Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Forgery on the Fourth - February 2018

Back again with a really quick and easy idea for my Counterfeit Kit Challenge February kit, Amour.

The original Noel Mignon Weekend in Paris kit had some rather delightful ribbon bows and these seemed perfect for me to copy for my own kit.

I went though my ribbons and found some that seemed suitable.

Then I just folded it over for form the bow part and secured it with a few stitches.

And then I cut a really small piece of ribbon and wrapped it round the centre with a few sturdy stitches at the back. This bit was a bit fiddly but only because I have no patience!

Trim the tails et voilà!

Three cute bows which I will no doubt use for cards that I intend to hand deliver because of the bulk and dimension. You know me, I always find the easy way to make things ;-)

Will you give these a try or do you have another idea for some of your own forgeries?

I've included a list of printables over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog too with themes that match the original kit so check those out too!

Don't forget that you can share you Counterfeit Kit Challenge kits and pages/projects on the CKC blog here, over in the Counterfeit Kit Challenge FB community here or over on Instagram here (find us @counterfeitchallenge and share with #counterfeitchallenge )

Forgeries on the Fourth

There were many items in the Counterfeit Kit Challenge inspiration kit, Indigo Hills by Pinkfresh Studio, that could have been "forged" and I decided to go for the gorgeous tassels included in the collection. How useful they will actually be on pages has yet to be established because they are quite bulky but I just couldn't resist their prettiness or their colour!

First of all, I collected some products. I had plenty of white embroidery thread and decided that I would use that for the main body of each tassel rather than the different colours in the originals. However, I did have normal sewing thread in each of the five other colours so I felt that was enough of a match.

I started by looping some of the white thread so that it would be longer than double the length of the final tassel and then I started by wrapping the first, middle colour of sewing thread around the centre of this bunch and pulling it tight. In this way, the top of the tassel is really firm.

When I had wrapped what felt like the right amount according to the picture of the original, I then started the second colour to the left of centre, ensuring that the ends slightly overlapped each other to give a smooth transition from one colour to the next. I wrapped that until it looked about the right size compared to the original - there was a lot of guessing in this process!

This colour was then added to the other side too. Finally, I added the second of the side colours - gold.

Once the top loop had the three colours, all that needed to be done was to double this over in the middle so that both sides were the same and the blocks of colour matched up. Then the fourth colour of thread was wrapped around the base of this loop. This needed to be tightly wrapped too so that the loop is held in place.

This was how it looked when I had finished the wrapping of the threads. It felt like it was going to take a long time and the initial stages were a bit fiddly but I think that each one of these tassels only took about 10 minutes once I had established the size, colour and technique.

All that was needed then was to trim the ends of the white thread to give the full tassel effect. The smaller tassel here was my first, test make and I have to say that I think I got the size better than the next ones I made. But these are hand-made after all and I probably won't put more than one tassel on a project at once and wouldn't notice the size even if I did!

Here are the set of four using each of the four colours in the different parts of the binding process. I've just realised that I'm missing the little ring on the top so that they can be attached to layouts and projects more easily so I will try to get around to adding that on when I track some down.

I love the colours from the original Indigo Hills items and think the combination of pink, aqua, yellow and navy works so well. When I put my kit, Lucid, together I had already made up the tassels some weeks earlier. So I put the tassels out on the papers to make sure that I picked out the right shades for my version of the kit. I found this a great way to quickly pick out items for my kit so I might try to remember that technique again for the future.

Thanks for dropping by today! Let me know you were here and which item from the original kit you're planning to forge!

Don't forget that we love it when you join in and make up your own kits. Share your kit and your creations over at our Link-Up page and don't forget the Member Blog Hop on the 24th. 

***** MEMBER BLOG HOP ***** 

Find out how below!  
Go on, you know you want to! 
Your project should be something new, using a Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit, that you haven't shown before and will only post for the hop. Be inspired by any of the challenges this month or just share something you've created with your kit. Remember, the more the merrier and it never fails to be a lot of fun! 
To be a part of our blog hop: 

• E-mail us your name & blog address & promise to participate at thecounterfeitkitchallengeblog@gmail.com by the 18th October.
• You will receive an e-mail from us by the 20th October with a list of the hop participants.
• You will need to schedule your own blog post showing your project based on a challenge and link to the person after you in the hop.All Blog Hop posts will need to be scheduled to go live on the 24th October at 12:00am Mountain Standard Time (Arizona) but we will help you with the scheduling

I got creative!

I promised you a brief description of some of the counterfeiting I did for this month's Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit.

Like I said, I'm really lazy most of the time and don't often make the time to really think through how to replicate the items in our inspiration kit that I don't have in my own stash.

But last weekend, I made the most of a small window of time and space (in my brain) and got crafty for some items I really wanted in my kit.

I'll start with the super easy items:

I decided to make the most of some of the thousands of pins I have and find some free printable Project Life/journalling cards etc which could match up a few sheets and packs in the original kit:

Elle's Studio - Day to Day - Tidbits (available here)

Glitz - Color Me Happy - Bits & Pieces (available here)

Fancy Pants - Down By The Shore - title pieces (available here)

While I may not have found perfect matches, I have a hefty pile of stuff which can be tucked here and there and were a fraction of the price of ready bought items - look at this array:

I used these two pins (this and this)

Lots of bright happy colours, cards with space to write, cards with slogans, cards with dates or days, cards with pretty designs - everything you could ask for. And I could have printed out hundreds more as I have so many pins on my printables board (here) and my Project Life board (here). A quick search round the internet will unearth a plethora of freebies. I printed them out onto 160g card in best quality so they are not as thick as regular cardstock and think that will work really well for layering up.

Next up was the pack camera die-cuts.

Maya Road - Say Cheese - camera kraft die cuts (available here)

It just so happens that I have a set of Maya Road stamps with cameras and they are the same design as these even if they are a bit smaller.

So I simply stamped blocks of images in brown and black ink onto kraft cardstock and can cut them out as and when I need them - talk about simple.

Next up was the summer word stickers:

Bazzill Basics - Summer Big Word Stickers (available here)

I created a word document and typed up all the words I thought I might use on my projects and then filled the text box with orange mini polka dots. I think my font size was a bit smaller than the originals but that's the genius with making your own - I made them at the size I think I will use. As I use them, I will cut them out and whip them through my mini-Xyron to turn them into stickers. Again, I used the 160g card and printed them at best quality.

A rather unsuccessful counterfeit were the word stickers:

Jillibean Soup - Wise Words - Happy (available here)

I used my Cricut to try and replicate a few but my word choice was limited and the blade wasn't sharp enough. Better luck next time although I may still be able to use one or two of them. I'm sure many of you out there will have had more success than me so make sure you share :-)

Last up were the chalkboard Thickers. These were the items that really match the idea of creating your own. Here are the originals:

Studio Calico Charcoal Sketchbook Thickers (available here)

I decided to get my very underused Cricut in use for this one. I hear all the time about how it can be used for all sorts of creative ideas and it mostly sits collecting dust for me. So I dusted it off and fished out all 6 (! yes I only have 6!) cartridges to see if I had something suitable for this alpha. I used a scrap of card to try out a few fonts and to check out the sizes to settle on a serif font that I thought was quite simple but chunky enough. I also used this scrap to try out a few white pen options - a Distress marker, a white pencil and a few white gel pens. I seem to have no luck with them at all but there was one (from three) which was still writing relatively smoothly. I saw on the originals that the shape was outlined and then filled in with lines so I practiced that a bit and liked the effect.

Two sheets of black cardstock were then sent through the Cricut and a selection of upper and lower case letters were cut out as well as some numbers and a few ampersands.

Keeping the sheets on the cutting sheet so that the letters stay put, I then got to work with my white pen. In the end, I found that it was easier if I outlined all the shapes first and then filled them in. It took a long time. I mean a loooong time to get all the letters coloured in and they are by no means perfect. But the overall impression is really good (in my opinion).

And I have loads of e's and all the other letters I run out of! I did a few sets of vowels, extra r, s, t and lots of numbers as well as full sets of the whole alpha in both upper and lower. There are way more than in a standard pack of Thickers and even though they took a long time, they cost pennies so all in all, most definitely worth it.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding - as in using them - so watch this space to check if they make an appearance on my layouts!

I spent a very happy afternoon pottering around making all my forgeries (!) and while I don't necessarily want to do that every kit, I am thrilled with the results this time around.

Lynette will share a round up of all our tutorials for this month's kit so if you've come here directly, I would suggest you go over to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog and see what the others have made. And don't forget to share with us how you have created your own versions of items in the inspiration kit :-)

Creating my Counterfeit kit

When I posted my May Counterfeit, I commented that I would write a post about the process I go through when shopping my own stash to create a kit. And I'm really late with this post. So, I'm sitting here in front of Germany's Next Top Model and have decided to try to get this written up. :-)

1. First of all, we receive the details from the Counterfeit girls about which kit we are counterfeiting this month and I spend a little time looking at the kit online, printing out the photos, looking at the content list and generally getting a "feel" for what the end result needs to look like. 

Here are the print outs I made of the 5 SC kits we were given this month and my first reaction was that the main kit wouldn't be my main focus but that I would probably combine a couple of the smaller kits. Looking at them laid out like this I could see that numbers 2 and 3 appealed to me directly so I put the others to one side and limited myself to these.

The next thing I did was to check out the content list just to see if I had anything matching in my supplies. If I do, it doesn't necessarily mean that I will include it in my kit, but I might take them out as a starting point, taking them out later.

This time around, I had a couple of the MME papers so I put them to one side.

This might sound like a long start up but this is a pretty quick process, the longest bit being checking out the kits online. I'm talking about 15 mins or so in total.

Once again for reference, these are the two kits I selected.

Louvre

Versailles

2. I know several of my fellow forgers find this odd, but my next step is to sort out some cardstock which will form the base colours. I don't really use much coloured card these days but I still have quite a lot in my stash so I see this as an opportunity to get some of it out and hopefully used up. I always add some white, kraft and or cream and then go with some colours. Usually six sheets seems to be a good idea. I pick out my colours and just place them next to the pictures of my selected kits to see if they go. I might take out 10 or 15 different sheets and then just reduce it to 6 or so to get the feel I want. 

Here, I knew I wanted some softer colours especially compared to the previous month's rainbow extravaganza and so I selected white and kraft, then added in a grey, a soft yellow which picked up the woodgrain and yellow stripe of the original kit, then green and a soft pink as a nice complement to the other cardstocks. This way, the softer coloured card would drive the softer colours I wanted to achieve in the kit.

3. Next up is papers. Like I said, I had some of the original kit papers so I put them out and laid them on my desk next to the cardstock and decided that I would use them after all. They seemed to go so well with the colours I'd chosen and looked so good in the original kit that it seemed the right thing to do.

Looking at the inspiration kit, I liked the butterfly paper and just happened to have one from Bo Bunny so out it came. And that drove me to select another sheet of the same range that went with it. There was a yellow spot in the SC kit so I found a soft yellow print from BasicGrey (ages old) and also a lovely greeny design that reminded me of the green in the chevron paper in the Louvre kit. In this way, I had "matched" the four papers in that kit. The Versailles kit started with the two sheets I had (mentioned before) but I didn't have the same woodgrain or floral so I selected a MME wood pattern and went through my stash for a multi-flower design that would contrast but still go with the papers and cardstock I had already chosen. If you look at the photo below, you can see several floral sheets out but none of them are anything like the original kit. But that's ok as I didn't have that strong red contrast from the original so I selected the Crate Paper floral with tones of lilac which brought another colour into the palette and which I thought was rather nice. I dragged out a few more sheets of paper in the process but after laying them next to the pile you see here in the photo, they immediately went back into my stash. 

It's all a matter of taste and feel and variety. I'm not looking (well not often anyway) for a kit that is ONLY a certain limited colour scheme. I want to get a selection of layouts out of my stash that I might not have come up with before so a bit of variety is important for me.

Another main thing for me is to combine new, not so new and most certainly old papers together in every kit. You have to try out the process to see how it works for you.

4. Once I have made my paper selection, I line them up to see how they look together. Here I decided to add in another floral paper to bring out a bit more of the pink

5. Now the main part of the work is done and I can go to town selecting my embellishments. You can guarantee that there will be more in my kit than the original as I know what I'm like with my layers and stuff!

The process starts the same way as with the papers, checking to see if I can match any of the items exactly. In this case I couldn't so I started off my selecting items that were the same type as the inspiration kit. This time around, that meant some twine, some buttons and brads, several alphabets including a white one like the kit and a couple of smaller ones like the BasicGrey sheet in the original. I didn't have a doily mask so I included several normal doilies but matched the mask idea with one out of  my stash, going for a leafy one because of the feel of my papers (with the butterflies and flowers, nature was calling). I pulled out some journalling sheets from a Making Memories book to match the Smash pages and mentally decided to make up some pennant pins like the Maya Road ones (see tutorial here) and some doily envelopes similar to the Martha Stewart ones (see tutorial here). Then I noticed the tissue paper in the SC kit and fished out some recycled tissue paper from Starbucks and decided that I had to find a way to use that too. 

The original kit had a few stamps and I'm a bad stamper so I thought it would be a good idea to sort out a few and put them directly in my kit to remind me to use them. I again followed the nature theme and chose some leaves and butterflies. 

Now I had matched the original kits pretty much item for item so it was time to see if there was anything missing. In the end, all I added in were a few more twines and a roll of washi tape as well as pulling out two Cricut cartridges to remind me to use them if possible.

I might, at this point, drag out some flowers, bling, ribbons or anything else which catches my eye when trawling my stash but not this time around. Again, it's important to me to include stash that is newer and older. I love to see my older stuff getting used up - I'm sure you do too.

6. Here is my kit all laid out willy nilly over my desk. I try to get a feel for if it's too big, too small, if anything is missing or if this is it. This was it! I move fast and make decisions quickly. It's not my aim to second guess myself and this whole process takes about 30 to 45 minutes. Taking the photos with the set up often takes longer! :-)

7. So then I took a nice photo of it!

8. Last but not least, I always reserve the right to add things in throughout the month as and when the need or fancy desires! And as I'm making up a layout using the kit, if I reach for something else to use with it, that often gets thrown in and stays there for the rest of the month - such as alphas, journalling spots or bling. This month, I've added in a mini alpha and some paper dolls I came across. Mists, inks and paints are considered to be "free" items to be used as and when and I often find myself adding in extra sheets of cardstock and using up vast quantities of string that were not in the kit.

Don't forget, there are NO rules! This is your kit and you can make up your own way of making and using it! :-)

Does this help? I hope that if you've been sitting on the sidelines not knowing where to start, this has given you some idea of my process and that it might help you to grab a piece of paper or cardstock as the basis of your next Counterfeit kit.

Let me know if you do!

Pennant flags

After me saying that I never made my own embellishments, I have another mini-tutorial to share.

Although these little flags are SO easy to make, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how to make them.

But just in case you've seen these little embellishments around and haven't thought about making them yourself I can assure you that they only take a couple of minutes and are super easy - just use the scraps you have lying around or even better, use up some bits from the papers you are using on your layout to make them match perfectly.

The ones in the SC kit that I counterfeited (see my kit here) were kraft flag pins from Maya Road so I decided just to grab a bit of kraft paper and have a go.

1. I cut a handful of strips - some 3" by 1" and some 2 1/2" by 3/4" and sort out a few floristry pins that I keep in my pin collection as well as some standard cocktail sticks.

2. I scored each of the strips down the middle because the card was quite stiff, but if you used normal paper, this might not be necessary.

3. I then used a wet glue (a glue stick would be best but I just didn't have any) and wrapped the card around the pin or the stick. I slid the card up to the pin head so that it popped out of the top but with the sticks, I kept the pointed end inside the fold. Just hold onto it for a few seconds to make sure it has stuck and sort of squeeze the card onto the pin/stick.

4. I just made a few cuts on the end of the flags - three of each design.

5. And then I decorated them up a bit with twine, string, words and a tiny bit of TH negative strip.

Cute!

Now I just have to use them!

Happy Friday everyone!