Welcome Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop

 Hi, folks. Welcome to my blog.
The challenges I chose for this month were the angled background challenge and the under 10 minute challenge.
The kit on which I based my "All My Love" kit was Choice#2. Lots of fun to create the kit and the projects.
For the angled background page titled "Picture What's Ahead", I started with a few squares of the patterned paper I had in my kit. When I started to arrange them across the page I thought of a mix of frames and squares and set about creating those. I inked the edges with the "Pumice Stone Distress Ink" and decided the blue-green solid paper was the right background choice. I then picked my cluster elements and my photo frame, aiming for visual triangles and color balance on the page and trying to avoid blocked white space, except where it was part of the design (proving once again that rules are meant to be broken).
Now, I know that my method of using product and design to start my page and then deciding what story and photos belong on the page is radically different from most scrappers.It works for me, though. I believe that finding your page inspiration can come from many sources - photos, stories, quotes, product or design. Sometimes a well taught class or someone else's layout could inspire you. It's all good!
When you first begin to make pages I think trying to copy a layout almost exactly is a good way to learn. I don't know about you but I always make mistakes. The advantage of that is that even when copying you won't end up with exactly the same layout (and unless you have the exact same photos it never would be anyways). I personally believe adding your own twist is always enjoyable.

So, how did I end up with the choices of photo and story you see on my page. Well, it just so happened that my dear daughter-in-law posted some photos on her Facebook page the other evening and this particular photo made my heart melt. I began to think about the empty frames in my layout design and inspiration came to me. My grandson's future is unknown but we know he's going to pave his own way and fill in those frames with pictures of his own unique life. So the title is "Picture What's Ahead" and the quote from John F Kennedy "Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future" summed it all up. I then recorded the date, downloaded the picture from Facebook, a little Photoshop work on the photo and finally attached it. I had my page. Now, would I do anything differently? Well, maybe vellum behind the word "Picture" or perhaps a different font. It is more striking and easier to read in real life than it is here onmy blog as the font is a very shiny deep gold glitter I was really trying to limit myself to my kit to make this project and it seemed the best choice of my options. Perhaps using the same font in a black glitter might be more effective?

The card was just fun. I had made more layouts which I'll feature on my blog in a few days. (OK, I HOPE to post them. I try to keep my promises but on this blog my follow through is rather tenuous.)
A layout, for me, means I will have scraps and bits of the entire kit out in front of me. I decided to create a card base from some white cardstock, then I attached some trimmed scraps, word art and an enamel dot. The papers were edged with "Spun Sugar Distress Ink" before attaching them. I think the gradual increase in the value (value is the lightness or darkness of a hue, and hue is the name of the color) of each red item in the card layers works well in the design.
I hope you have enjoyed my challenge efforts. Thanks for checking in.
You should have arrived at my blog from http://chidkids26.blogspot.co.uk and you should proceed next to http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com
Please visit the Counterfeit Kit Challenge at http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com for a list of all the blog hop links.

Sunday Reflections

 

This weekend has been fabulous! Spent Friday evening and all of Saturday with a wonderful group of crafty women. Sherry Richter organized a crop at a somewhat local scrapbook store, "It's All About The Scrapbook". Dixon is two counties away but only about 25 miles/minutes. Still, most of us spent the night Friday. That was good for several reasons - one was no late night drive and thus we could stay late on Friday night, no chance of getting caught up in events at home (like I was much of Friday), able to drink wine with dinner, and a chance to breakfast with friends, strategize and share the excitement of the day ahead.
I had fun preparing for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge with the kit I created. You'll notice from the photos I put together a kit based on Fancy Pants Design's "Beloved" line that was used in the second kit club selection made at CKC. I used doilies and a stamp with little circles and a sentiment stamp like the suggested kit. I went to the Fancy Pant's site http://www.fancypantsdesigns.com/products/beloved to get a better look at the elements of the line and created my kit with that inspiration. Since I was using stash you'll notice that my colors are slightly different, in particular,you'll note the blue green, which is much more green in my version. Still, I tried to capture the general feel of what the amazing designers at Fancy Pants Designs came up with my kit
"All My Love"

I messed up my photo download and thus the bad photos in the prior post and the missing picture of the stamps and stencil I chose. I'll try to make sure I have everything up (done above, though could not get all in collage but those photos are in yesterday's post) before the challenge gets posted.
Now, folks, mix a crop and a newly created kit and you'll know that a lot of projects flowed. I will be posting many of those and a few more from today. On challenge post day you'll see I did both the angled background and the under 10 minute challenges with my kit.
The heart background paper and tag were fun to make. I used a stamp I made by tearing apart a Dawn Dish Wand refill and cutting the sponge part into a large and a small heart then stamped using a variety of acrylic paints.Pretty resourceful, I think. After all, my goal was not to purchase anything new for the challenge.
My CFC layout and card are purely original creations. I just started cutting and arranging. However, several of the other layouts were inspired by classes from Debbie Hodge at Get It Scrapped. http://debbiehodge.com/admin/blog/ I recommend that site; los of good free information and an enormous amount of content for a very small membership price. No, I do not have an affiliate fee arrangement with Debbie for referrals (though I should probably set one up).
So, still need to get that car unpacked and get some creating done.
Also, today is the last day of the Ray Eames show at the California Museum and I've not been yet. You know I plan to get there and see that exhibit. She was an amazing Sacramento creative talent.

The LO I did after my museum visit today. Sorry about the quality. May retake it tomorrow.

Coming Soon!

 Counterfeit Club Challenge
Plan to use these supplies for the challenge.

Lingerie Love

Public radio, I love it. So many interesting topics. Last night as I returned from an evening with AMWA women physicians (a wonderful evening, I might add), I listen to a Rick Steeve's radio show http://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/radio/programs/program-354where he interviewed two women writers who had moved to France, Nina Sovich http://www.thesestolendays.com/ and Sarah Turnbull http://www.amazon.com/Almost-French-Love-Life-Paris/dp/1592400825?ie=UTF8&tag=CoffeeandaBookChick&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969
I suggest that those who love travel and all things French will enjoy his interview. I'm certainly going to check out more from these authors.
The part I liked best was their discussion about lingerie. I have french heritage and I am sure there must be a gene for love of lingerie and scientists can find it there in my genome!
I grew up in a poor household. For the most part, we had food on the table but not much in the way of stuff and certainly we only had simple clothing.Thank goodness for an amazing grandmother who could transform thrift shop finds! My earliest fashion remembrance is that I did not have "days of the week undies" like my friends. Yes, I did want them. It was Canada in the the 50's you must understand. Nowadays, I think every child in America has their favorite cartoon character on their disposable diapers and pull ups but times were definitely simpler then. At any rate, I always wanted fashionable clothing and that definitely included under fashions. I was so relieved that ugly girdles and boring garter belts were vanishing with the advent of pantyhose in the years of my late teens. I think Spanx, etc. are a definite improvement in foundation garments and garter belts now only seem to come in sexy lacy versions. Inexpensive undies were mostly white and boring in those days.
At my late teens, I moved to Montreal to attend university. McGill campus is situated on Sherbrooke Street in downtown Montreal. On Sherbrooke down near Cotes des Neiges Avenue existed a Simone Perele boutique. It was the late 60's and early 70's. Color and pattern were on-trend and this very French brand featured beautiful lingerie fashions in their just-below sidewalk level enormous plate glass display windows. Montreal is basically a mountain island city so my description of the levels of things may seem odd unless you visit there. Do visit! It's a wonderful and quirky city. Simone Perele designs featured vibrant colors and patterns, very unlike the usual offerings in the lingerie sections of popular department stores back then.  I would often stop to drool. Alas, a meagre student budget was not conducive to boutique shopping. Window shopping was much more my thing. Window shopping included browsing art galleries and I still regret that I could not convince the first husband to go out on a limb in 1973 and find the means to purchase that $5,000 group of Picasso etchings in a Montreal gallery. Those might have put us in a good financial position vs the debt in that eventual divorce, but I digress. (Of course, parting with them would have been so painful!)
Apparently, 17% of a French woman's clothing budget is devoted to lingerie, a fact I learned from the radio interview. I believe my budget nowadays may approach that. Yes, Simone Perele is a significant presence in my lingerie drawer. One of the benefits of my recent weight loss is that some of my favorite brands, like Chantelle, fit well now. I've always had a bit of a North American puritanical guilt about spending a lot of money on undies. Now that I've convinced myself it is a genetic trait - guilt no more. I will try to be generally prudent in spending; but, making sure that lovely undies are a part of the budget resonates with  strong "Yes!" and a fist pump.
Thanks public radio.

Keeping Up

 Anyone else doing February LOAD (Layout a Day) http://www.layoutaday.com/?
I am trying. I'm up to Day 6 today and feeling pretty happy about that.
Here a few of my layouts. I've reworked a couple of these. I normally spend a few days on most LO's so this get it done stuff goes against my grain. It's good for me, though (at least, that's what I'm telling myself, LOL!)

If that wasn't enough on my plate, I've been learning more about Photoshop these days. I hope it will make me more comfortable with digi scrapbooking. I'm pretty much OK with templates but not so great with layouts from scratch or a sketch.
Thinking seriously about a new computer. The monitor on this one is beyond hope. It flickers for 10-20 minutes as it warms up and one of these days I figure it will just stop working. The computer is old and was not the top of the line at the time I purchased it, which means it is SLOW.
I listened to The Digi Show http://thedigishow.com/ this week which just happened to be about purchasing a computer. Charr, professor at Sacramento City College, agrees with the panelists and says get the best computer you can reasonably buy because you'll be unhappy with anything less. Those Photoshop files are memory hogs and eat up video card memory, too and RAW photo files need hard drive space. So, I think it may be time for an iMac. It's not the best time for a big purchase, but no real choice, I think. Still, I'm taking a bit of time to think this through. Unfortunately, the salesperson at the Apple store was not very helpful. He probably only knows games or something because both photography and digi scrapbooking drew blank looks from him. Alas, young folk only understand photography if it is taken with an iPhone and posted on Instagram!
I suppose blogging may be a bit passe these days, too. At my age, I think being a bit "retro" is OK. So, I'll continue to episodically post a short essay about life right now.I'm considering studying writing a bit, since I need skills in that area, probably more so than art and photography. I think it will be hard. Then again, you dear readers may be grateful, LOL!

Video and me

I started to do a vlog post about making a scrapbook page in analogous colors but quit after I fumbled about so much that I decided I needed to rewrite the script to be a comedy. The good teaching points sounded entirely too boring, too.
Some of m friends said I should just post the funny bits. After all, folk want to see that other folk do in real life when they make scrapbooks. My headset flies off, I look all over for an item while it sits there in full view of the camera, stuff gets glued to my hair, I drop everything (well, some of that is attributable to my weak left arm; but, not enough gets that excuse, alas), my work space gets smaller and smaller as I collect items and do not put them away as I scrap. So it goes, on and on. Not to mention, flubbed lines!
So, it may be a bit before you see me present a vlog post. I promise I will keep trying.
I like color and layering in my art work and since I'm reasonably good with both, I thought it might be good to make a process video with a bit of discussion. A friend looked at me and said with dread and disgust, "You're not going to talk about that color wheel thing, are you?" Well, I was...now if I do, I guess it will be accompanied by the theme music from "Jaws". Really, it is just a tool. My Crop-a-dile is much more intimidating. Nonetheless, I am giving a lot of thought to how else to present color in a way that is useful and easy to understand and only minimally touches on the color wheel.
My favorite color scheme is the primary triad, though, Lee Andersen, you are so correct that as we age tertiary and quaternary colors, like puce are more appealing.I do believe that interesting combo of yellow, red and blue will always appeal to me, no matter what my age.
Lee is one of my most memorable design teachers.She currently designs lovely clothing lines with interesting textures.I learned about her through knitting, which must influence that desire for texture. Truly, she is a most interesting woman. I think she sparked my interest in color and design. Travel, art and education have helped develop it more.
Right now I'm deep into Lain Ehmann's LOAD for February. LOAD stands for "layout a day". www. layoutaday.com
I have heard so many "craftlebrities" say that Lain's LOAD helped them refine their style and improve their scrapbooking. I always dread the idea of the work involved (though I just do digi pages if I feel overwhelmed). I decide to do it though because I'm convinced that some of those folk know what they are talking about.

These are my first two LO's for LOAD. The double page one needs a bit of tweaking but I'm thinking this will be a fun month even if I miss a day or two.

By the way, look for the "2 Craft Ladies" on You Tube this season. http://www.youtube.com/user/2CraftLadies Their spoof of themselves doing crafts is fun. Somehow I think the wine pairings, though delightful, might have a wee bit of an effect on how their projects turn out? Just sayin' I mention them after discussing the big names (AKA "Craftlebrities") in skilled crafting because they have adopted "Craftlebrities" as a title for the coming season. It's a term we all owe to the amazing and inventive Angela Daniels, AKA "The Guilty Crafter". http://angeladaniels.squarespace.com/
Has this blog post rambled all over enough? Definitely stream of consciousness! OK, off to bed right now and a goal to try to produce a reasonable short video this week. Not sure I'll accomplish that but maybe if I stay away from facebook and apply myself, something might happen.