April 2019 CKC Challenge #1

Hello,

Well, I have attempted the first challenge for this month’s, Counterfeit Kit Challenge. The challenge involves scrapbooking about the weather, for those CKC scrappers above the equator, that means Springtime and us Southerners below the equator are feeling cool with Autumn upon us. As I type this the rain is pouring down and we are cosy inside with our wood fire burning and the washing drying on the airer. I love this time of year, everything seems fresh outside, all the dust washed away and the paddocks begin to become green again.

For myself, I have the added pleasure of school break over the next two weeks and so, on my first day of the holidays, I indulged in the pleasure of a whole day of scrapbooking. What did I scrap? Well, for the challenge I went with a Summer layout using a photo of my youngest son contemplating life while we were having a family day with relatives at the beach. It is not the best photo of my son, he is in shadow seeking shade under a tree with the hot Australian sun burning down on the rest of us. Yes, those little specks in the water are the rest of the family, enjoying the beautiful blue ocean and trying to escape the heat.

The other thing I have been working on is cleaning up in my studio (aka, oldest son’s reclaimed bedroom), as you do after you have been scrapping for a few weeks. During this cleaning/organising frenzy, I broke my March CKC kit down into smaller layout kits. I find this a great way to get things done with everything already selected you quickly get through making your layouts.

During my clean up, I came across a little booklet from the Summer, International Film Festival which is held in the South West region. When I flicked through the book I noticed the great print on the inside of the cover and thought I could reuse it in some way.  Then I realised the colours and theme would work well with the kit I had made up for this layout.

Below are the papers and embellishments which I decided to use, including the booklet cover.

I started the layout off with some soft inking using Tim Holtz’s, Scattered Straw, Distress Oxide ink.

Next, I played around with using strips of the different pattern papers to create the background.

Then, I double mounted the photo on white cardstock and the Kaisercraft black and white patterned paper. I spent quite a bit of time laying out were the embellishments might go. Once I am happy with it, I take a photo with my iPad, so I don’t forget where to place everything when I begin to fix things down.

On this occasion, I was not happy with the layout, it had a bit too much negative space and didn’t look balanced. So, I took everything off and stamped some foliage on three of the corners/sides.

This made a big difference to how the layout looked, it added a little more interest to draw the viewers eye and seemed to add balance. I then finished it off with some gold sparkly gems and black Thicker alpha stickers for the titles.

Another layout for the album. I have many other photos from this day and will be putting together some pocket page layouts using the leftover paper scraps from my kit.

Happy holidays, to those Aussies, also enjoying the school break!