#Challenge52Kits Daydream Believer - February 2012

Daydream Believer was one of the first kits I remember being sold out of stuff REALLY fast! This was a good one!

ABOUT DAYDREAM BELIEVER | Lots of girly, frilly, lovely products for this one! I didn't have a daughter back then, but sure wished I had! Since it was just me and my husband, I didn't do a lot of layouts with this one. It's actually hard for me to believe that I only got one add-on kit with this one, but maybe that's because I also bought the entire Dear Lizzy Neapolitan line on its own separately!

Main kit + Lady Lane leftover

A LAYOUT | I don't know why, but I really struggled with this layout, well I struggled once I had the pictures printed. I pushed paper for two days and really had trouble deciding what direction I wanted to go with this one. Finally I saw the layout, "Hello Fall" by Kat Benjamin and decided to do a scraplift!

SEWING | The best part about doing this layout was once I cut out the heart on my Silhouette Cameo and pierced my paper, I was able to take my sewing upstairs with me and get that whole part finished while Natalie played with her "manger people" in the living room and Daddy was able to sit through an entire Bills game without having to shut the tv off, grumbling about the whole season being done haha! It was quite relaxing, especially while I drank some warm apple cider!

BONUS PROJECT | Making a card based on my layout was easy for this one, I just kept it simple too and made a birthday card and left a little bit of space at the bottom for a name, maybe stamped or with some thickers.

NEXT UP | Story Hour from March 2012, I remember this one quite well because I just LOVED this kit, with a lot from the Crate Paper Storyteller line, first time seeing Kesi'Art papers, and the unique and versatile colors! I got 3 add-on kits and made 9 or 10 layouts. I found the different types of embellishments for this one as well as the papers made it easy to come up with a lot of layouts quickly, so it'll be interesting to see if I get stuck again with this one finally.

#Challenge52Kits County Fair - January 2012

Oops, I almost forgot to post this week my exploration of squeezing out one more layout from one of my top 3 or 5 kits of all time - County Fair!

ABOUT COUNTY FAIR | I loved the great woodgrain in this one and absolutely LOVED the Sasparilla collection from October Afternoon that made up a good amount of the kit and add-ons, plus I don't know... that country type feel for some reason!

Main kit leftover

REALITY | This was the first kit I actually made use of! I had signed up for Studio Calico's first class "Stretch Your Kit" with Amy Tan and made 9 layouts with this kit and add-ons! Later I made one more layout, making 10 layouts! The silly thing is seeing how much I really still have left over even after making all that, but I attribute that in part to buying more and add-on patterned paper quite often (I think I purchased just the more patterned paper for this month), so that doubles the main kit papers. I don't think I stopped buying add-on paper till later in 2012, so we'll (hopefully) start seeing a lot less leftovers!

Shooting Gallery leftover

Photo Booth leftover

A LAYOUT | For my layout I had this photo from a zoo trip with our friends that I wanted to put into Chris' album, so I made it 8.5x11. I had looked up some ideas but ended up just grabbing some leftover scraps and a piece of paper from that pad of paper around the page! So it kinda came together really fast! The only pieces that weren't from this kit are the round wood camera stamp (I liked this one from Amy Tangerine better than the one that came in the kit) and the jewels in the middle because the green buttons from the kit popped up just a little too much for me to want to use on a scrapbook page. Below you can see the Color Theory inks I selected to stamp with.

BONUS PROJECT | I made a thank you card for my sister and used my layout for inspiration, specifically the top right! So this card was super quick and easy and she loved it, especially since her name is Julie but Natalie called her "Aunt Juwie" haha!

NEXT UP | Daydream Believer from February 2012! This was a beautiful kit and back then I didn't have my daughter, so I'm looking forward to making something girly with this one!

#Challenge52Kits Brooklyn Flea - December 2011

Brooklyn Flea... where was I in December 2011? Absent perhaps.

ABOUT BROOKLYN FLEA | Not your typical December kit, not super Christmas-y, and I LOVED that it wasn't!

Brooklyn Flea + Salvaged add-on leftovers minus the card stock

REALITY | But reality is, I might've made 1 or 2 cards with this kit MAYBE, and that's it. I hardly remember this kit at all, except later thinking how much I loved the look of it, but never got around to working with it! I had only purchased 1 add-on kit, so maybe that's part of why I didn't do much with it or remember it well.

A LAYOUT | For this layout of my family eating dinner together for my daughter's 2nd birthday, I scraplifted this older layout by SC user paperandpetals because I really liked the banners and getting to use a bunch of those papers together! Plus I used up a bunch of those nice buttons!

BONUS PROJECT | Going with the theme of last week and using my layout as inspiration to make a card from the kit as well, I made this card base. It's just the start of a card, because I want to be able to use it for any occasion, maybe a thank you, maybe a boy birthday... but this way I have a quick start and idea all ready!

CARD UPDATE 10/2015 | I ended up needing to send some photographs to my Grandma's friend and of course, I couldn't send just an envelope, so I finished up this card to send along with the photos! I added some foam adhesive to the bottoms of the banners to make them stand out a bit more and then stamped and embossed the sentiment at the bottom. I was a little skeptical how I could use that card base, but it was perfect for this occasion and so glad I had it to work from to send out some really quick mail!

NEXT UP | County Fair from January 2012 - One of my top 3 ALL-TIME favorite kits I think! Why? Mainly because of Amy Tan's Stretch Your Kit class that got me to make 9 layouts with this kit and really gave me permission to USE my beloved supplies instead of hoard them!! It will be interesting though to see what I have leftover and how I am going to squeeze another layout with it. I think I actually made 10 layouts total.

#Challenge52Kits Handmade - November 2011

Handmade, handmade, handmade. Here we go, November 2011.

ABOUT HANDMADE | This month definitely had a different vibe to it than the previous two kits, and included some of October Afternoon's Farm House collection as well as some Lost & Found Two collection from My Mind's Eye, AND that beautiful woodgrain paper in the main kit from the Peppermint collection by Crate Paper!

REALITY | Reality is, that full 12x12 diecut sheet really threw me for a loop I think - at least in my memory, when I think of this kit, I can only picture that diecut and the whole kit has kinda gone out the window for me. As noted last week, I felt like I would have trouble with this one, but in reality, now that I have the add-on kits all put back together, what a lovely kit this is! It wasn't even on my radar to start looking for Christmas themes, but when I noticed some beautiful greens mixed with a couple of reds, it got my wheels spinning… so my bonus project was to make a Christmas card with this kit!

Handmade leftover	Tatting leftover
Pin Cushion leftover	More Color

STORAGE TIP | Whenever I have a pile of wood veneer letters that I know I won't want to sort through later, I try to just sort once and make a "cheat sheet" to tell me how many of each letter are left. Then, when I use the letters in the future, I try to remember to cross them off as they get used (see the Tatting leftover image)!

A LAYOUT | I started the layout after I found this layout by SC user Izzie as inpsiration - I just loved the starburst look with these papers and that woodgrain paper as the background! Except I wanted to make mine come from the corner.

STARBURST | To make the starburst I cut a rectangle to the size I wanted it out of plain card stock. Then I drew random lines from one corner out across the paper with a ruler. I numbered the front with a pencil just in case I lost track of one of them, then cut with my paper cutter along the lines. After that I took each numbered piece one by one and lined it up on a piece of patterned paper and traced it. To reduce a bit of cutting, I lined up one long edge of each piece along the edge of the paper, then only had to trace and cut along the other two sides. Then I pieced them together to see how it would look. When I was ready to adhere them, I flipped them over and re-pieced it together and taped up the back with scotch tape. That made it easy to adhere the whole thing down exactly where I wanted it.

BONUS PROJECT | After seeing some of the colors of the papers laying together, I thought, I can definitely get a Christmas card from this! I went to think of a design, but then thought it would be cool to use my own layout as inspiration for the card, so that's exactly what I did! Super quick and easy to repeat the process and this time, I traced 2 of the pieces at a time from the same paper and then cut them out - which made it slightly faster and less tedious-seeming. I really enjoyed this kit and this process, and would love to try to do more cards this way!

NEXT UP | Next up is Brooklyn Flea, which I am REALLY looking forward to since I don't remember really digging into this one hardly at all! I love how it was a December kit that wasn't too Christmas-themed!