August 2023 - Kill That Kit!

 It's hard to believe that we are already at the end of the month but here we are for the last post of this month. 

How was August for you? Were you productive and raring to go for the new month or maybe, it was a quiet month for you as you approach the end of summer (or winter for those of you down south) and head into the new season. 

I always feel like September is a reset for me and I hope to find a little more creative productivity! My August kit was hardly touched - just one layout in total - but a new month is always a new chance at more focussed creative time.

So it's a little strange to be writing a post about killing the kit because as you can imagine, my kit is nowhere near at the end of its life. In fact, as you can see in this photo of just the papers, there is still PLENTY of life in it yet.

But I did come up with an idea of something I wanted to produce with my kit and I think the idea lends itself perfectly to using up the bits and pieces that you find at the bottom of your kit box as the month comes to an end... ATCs!

My circle of scrapbook friends and I have started exchanging ATCs (artist trading cards for those of you who might not be familiar with them) as part of our regular creative swaps. I'd never done them before but remember that they were very much the trend when I started scrapbooking back in 2006. I was a little sceptical at first but as we started exchanging these little rectangles of creativity, I realised how delightful they are. And I've grown to enjoy coming up with ideas for designs and reasons! We've exchanged as part of our swap, for a creative day we had together in summer, even for the coronation of King Charles back in May. My ATC pocket pages are slowly filling up and I love the fact that we all approach them differently! Our styles are there to see in each of the cards and as always, it's easy to see that I prefer the simple approach.

As a side-note, our wonderful Guest Designer Clair sent me this pocket letter back in 2017 and it was my very first experience of ATCs. Isn't it just the most gorgeous little selection of creativity!??! I still love it as much as when I first received it!

Anyway, long story short and here we are with my kit killing idea.

I wanted to make some thank you cards for my creative ladies (we just finished our summer exchange) and thought that the pretty elements in my kit would be perfect. I came up with a simple, layered design and then cut out the basic cards, some paper backgrounds, die cut some tickets and fussy cut some butterflies. I picked out a bunch of flowers from my bag of floral elements and added in some gold card to cut out some alphas to use (I added double sided sticker paper to the back before cutting them out.) You can see my piles of elements ready to be pulled together here.

From there it was just a matter of building up the layers across the ten cards, production line style. Easy peasy!

In the end, it took me about an hour to make the 10 ATCs and am really happy to have used up some older product and made the most of the papers and embellishments I had in my kit. I could also have added some enamel dots but didn't want to add anything else into my kit in the spirit of using up the kit that I had.

And there you have it - an idea you might be interested to copy to use up some of the scraps and bits & pieces at the end of your kit to exchange with your creative friends! 

You never know, you might become as taken with them as I am 😉

Thanks for joining me this month - as always, it was a pleasure to be your guide. I'll be back later in the year but Tina will be here tomorrow to kick off a brand new month of creative possibilities which you are not going to want to miss.

I hope that you are inspired to make something and share with us. You can post them in our Facebook Community, or share them on Instagram (we are @counterfeitkitchallenge or tag us using #counterfeitkitchallenge and #ckcaugust2023). 

 

Lisa