Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop - March!

Hi everyone! Hope you're busily hopping along from blog to blog :) You probably just came from visiting Margie -- if not, feel free to start at the beginning, over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog.

This month's challenge was to scraplift yourself. I admit, I totally have a go-to layout for such occasions, and it sure didn't fail me today. Here you go:

One horizontal photo on top of lots of horizontal strips and embellishments and punched bits and such, with a title to the left. It ain't complicated, but I like it, mainly because it looks different every time. In this case, of course, I used lots of goodies from my Counterfeit Kit, especially the main kit. You can see my kit photos here, and other projects I've done this month at the kit post, as well as here, here, and here. 

I especially like the way the title came out: 

Squeeze, indeed! I also like how the arrow points at my Uncle Mike, who didn't quite make it back in the shot before the camera timer went off -- oops! We took this family photo while camping up in Benzonia, MI last August (which I also scrapped about here, just in case you're curious and/or want to see my fam in a different set of matching shirts!)

Here are the layouts I lifted this design from:

There's more about the "Super Classy layout," featuring my quite-young Dad, here. You can read all about more goofy family members (and their mustachio'd layout) here.

So there you have it -- successful self-scraplift! I'd love to hear your go-to tricks for making stuff in a hurry.

Hop along now, and go see what Lesa has to offer. Have a delightful day!

The tree to my apple....

Well, let's just say I'm happy it's Friday! Are you?

How about a layout to celebrate? Before you take a peek, remember this: when my mom and I happen to meet someone for the first time, we often get a bit of a double take. Wanna know why? Ok, here you go:

Ok, so the photo isn't the best -- it's an old one of my mom in her early or mid-twenties, and it definitely has that 70s glow to it -- but yeah, we kind of look alike ;)  Hence the title of my layout, which is the first I've done involving a rebus, as far as I can tell!

I am definitely one apple that's pretty dang close to the tree. I used some of my favorite bits from this month's Counterfeit Kit here, including that tree-print and apple-print paper (both Studio Calico), and some fairly new Thickers, which came nekkid but which I inked up a bit for contrast. I also finally made myself use a Kaisercraft doily that I've been hoarding :)

The tree is paper-pieced (drew the tree top freehand, even), and both it and the apple in the title have a little extra flair:

Crackle Accents to the rescue. I'd forgotten my bottle in a drawer somewhere, and now I remember how much I love it!

So, I'm totally turning into a Counterfeit Kit Challenge nerd -- this month, I printed out my kit photos (see link above), and I've been checking off items as I use them! NERD! But, between this and a couple more projects you've yet to see, I have used and/or used up about 85% of the items in the kit. Score!

I'll be back for the Counterfeit blog hop on the 28th -- the challenge was to scraplift myself...which I do all the time anyway, so that wasn't too hard.

Hope you have a great weekend, and I'll blog at you soon!

It's almost here!

Spring, that is -- last I heard, the "official" start of spring is at 7:21 this evening (local time -- Eastern Standard, that is). Hooray! Spring is my second-favorite season, but this year it just might be #1, since winter was so dang long and cold and snowy!

Well, until spring is really here, how about a nice, warm layout? Ok, here you go:

It might be a little grey out today (sorry the photo is a little grey, too) -- but these photos were from a beautifully warm day, and a delightful little restaurant in Detroit called Le Petit Zinc. I was there with friends from work -- last summer, the three of us went on several outings geared toward being tourists right at home -- this little lunch followed a shopping trip to the nearby John K. King (huge-a-mungous) used bookstore. What a lovely day. If you're local or planning a visit, be sure to hit both!

I used my Counterfeit Kit to make this layout -- mostly from the main kit, and a few goodies from the add-ons.  How about a detail shot or two? If you insist:

I misted my bg paper a bit with some reddish and yellowish colors before building my page on top. I just love these Sassafras alphas -- perfect font, excellent value, and every color/pattern is just yummy.

I took a little extra time concocting this cluster -- there are die-cut, real, and chipboard buttons (and none are threaded -- my patience only goes so far sometimes!), punched and fussy-cut bits, label stickers and even a bit of bling. I can't say I thought too hard about the assembly, though -- I find if I just start sticking, it all turns out fine in the end, but if I over-think every move, well...it just looks over-thought!

Well, I hope this brings a little sunshine to your first day of spring. Have a lovely day!

Cards and cards...

and cards. Three for you today, to be exact! Let's get on with the show:

First:

I don't do much for St. Patty's Day, craft-wise (I'll never turn down a beer, though, green or otherwise!) -- I only have one tiny St. Pat's stamp set (from Papertrey), but it gets some use here on an anniversary card for some dear friends of ours who snuck off and got married on St. Patrick's Day a few years ago :)

I used Meg's fabulous clover idea, though in a larger size, curled up my "leaves" a bit, stamped part of the sentiment stamp, and added a rainbow center and stem -- here's a closeup of that bit:

The center is punched from a stamped and colored rainbow from another set (more on that in a minute), topped with a dome sticker, and the stem is braided twine from the Twinery. Quick, simple, colorful. Suits them to a T!

Next, I have two cards for the same person -- whom I've never met...but she must be pretty special! Any guesses why?:

Yep, she's turning the big century! My pal at work calls her an adopted grandmother...and apparently, it's a little hard to find hundredth-birthday cards at good old Hallmark ;) So, card-making friend to the rescue!  Turns out Ms. Century is a former mountain-climber who still enjoys the view, hence my hand-cut mountains rather than my usual hills. I used Up, Up and Away and the matching balloon and cloud dies for my little scene (the rainbow center of the above clover is in the same set).

Flower gardening is her other hobby:

Used that pretty flower set from Stampin' Up for this one -- I even used a bit of Copic work on them! The dies and sentiment are from Papertrey as well. The pink rose has a bit of dimension:

...um, hope you can see it :) the center was stamped a second time and popped up over the original.

Besides the fact that I made all three of these cards last night, they have something else in common -- they all use the same 8x8 pack of Making Memories paper (an Archiver's giveaway, I think) that's been sitting in a drawer forever. Nice to give my older stash some love!

Before I go, I thought I'd answer the questions I got on my giveaway post last week.

Meg wanted to know my favorite movie. My all-time absolute forever favorite is Willy Wonka (the original, please)...but my modern-day grown-up favorites are a three-way tie between Lost in Translation, Amelie, and Ghost World. OH, and I love everything Audrey Hepburn's ever been in. And all the Wes Anderson movies. And a few others.... :)

Cathy C. wanted to know if I ever do scrap weekends. I can't say that I have -- I've scrapped/crafted all day at Scrappy Chic a bunch, but never an overnight. I'm pretty sure that would be fun, as long as my fellow crafters were a fun bunch!

Liz wants to know what else I like to shop for besides scrap goodies (wait, there are other things to shop for?!?) Seriously, though, I love shoe/clothing/accessory shopping, especially when I score great deals :) And like you, Liz, I love a good HomeGoods run! Vacation spot: I'd love to return to London, and while I'm there I'd visit...um, the rest of Europe! I love cities and history. Favorite blogs: too many to count!

Well, that was a heck of a post! Hope you enjoyed it. If any other questions pop up, just throw them my way. Until then, have a delightful day!

Winner time!

Hey there, valued readers. Last night at 12:30 (or 1:30, depending on when you set the clocks ahead), I went to our pals at random.org to get the winners of my blog birthday giveaway.

Here's the first:

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:2Powered by RANDOM.ORG

That response came from my dear stampy friend Meg! Hooray!

And here's the second:

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:5Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Comment 5 came from the fabulous mustavcoffee! Congrats!

Ladies, please shoot me an email at angelahath(at)gmail(dot)com with your mailing info and the prize you'd like best (Emma's Shoppe or Toy Box) -- if you both want the same one, I'll let you arm wrestle for it.  Just kidding. You live on two different continents :) I'll go first-come, first-served.

I'll be back with a crafty post soon. Have a lovely Sunday, and if you live in the land of Daylight Savings, enjoy your extra evening hour of sunlight!

Tuesday Trigger Time!

Oh my, I haven't managed to play along with the Tuesday Trigger at Moxie Fab World in ages! This week's is particularly inspiring for me -- here it is:

The distressed paint, the clustered bouquet, and especially that echeveria right smack in the middle of all those girly flowers -- just lovely! Appeals to my gardener side as well as my crafter side!

Here's what I came up with:

I was especially inspired by the colors of the echeveria as well as the tight cluster of flowers. I used a die-cut sheet from American Crafts layered over my card, which was then layered with lots and lots and lots of die-cut flowers all clustered together -- as an added bonus, I used the Flower Fusion die from Stampin' Up, which has been languishing unloved for quite some time :)  All the supplies here besides the die came from my Counterfeit Kit for March. You can check out the whole challenge here. Let's take a closer look:

I'd like to say there was some rhyme or reason to the way I made and layered the flowers, but here's what I actually did: die-cut a nice little pile, then squished them all up into a ball, then un-squished them, and then adhered them somewhat randomly, adding pearls here and there. I trimmed the overhang on the left and bottom, but not on the right...because that's more "carefree," don't you think? 

Finally, I'd like to thank my talented friend Emily for sending me that awesome new watermark, which was created by Kasia -- also a very talented crafter! I love skating, and I'm in training to be a roller derby NSO (that's non-skating official) for a new start-up league nearby, and Kasia's a derby girl from Calgary! It's a small crafting world, after all :) Thanks again, both of you!

Have an absolutely delightful Friday, and if you haven't already, be sure to check out this post -- there's a giveaway open until Saturday night!!

Supplies: cardstock -- pti, american crafts. papers - cosmo cricket, studio calico. sentiment sticker - my mind's eye. pearls, die - su. 

Two layouts, plus...

...it's blog birthday giveaway time! But more on that later. First, I have a couple layouts for you today -- made them both last weekend at Scrapbook League at Scrappy Chic.

Numero uno:

Oh my, look at little us. This photo is from 1998, when we spent a semester in London. I dearly miss that semester. If you are ever in the position of doing a semester overseas yourself, or advising a young person faced with such an opportunity, TELL THEM TO GO!! Trust me.

But perhaps more to the point: I used some of my new Echo Park here. Just love For the Record -- it is delightful! I paired it with some old, old Making Memories puffy letters and a little bit of stamping that just looks like smudges in the photo...much cuter in person, I promise. This layout has a partner with a similar design, using the same papers -- it's a photo of me and two of my gal pals in the same pub from the same night. That's about as close as a two-page layout as I get these days :)

Further back in time:

...further back by, oh, 20 years or so! Yep, a different sort of little me, snoozin' in the swing. Sassafras Mix & Mend here, with some old (again) letters from...K&Co, I think, and some new flowers from Prima -- two resin, and one big orange dude that arrives in ribbon form. Can you picture a whole yard of flowery goodness? I can. 'Cause I have one ;)

So, in that photo there, I'm just about a year old...(see the segue in action)...and so is this here blog! Yep, a whole year ago, I decided to take the plunge and share my designs with the world. Well, with the half-dozen or so members of the world who stop in and look, anyway!

In honor of my blog birthday, I have TWO WHOLE PRIZES to give to two lucky commenters today. Wanna see?  Ok:

Oh me oh my, brandy-new goodies from two of everyone's favorite companies! I just got home from picking these up for y'all at Scrappy Chic...look, I'm so tacky I even forgot to take the price tags off! Oops!

First, a 6x6 pad from Crate Paper -- Emma's Shoppe is girly and vintage and fabulous, while Toy Box is part boy, part young at heart, and all awesome. Plus, look: the folks at Crate finally got the memo and reduced their full-size patterns for the small pads instead of hacking 12x12 sheets in quarters! I about flipped when I saw that. (Oh, and these aren't even on the shelves yet at the store -- I was totally rooting around in the piles waiting to go out! They'll probably be out by the end of the day, though, local folks.)

Next, a pack of petals from Basic Grey -- the colors in Hello, Luscious coordinate perfectly with Emma's Shoppe, and the Life of the Party line looks great with Toy Box. Plus, hello? They're CANVAS. So yummy. And there's a lot in each pack.

So whether you're a scrapper or a card maker, there's plenty to love here. Would you likey? Here's the details:

1. If you aren't already, please consider becoming a follower of this blog -- you can do so over in the sidebar, and it only takes a second.

2. Leave a comment on this post that either:

     a. is a question for me. You can ask me anything, make a request, whatever. I like curious people, and I'll try to answer the questions in a future post. (PS: please don't ask for videos. You won't get them, because I'm shy that way ;) OR:

     b. tells me why you stop in and read awhile here at the blog. I'm trying to figure out why I like reading some blogs and quit reading others...maybe your comments can help!

3. Do #s 1 and 2 by SATURDAY, MARCH 12TH, at MIDNIGHT EST. I'll use a random-number generator to pick my winners and post them sometime on Sunday, so be sure to check back.

This is open to anyone, anywhere -- I'll ship internationally to my awesome readers. If you're local, I can bring your winnings to Scrappy Chic. You know you have some shopping to do there, anyway, right?

It's grey and very, very rainy outside, but here in blog land, it's always warm and fuzzy. Have a delightful day!

It's Counterfeit Time!

Time for a new Counterfeit Kit Challenge, that is! I was so super-excited to see that this month's challenge is to counterfeit Studio Calico's latest release! I just love their stuff anyway, and I have purchased a couple kits in the past, so it was extra-fun to save some dough and counterfeit one instead!

Here's the actual main kit, Into the Woods (which sold out in, oh five hours or so...):

And here's my take:

I had plenty of papers to choose from for reasonable facsimilies, including some older Studio Calico stuff I already had. I also broke out an older Papertrey Ink stamp set to replace the cute bee stamp in the kit.

I could have stopped there, but I decided to replicate some add-on kits as well....Here's Babbling Brook

And here's my version:

Admittedly, I lucked out here: I actually won a Social Club crafting kit from Cosmo Cricket, so I have some of the actual papers from the add-on (haven't seen them in stores yet). They're the top-right and bottom-left choices.

There are three other add-ons available (or formerly available) from Studio Calico -- I won't show all three photos, but I took bits and pieces from each and came up with one more of my own:

Gives me a chance to use some of my new Stella & Rose goodies (the original kits use the 12x12, but I have the 6x6 instead), as well as a combo of newer and older goodies from the stash.

Will I use it all up? Probably not. But I gotta say, I'm really inspired to make stuff with these kits! In fact, I already made one project! Here:

Yes, those are photos of our cat with a Justin Bieber hairdo. No, we did not invest in a cat wig ;) It's part of Jimmy Fallon's iPhone app (LNJF) called "Bieber Yourself." How could we resist? Most of the goodies on this layout came from my main kit, with a few elements from the add-on. And yes, I used my bee stamps. Bieber=bee-ber. I crack myself up.

Anyway, happy counterfeiting to you all! I'll be back in the studio today...who knows what's next?

Oh, and be sure to stop by again tomorrow -- I'll be celebrating a blog birthday, and there just might be a little giveaway!

Have a delightful day!

Something new...

Hi there!
As I'm sure you've noticed, there is just a flood of new goodies for all of the papercrafting world to drool over these days.  I just love the post-CHA rush!

Yesterday, I was working away at Scrapbook League at Scrappy Chic, and I tried a product that, if I'm not mistaken, is really new -- something I hadn't seen before. Take a look:

Foldies! Foldies are new from Sassafras -- these are from the delightful Sweetly Smitten line -- and they're reminiscent of the punch-out books I had as a kid. I popped out a little cluster of flowers from a 12x12 sheet (I think there's 4 or 5 total), folded on the little tabs, and then stuck my newly-dimensional embellishment right onto this layout of my sweet Dexter basking in the sun. It was super-easy to add dimension to a relatively flat layout, and I love that big ol' yellow flower in the middle! (By the way, I totally used a great tutorial from Meg to create those photo strips -- go check it out if you'd like to make some for yourself...thanks, Meg!)

I made a card, too:

It's a little easier to see here: the cluster started out flat, and I folded the little tabs under the leaves and the two smaller flower groups, then adhered it to the card with various heights of dimensional adhesive, curving it to fit around the corner of the card. Popped on a quick sentiment with some Echo Park letter stickers and called it good! (Oh, and the background paper is stamped with the envelope pattern stamp from Hero Arts -- also new, and definitely versatile!)

So, has anyone else seen or tried these? I'm usually kinda useless when it comes to flowery embellishments, but these just seem fun :)

Speaking of fun, I'm off to finish a movie and play with my newly-assembled Counterfeit kit -- I'll show that one off tomorrow!

Happy Sunday :)

Birthday x2

Hi folks!

Feels like it's been forever since I've posted a card -- and today I have two!

We celebrated two family birthdays last weekend. First up: my aunt. Here's her card:

I managed to make this whole card with stuff that was already sitting on my desk, which doesn't say nearly as much about my design abilities as it does the amount of crapola that was on my desk! I had plenty of stuff to choose from, that's for sure :). What made the cut: a bit of kraft cs I'd used to test out an impression plate from Papertrey Ink...several months ago. A bunch of scraps and bits and bobs...and a little stamping, too.

Birthday #2 was for my cousin. Here's her card:

Anyone wanna guess how old she is? ;)
Another card from scraps, although this time the scraps are a little newer -- floral paper from Echo Park, spotty paper from Crate Paper, another die-cut that was just laying there, and one of my new My Mind's Eye stamps for the bg. Quick and cheerful.

Well, that's about all from me for now. Saturday is the last official meet-up for scrap league at Scrappy Chic, so I'm busy packing up goodies for that. It's about time for new DT kits there, too -- and whoa, man, they're gonna be something else! I've lost count of all the new stuff that's shown up in the store this past month.

Also, I just kinda realized that my blog birthday (never did really like the non-word "blogiversary." Not that "blog" is much realer, but whatever)...where was I? Oh, yeah -- the 9th. I'll have been blogging for a whole stinkin' year. I'm thinking a giveaway of some kind. Are you up for that? Maybe all you stalkers out there (and I know who you are, Fawn and Kim!) might actually drop me a line if there might be some goodies on the other end of it!

So, stay tuned for that. For now, I'm out!

Enjoy yourselves, wherever you may be.