme and found some letters that went perfectly, in my opinion. And if you notice there's some Waltzingmouse Stamps background stamping going on. That's the Free Spirit circles background stamp. I think it has a tendency to look like bubbles too, so I thought it fit in well to use for this page. Oh, and see those three circle pictures? Those are real fishes that we caught on film! I had to be sure to include them!

Just for anyone curious about snorkeling in Hawaii...when we went to Hawaii the first time in 2009 we rented gear and went snorkeling too on Oahu. The bay that we were in was awesome to snorkel in, but our gear was not the best. This time in Maui we researched snorkel gear a bit and went with a company that we could rent it for the entire week. These places had really cheap to slightly better stuff to choose from. We all went with the sets that allowed for not getting water up the air tube. Thus, if waves were hitting us or we went just a bit too far underwater, we weren't getting a mouth full of salt water, just no air. I was a little skeptical about snorkeling this time since I didn't have the greatest luck with it last time, but I think the gear made a big difference! So, when in doubt, go for the slightly better gear and you'll have a much more enjoyable time. :)

Trying out the Counterfeit Kit Challenge

I saw this group appear on 2Peas last month but missed January's challenge. I did want to try this out though...the basic premise being to take one of the available kits in scrapbook land and make your own using products from your stash. Like many scrappers, I knew I probably had a fair amount of supplies that I could use to make a similar kit. So with another month, the crew over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog chose a kit for all participants to base their February stash kits off of. And here's my interpretation:

I don't usually incorporate a lot of embellishments in my pages even though I have plenty. But maybe with them already being in a paper keeper for the month along with all my chosen papers, I won't forget to include them. As I am a great hoarder of Thickers, I had to include one trusty set within my kit. I'm excited for what the challenges will be and it should be fun to have a "kit" of supplies to work with as well. Check out the challenge blog yourself if you are interested in joining along for the month of February.

Hawaii Book, Post 1

After successfully finishing the general book pages of 2009, DH has directed my attention to the January 2011 trip we took to Maui as my next project. I usually do vacations/trips that have a lot of photos in separate mini scrapbooks in order to use a bit more of these photos than what could possibly be done in a few 12x12 layouts included in the general books I do. I also like that these mini books offer a great opportunity to use techniques, embellishments, and papers that I don't normally use.

For this 2011 Hawaii book though, I am moving away from my usual SEI green 8x8 books. Instead, while in Maui I found these great 4x6 photo holder albums that I thought would make a great, unique scrapbook instead. It diverts from the usual size of typical scrapbook pages (these are 9.5x6) and there aren't page protectors, but even with only one page done so far, I'm enjoying this different process already.

I found that the 9.5x6 requirement comes from the spacing available when considering using the entire space allotted for two 4x6's on the page. The book will limit me to only 20 pages for the entire book, but that just means only the best will be able to be included!

And here's my first page. It's centered around the trip we took to see the Iao Needle in the Iao Valley nestled in the Maui Mountains. The "hike" to see the needle wasn't that difficult but luckily there were some off-the-beaten-path trails around for a little more adventure (seen at the start with the picture of our one friend by the "stay on the trail" signs and also the middle picture). Unfortunately, we didn't know how far this trail continued because it started getting pretty steep after awhile. A good place to go for a nice view in Maui. The valley is quite impressive.

On the more crafty technical side, I decided such a book required distressed edges for the pages. And DH even pointed out that my pictures could go to the edge because there was the border of the page itself to consider too (see, isn't he so helpful?). And faintly, you'll notice I took another stab at making my own patterned paper. The green has been stamped with a Hawaiian border stamp (exclusive to Island Paperie in Hawaii...they make their own stamps!) in green itself. I alternated the orientation of the stamp for some difference. A ribbon from Target and trusty Thickers finish the layout.