kit leftovers, one more layout, and giu winner!

 Happy Monday, everyone! Since I spent all last week using one self-made Counterfeit Kit to make all my Growing in Unity projects, I thought I'd show you what's left. Whenever I make myself kits (Counterfeit or otherwise), I try to start with a color scheme in mind. This time, it started with the crazy bird paper from Basic Grey in the middle of the photo below. While that gave me a range of colors, I stuck primarily with turquoise and yellow, with a few neutrals and such. I only added two sheets of cardstock, but grabbed a few more for backgrounds and cards as needed.

I used cardstock from Bazzill and SU, solid-color paper from Basic Grey Urban Prairie (white, turquoise, yellow), geometric prints from Echo Park Style Essentials (probably the only line still being sold at full price), and patterned paper from Studio Calico Homefront, Basic Grey Lime Rickey, and Melody Ross for GCD.

I didn't follow the original kit list for embellishments precisely, but I did try to limit myself and use fairly old products. Besides what you see below, I also added a few other bits here and there -- ribbon, brads, mist, glitter, etc. Of course, I used a lot of stamps, but you can see more about those in last week's posts.

I used Fabrips, die-cut tags, rub-ons and letter stickers from Studio Calico, stickers, rub-ons, and Thickers from American Crafts, and letter stickers from LilyBee (the newest of all the embellishments).

While I had all my leftovers just sitting there, I felt inspired -- so I grabbed all the small scraps and a couple of the larger ones and threw together a quick layout -- I only trimmed papers if they were longer than my 8.5x11 page, otherwise they just got layered rather willy-nilly along with a few more embellishments. Here's the result:

I've been doing "twelve {photos} on 12{th of the month}" layouts all year -- this is June's. A rather eventful food day, really -- I made both homemade sauerkraut and strawberry jam...picked lavender for drying...and shucked peas to make risotto while I was at it.  How Little House on the Prairie of me (well, maybe not the risotto part, but definitely the pea shucking!). Yum.

A closer shot of the photos (all from instagram -- you can also see my feed over in the sidebar now, by the way) and the journalling if you're inclined to take a gander. Added bonus: my leftover pile is even smaller now! I just might kill the whole thing instead of re-filing it.

Ok, I know some of you are probably here for the big winner. How very patient of you! (Unless you just scrolled to the bottom...but you don't have to tell me that!). Well, without further ado, here's what random.org gave me:

Commenter #37 is Miriam Prantner! Congrats, Miriam -- I'll send your info along to the lovely folks at Unity.

I'll do my best to make my way around all your blogs this week, and I hope you'll return to see what I have for you later this week -- some of my June projects for Scrappy Chic. Until then, enjoy!

12 on twelve: January

Happy Friday! It's sunny and warmish and boy, do I need a nap!
Instead, how about a layout?
How about one that features NOT my usual one or two or three photos, but one with TWELVE, count 'em, 12 photos instead?

Okay, then, here you go:

Ella Publishing is doing this Take Twelve challenge all year, and while I know there's an "official" challenge with a kit and contests and templates and stuff, I decided to just take the idea as inspiration to visually document a whole day every month. This here is January, and my first real experience using Instagram, and I liked it! (I'm a Hipstamatic fanatic, usually.)

The photo-strip look is a bit of a fake-out -- I just printed the photos as a collage, then sliced them up and reconfigured 'em. As you can see, my day was pretty random, so my design reflects that. I also pledged to myself to use mainly older products on these layouts (stash busting is craft resolution #1 this year) -- the floral paper and alphas are both newer Basic Grey (Picadilly - from Scrappy Chic, natch), but everything else is old(er).

I did, however, use a new technique with my old glitter -- it basically involves splattering watered-down glue all over the page and then glittering it up. I learned it through this video tutorial from Rahel Menig (whose style I admire quite a bit [and she has the cutest voice!]). Surprisingly, I didn't walk around coated in glitter afterwards, and so I decided that this is one technique I'd try again.

I have photos from 12 February ready to go, too -- this time, I think I'll try something really clean and geometric, just to see if I can :)

In the meantime, have a great weekend! (I get to go see Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert tonight -- what's not to love about that? Yay.)