Krafty Travel Kit and Mini Album − Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop

Welcome to my part of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Members' Blog Hop!

If you're already following the Blog Hop, you have probably come here from Tina's blog. If you want to start from the beginning or got lost along the way, head back to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog to find the full hop order!

A couple of months ago in June, I had the honour to be a Guest Designer at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog. It was so much fun to put together my own kit, and even more fun was to have my kit then handy to create projects for the whole month. The inspiration kit was the May 2016 Kit from Hip Kit Club, bright and cheerful, and I called my kit Hip State of Mind.

Here you can see all the projects I made with the June kit, and here is the direct link to the one time I had joined their challenge with my own kit before that.

This time, the monthly inspiration kit was chosen by Lisa Hausmann, who as a European member of the CKC Design Team wanted to pick a kit from a European club. Lisa's choice was the March 2016 kit from Papierwerkstatt. You can also take a look on the kit on Lisa's Pinterest board here!

Let's take a look at the Papierwerkstatt kit first!







I was particularly inspired by the kraft and neutral tones of the kit, and also the mini book idea, which you'll see in my project further down! For contrast, there is also one black paper with a flower pattern.

And here's my Counterfeit... named the Krafty Travel Kit!



With a close-up...



Here are the papers and cardstock I chose!

I was not completely happy at first to replace the black paper with these two Basic Grey flower ones with brown and purple backgrounds, but they had to do, since I simply didn't have any with black backgrounds and wanted to have some dark ones with flowers anyway. We'll see if they work for this kit or not.



From left to right: Glitz − Sunshine in my Soul 6x6 pad
Pre-gessoed and stenciled kraft cardstock
Textured light yellow paper
Prima − Just Us/Long Embrace
Basic Grey − Jovial/Nordic
4 heures 37 − 1658 Eiffel Avenue
Bazzill Basics − straw cardstock
Non-scrapbook item: a piece of wallpaper from our Red Cross thrift store
Almond and kraft cardstock also probably from Bazzill Basics
4 heures 37 − Chemin des 3 flocons
Bazzill Basics − kraft with gold foiled stars
Basic Grey − Mellow/Cultured
Basic Grey − Eva/Noble



And then the embellishments, Project Life supplies and alphabet:



Tiger aka Flying Tiger Copenhagen − cork and gold/white striped paper straws
Kaiser Scrapbook − Golden Rhinestones
8x8 Papers on top left and chipboard are of unknown brand.
PL journaling cards are from 4 heures 37, Sodalicious, and... can't remember the third one.
Chipboard alpha, unknown, cork alpha from American Crafts/Dear Lizzy, and the travel themed alpha from Papermania/All Aborad.

Some more close-ups:





I knew I wanted to join the Challenge 2 of the month in particular, where the theme is Outside the Stash: Incorporate some non-scrapbook stash into your project. I had so many possible items that they deserved to be an add-on kit of their own!



And then to my challenge project!



A Mini Album from Outside the Stash − made from toilet paper rolls!



This was a quick and simple project with memories and ideas from a craftivism workshop that I participated in last weekend. The good thing with a paper roll album is that the rolls automatically form pockets where it's easy to add hidden journaling, so I can do that later!

















Thank you so much for browsing through this super long post! To continue the blog hop, you should hop over to Jemma, the last person in the hop today! For the full hop list, check the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog here.

Thanks for looking! I'd love to see you comment to let me know you were here and happy hopping!

Vintage Bottles − An ATC set for Scrap Africa August Mood Board 77

Hi! The lovely August mood board at Scrap Africa inspired me to try my new Art Journey set of stamps with vintage bottles.



Here's the beautiful blazing purple/violet mood board, with so many possible ideas of inspiration! I was particularly inspired by the bottle theme, obviously, plus the watercolour flower painting on the top right that made me think of making a painterly background with dye inks.

Did you know that you can join the Scrap Africa challenges with any kind of paper crafting, be it layouts, cards, ATCs or off the page projects?



I am also joining the challenges at Lost Coast Designs Blog, where the monthly theme is Watercolor Background, and the Artistic Stamper, with Anything Goes.



The watercolour effects of my ATC backgrounds are made with Distress Inks. Both that and the stamping technique I used were taught by the Dutch stamping artist Liesbeth Fidder at one of her popular workshops in Finland last spring. Liesbeth showed us how to make a watercolour looking background with Distress Inks, a spray bottle of water and an acrylic block. Until then, I must admit I had not used my few Distress Inks a lot, since I prefer pigment or permanent inks for stamping of actual images. I know there must be so many ways to use them that I just haven't thought of, and this definitely became a favourite!

I also like that there are more bright colours available, and the mini pads that are more economical to get in many colours. When I bought my first Distress Inks, they were mostly in earthly shades (which I normally love, too, but with this technique, the brighter colours really get to shine!)



I made the larger piece of paper into ATC sized cards at this point and stamped the bottles with black Staz-On. The next thing was to remove the background colour from the image area with chlorite. As said, all of this I know thanks to Liesbeth, who is also a very nice teacher in addition to being a great stamping artist. I warmly recommend joining her workshops if you ever get the chance!

For those of you who live in or near Finland, Liesbeth's workshops have been organized by Askartelu Amalia in Espoo, in case you are interested!

For a finishing touch, I just added a bit of Inka Gold in Turquoise and Violet in the borders and corners.

Here are the cards one by one. They are all available for trade, and I'll update when they aren't anymore. Feel free to ask here in the comments or wherever you see me in social media!

1 and 2


3 and 4


5 and 6


Thank you for looking! I look forward to trading these! (I'm in Finland, but international mail is fine, too.)