November at Scrapabilly #3

Back again for my last shares with the November Scrapabilly Kit des Monats featuring Jen Hadfield for Pebbles, Warm & Cozy collection. I loved the neutrality of all the papers with the rose gold elements. It really did make me feel all warm and cosy and ready to bunk down for the winter. Love this time of year!

For my last two pages, I decided to head back to 2007 and touch on two more snippets of my Yukon adventure story. The papers had that rough and ready feel to them and seemed perfect.

I scrap lifted myself for this sunburst effect page because I wanted to showcase as many of the papers as possible on one page. It's quite a lot of work to do and the stitching is fiddly but I adore the results and will no doubt make more versions of this design.

I really wanted to find a way to use this pocket page card with the photo realistic design. Not always easy but this seemed an ideal page. And again, there's that long title made possible by the added in mini alpha.

An off the page cluster with a hint of dimension was all this page needed to feel finished. The stitching along the sunbursts is the main embellishment and with all that detail, I wanted to be careful not to over decorate.

Finally, here's a page about our daily breakfasts while we were on the road.

Imperfect photos make for a perfect story and I'm so happy to have captured this little - even the hand grabbing the last blueberry pancake with a plastic fork makes me remember these days with longing! (yes, when it was our turn for breakfast or food, we went with the disposable options to limit the tidy up work - lazy but true)

I really went to town with the sprays for this one and ended up ironing the paper to get it relatively flat again. I don't do this sort of wet technique very often but I like the effect here.

The layout uses up a lot of scraps and last bits of washi tape with which I cut out some stars to scatter - subtle but there.

Another of the photo realistic pocket cards seemed to find just the right place on this page. It was a great relaxed start to our day - every second morning!

I picked out several elements out of the die cut pack which supported my theme but didn't overpower the overall design.

It was lovely to see you here today. If you'd like your own kit to work with, you can find the kit here on the Scrapabilly site. Don't forget to check out the Design Team gallery here while you're there. I love looking at the gallery to see all the different ideas we've come up with. You can also find the Schnick Schnack Sack (embellishments) and the Pretty Planner Pack kits and galleries there too. So much to discover and so much inspiration to be had.

I'm hoping to get back soon to share my Simple Scrapper November makes so come back soon.

It's as if they planned this month just for me!

I know that you know that I love autumn. I tell you all the time. So when I saw the list of challenges for this month at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge, I was happy, happy, happy!

First off we had our favourite stamps and I knew my trusty maple leaf would be the one. Now comes inspiration from autumn photos.

While I was putting my kit together, I knew that I wanted to make some more Yukon layouts and I had photos like this one below in my mind. I knew that I wanted to have sumptuous tree photos included and this was just what I needed.

So for the mini challenge #2 "Be inspired by fall foliage" was a no brainer. This photo jumped out at me and my Engineer Creek layout was born.

Look at those colours, look at the brilliance of that golden hue, look at how unreal these leaves seem to be. That was exactly what we got at Engineer Creek and it was somewhat spectacular! Sunset, when the setting sun hit the top of the trees was all the more amazing. I am still living off those memories!

I think I could do this challenge a dozen times and still not get bored! Why not give it a try?

Don't forget to share your creations with us over at the Counterfeit site (here), we love to see where these prompts take you.

Inspired by stamps

I hope I'm not alone when I say that I have a small collection of stamps (I don't consider myself a stamper at all really) but even then, I don't use them very often.

I think that it will take too long to get them out, pick out a colour, fish out the acrylic block, practice the stamping and then risk my whole project by getting the stamping wrong!

But it doesn't have to be that way. And every time I'm challenged or inspired to use my stamps, I remember how much fun it can be.

So the latest Counterfeit Kit Challenge mini challenge is perfect to blow the dust off your favourite stamp and get going!

"Pick ONE stamp (not the whole set) to inspire you and use on your project. You can use more than one stamp, but your inspiration one should be prominent.  You will tell me which stamp it was on your blog and how it inspired you."

With my November kit, Dempster, being such an autumn inspired kit and with my intention to capture some more of my Yukon memories, I went with a tried and tested leaf stamp to guide my design. In fact I saw the end result in my head before I even opened up my stamp drawer and knew exactly how I would use the stamp to make a leafy border.

The leaf is part of a pack of four that I picked up when I was making my monster Nova Scotia album back at the beginning of my scrapbooking adventure.

I didn't know anything about stamping back then and just picked up a set to add some detail to my pages.

In fact, the set has four leaves in it

 ... but the truth is I hardly ever use the others, reaching for the maple every time.

It's a really good quality stamp and the detail is so lovely that it's hard to go wrong with it.

The connection between the leaf, the maple, Canada, my kit and my travels all come together in this page and it turned out pretty close to the picture I had in my mind which is always a surprise and a delight.

"And to think I was worried there wouldn't be enough trees"

I used a whole range of different distress ink colours, stamping the leaf three times in each and then fussy cutting them out to form a layered and scattered border across the centre.

I tucked in a lot of pretty pearls, some funky wooden toadstools and a scatter of buttons to add some more dimension.

And of course the star of the show is the photo. I really was worried that there would be few trees on our travels through the Yukon and NWT but even though they definitely got smaller the further north we travelled, there were more than enough to keep me smiling. I might have more tree photos than anything else in fact!

Glad to have captured another little piece of the puzzle that is our adventure. One day I will bring all these pages together to see how full a story I've told!