Scrapping Along with My Scrappy Sisters (From Afar)...

Last weekend was a little rough for me as I had a ton of scrappy friends all congregate at the fabulous ScrapbookSteals Mad Scrapper Retreat. This year, I had a perfect storm of personal and work obligations that just made it really difficult to sneak away and play with all of them. There's always next year, and I know that it will be even bigger and better than before! If you haven't checked them out, make sure that you do.

Anyway, since I couldn't join my crafty pals... I figured I would at least pretend. I grabbed my little girls, let them play upstairs with me, and crafted the day away. I found myself drawn to a really vertical aesthetic, and just played with my September Homemade "Counterfeit" Kit which I'm now going to rename "Shop Your Stash Kits". The reality is, I don't want to step on anyone's toes and call them something that has already been taken. Totally proactive, I swear.

This layout used a lot of inspiration from Audrey Yeager's version of this PageMaps sketch.

For my second layout, I started with using some Golden Light Molding Paste with a Silhouette Online Studio cut. Once that was dry, I took a couple of inks that I had, and blended them together to add some color onto the dried paste. I didn't want all of the white to go away, so made sure that a little still showed. Then layered on a photo and a few embellishments. The veneer butterfly was inked to match the enamel dots.

The last of the three was really fun. The Sassafras Lass paper that I used is one of my favorites, and I'm glad that I finally used it. To be honest, I think I've had it in my stash now for over five years. That's a long time to not use something pretty.

I used one of the September PageMaps sketch for this one, and really liked it. I moved up the bottom border to better frame the photograph.

These last two were created sometime in September, but I wanted to finish sharing my wonderful September projects that were created using my September Homemade "Counterfeit" Kit. I really loved the yellow and all of the bright colors in this layout. I didn't want to make a matchy-matchy pink layout just because both of the girls were wearing pink. I did love the small pops of blue in Miss I's shirt, and the yellow in Ro's, so wanted to highlight those colors. I love using my Silhouette to make die cut shapes from small remnants of my favorite papers, so used the last of some Crate Paper to make this ampersand.

This last piece really didn't have a story... Just a sweet, lazy dog. I wanted to keep the colors fairly muted, so grabbed a couple of light patterns and created a large background cut. The original layout of the cut is pretty vertical, so I squared it out to mimic my photograph and paper. I couldn't resist adding a couple of Lawn Fawn stamps to the mix however.

Hope you enjoy the works of September! I already have my October Homemade "Counterfeit" Kit created... Hopefully I will share this with you tomorrow!