CKC Guest Designer for May – Kit Reveal

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog.

I am super excited to be a Guest Designer for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge community this month. Thank you to my friend Misty for asking me. She has so much faith in me and my abilities! I aim not to let her (or this community) down.

If you’re not familiar with the Counterfeit Kit Challenge, the premise is that you take the chosen kit as inspiration and build a kit from your own stash so you can follow along with the challenges all month. I love this idea! I don’t know too many scrapbookers who don’t have a stash that could last them through an apocalypse, so this a great way for us to make a dent while having fun.

For the month of May, my friend Misty has chosen the Timeless Kit from DLS Designs. I’d never heard of this company before but I have to say, I love their products. They have a clean, graphic style that brings to mind the days of my Gossamer Blue kits (RIP sniff, sniff). This is the kit that we are using as inspiration this month.

And here is my video walk through of the counterfeit kit I put together using mostly Pink Fresh Studio products. As I say in the video, the inspiration images gave me very Pink Fresh vibes and I had purchased one of their warehouse boxes a while back so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to dig into it.

Let’s take a closer look at the kit contents. First up, the papers.

I typically start building layouts and kits from the papers up. Initially I went hunting for a paper similar to the one with all the graphic circles as I swear I used to have one like that. But I couldn’t find it so moved on. Pink Fresh tends to have a great variety in their papers – from the super bold and graphic, to the soft and nature inspired. Once I honed in on their papers, the rest of the kit came together pretty quickly.

I wanted to have options to hand as it’s been quite a while since I did any sort of scrapbooking for challenges so I am feeling a bit nervous! Giving myself options for colours and prints helps relieve some of those nerves.

The inspiration kit has several journaling spots in their embellishment packs. I have an idea up my sleeve for how I can forge some of my own, but I wanted more options so I chose some papers I could easily cut apart, as well as a 6×6 paper pad. The scale of the 6×6 papers means I can use them to mat photos, create journaling blocks, or cut into smaller pieces to use as accents.

If you go poking around on the DLS site, coordinating with this kit is a wax seal with falling leaves on it. I don’t have one of those, and although I do own the Spellbinder wax seal system, I have not perfected how to get nice images with it. But I DID have a set of pre-made seals that are a great alternative.

The enamel dots in the kit have other shapes besides dots which reminded me of the Altenew sets I got for my birthday last year. So you know several colour ways had to make their way into this kit. If there’s one think I love to add to my layouts, it’s enamel dots!

I have included two different ephemera packs, plus a set of die cut titles and sentiments that I think can work for both layouts and cards. Here’s a look at the one with larger pieces including some pre-made journaling cards. The inspiration kit includes moths but I think it’s totally acceptable to substitute butterflies, right?

The inspiration kit also includes icons like plants and books so this pack of embellishments fits right in!

One thing I don’t have in my (fairly huge so how is this even possible) stash of stamps, is a small alphabet stamp set. I included some small puffy letter stickers that I think will fit the bill. And also this stamp set from Shimelle that includes two journaling block stamps. Once combined with all my other stickers, die cuts and papers, I know I can come up with some fun and creative ways to document my stories this month.

The last thing I added was some ink colours. I actually took this photo before I filmed the kit walk through and have since taken out Uncharted Mariner and replace it with Pine Needles, plus I added Spun Sugar for a soft pink. But … maybe I need to add Uncharted Mariner back in? Would love your opinions in the comments!

Why did I add ink colours in? I love to play with my inks and do plan to make some cards from this kit too so having my favourite inks around to play with is a must. Plus, they are just fun to use when you want to add some mixed media to your layouts. I forgot to choose a stencil but I know I have a large collection of those too so there will be no problem picking one on when it’s needed.

There you have it, my Counterfeit Kit for May 2024. Be sure to see all the kits the Design Team have put together by following the Hop List below. And if you want to create your own kit and play along, join the Facebook group. Be sure to say hi if you do. See you again soon!

1st May – Counterfeit Kit Challenge Reveal and Hop