November 2019 - Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Forgery on the Fourth

A reminder of the Counterfeit Kit Challenge November inspiration kit from Scrapdelight Scrapwinkel in the Netherlands. I am truly in love with this kit and am so happy that I picked it out for us this month.

https://www.scrapdelight.nl/product/67860/123-documenter-kit-pocket-pages-winter-thema/

I decided that I wanted to focus on the pretty fairy lights for my forgeries as well as what seemed to be really simple coffee cups and a "winter" word. It all seemed pretty easy and could be found in my Silhouette files.

Easier said than done for this Silhouette novice - even after 7 years and much increased use!

I searched my own files, then looked in the Silhouette store and came up with a good sample of full width banners and some shorter ones as well as a set of light chains which looked pretty close to the original. Then I went on the search for coffee cups and a word. So far so good.

I managed to work out how to create an offset cut for the word so that I could cut the original word out in blue and add it to a white background. I was on a roll! Then I worked out that I would need to make the coffee cup lids and hearts on a second sheet in different colours. Again, looking good.

The final light chain that looked so similar to the original also had separate shapes for the lights and the strings to be cut out in different colours. Ok, they also needed to be on a different cutting mat. I mirrored a couple of the chains so that the swing would be different and filled one sheet to be cut out in white. This was easy!

Then I organised all the bits I wanted to cut out in colour on another sheet - positioning them to match up where I intended to put different coloured scraps of paper. I was trying to make it easy after all and didn't want to have to load up the cutting sheet a gazillion times with different bits of paper.

My Silhouette layout looked something like this!

And my sheet of paper looked like this with the different scraps taking up different locations matching up to what my final layout was (I changed the previous layout a bit once I had the papers picked out). All the little bits of coloured paper came from my kit which I thought was quite clever.

However, every time I sent the file to cut, the paper slipped around and didn't cut properly. Even though I had refreshed the glue on the cutting mat and pressed the paper down really really hard! It drove me crazy. I was achieving one or two of the tiny things with each pass before the paper started to shift around. I was at it for HOURS!

This morning, I sat down with fresh energy and a clearer head and decided to send each shape through separately and attach the papers to the cutting mat with a little washi. Worked a dream!

I used a glue pen to do the fiddly work of adding the tiny pieces onto the white shapes. I'm not designed for this type of detailed work - I just don't have the patience. But even so, I'm pleased with the result of how they turned out - if you don't look too closely!

I lost the dot to the "i" along the way. I'll have to draw it in I think!

And the little lights are so tiny that I just picked them up and stuck them down as well as I could. Now I see that some of them are textured and some not - ah! Textured cardstock which I'm not used to using these days - oh well. As always, live and learn!

However, all in all, these die cuts will be useful I'm sure and you'll have to see what I do with them. I don't have anything specific planned, but the month is still young...

I've added some free cut file links over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenger blog today so head over there to check out what the others have created as well as the links.

Don't forget that there's a whole load of inspiration over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog and we always love seeing how you've been inspired. So please share your kits and projects with us.

You can use our Monthly Link-up page, post them in our Facebook Community, or share them on Instagram (we are @counterfeitkitchallenge or tag us using #counterfeitkitchallenge and #ckcnovember2019).

Counterfeit Kit Challenge - Forgery on the Fourth

I'm back today with my Forgery on the Fourth for Counterfeit Kit Challenge September kit.

You can find out more links and other forgeries from the team over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog here so don't forget to head over there to see what's on offer :-) 

A reminder of our personalised curated kit for September's inspiration courtesy of Khristina Sorge from the Secret Not Secret Kit Club (you can find details about her club online here) who is also our wonderful Guest Designer this month. 

This is the kit she made for us.

My eye immediately went to the die cut viewfinders and the outline plane embellishment. I knew I could come up with something similar using my Silhouette. It took me a couple of minutes to find some viewfinders in my library so I was on a roll but a plane? I had to use a cluster embellishment and ungroup them to have a single plane to use.

Next up was to resize a bunch of them, position them in a similar way to the original in the kit and then work out how to connect them. Merging them was tricky and it took a long time to get them perfectly positioned so that they touched but didn't go "into" the neighbouring shape. While that looked ok as block shapes, once I worked out how to create an outline shape, I could see that when they overlapped too much, the outline wasn't solid but rather had openings where they touched. I went online to find out how to create an outline cut from a solid shape (apparently it's offset and I worked out that an inside offset was better). Then I kept nudging the shapes around, merging, offsetting and checking the form before undoing all those last steps to nudge the shapes around again and continue through that iterative process until I was relatively happy with the result! It's not perfect but I'm happy with it and I think that no-one would notice the imperfection. This is a screenshot of how my template looked in Silhouette before I sent it to cut.

I used a thick white cardstock and it came out perfectly. It really took a long time but I learned about offsetting shapes and am gradually building up more than just the basic skills that I've had for some time now. When I use my Silhouette, I'm always thrilled with the result and just purchasing this shape might have been a whole lot easier but I've got a lot of satisfaction from creating this die cut myself.

I also thought I'd give the epoxy stickers a go. I liked the simple white on black form with the non-uniform white outline and thought I could recreate something similar. I used an almost black paper and them white heat embossed some motifs from a travel collection stamp set and a few phrases that were the same as the original set. I cut these out using three different sized dies and then cut a set of white cardstock circles too. I mounted the black paper onto the white cardstock in different ways - sometimes using a larger white circle and sometimes, the same size. I moved the shapes around so that there was a different frame of white on each one.

Then I covered a few of them with Mod Podge Dimensional Magic, laying them out on baking paper first so that they didn't stick. I tried to get right up to the edges and knock out the air bubbles before leaving them for 24 hours to dry.

The final result isn't perfect as there were definitely some bubbles still left in the glue as well as some rough edges as the glue settled and dried. I was also a little disappointed that the white cardstock appears less than white now. The Dimensional Magic is not 100% clear but at least the white of the cardstock is now the same white as the embossing!

Just for comparison, I also did the same thing to a few with Glossy Accents. As you can see, the white cardstock appears a more true white but the surface is certainly not as smooth and glossy or as dimensional.

I've left a few without the "epoxy" effect and no doubt all my faux epoxy stickers will get used up on cards at some point.

If you have some clear epoxy stickers, you can of course make your stickers in an easier way than this. I've included a YouTube link over on the CKC blog today for different ways to put your backgrounds together for these.

In the past I've also talked about making complete copies of sets of word-based Thickers using my Silhouette (you can find examples here and here).

Why not try your hand at making your own embellishments for your own kit? It can be a lot of fun learning new techniques and trying different things out to achieve the results you're looking for. Not all of my "forgeries" are successful, but I love giving it a try!

Don't forget that there's a whole load of inspiration over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog and we always love seeing how you've been inspired. So please share your kits and projects with us.

You can use our Monthly Link-up page, post them in our Facebook Community, or share them on Instagram (we are @counterfeitkitchallenge or tag us using #counterfeitkitchallenge and #ckcseptember2019).