May 2026 - Let's Use Those Scraps!

It is the final challenge of the month!
Before we dive in, here is a reminder peek at our kit.

Master Forger Ryann had SO MUCH FUN putting this layout together of her trip to Disneyland last summer!  She used those big, fluffy, "SNACKS" letters for her title, and the plates with utensils have been in her stash for a really long time!  She feels this was a fun way to showcase some of her favorites from her trip!

Master Forger Misty

Didn't have a lot of scraps to work with, but made use of what she had. From a few smaller scraps she punched out a bunch of circles for embellishment layers. She even created one as a ring to highlight a hard to see part of the photo! Then she trimmed her photo down to 3x5 so she could use some medium sized scraps as photo mats.

The story tells about trying to catch this picture. Since the photo is hard to see, I highlighted it with a ring punched from scraps. I use this technique frequently.

 That is a wrap for May. And actually that is a wrap for my time here on the CKCB team. I've had another opportunity come up that I will be focusing on. I will miss being behind the scenes with the team! They'll keep the fun going for you and I'll be around in the community to keep following along.

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty

May 2026 - Challenge #3 - Let's Get Sketchy

  

It is the third challenge of the month! This is always our sketch challenge.
Before we dive in, here is a reminder peek at our kit.

On to our sketch...
I decided on this one because it reminded me of a big dinner plate! I designed this sketch. I love making sketches and sharing them. So let's see how the team interpreted their layouts.

Here is how the team took the sketch and made it their own.

Master Forger Vikki

I thought this month's inspiration kit gave me the perfect opportunity to start my family recipes book.  I'm using a Happy Planner for this project so I adapted the sketch to a Happy Planner page.  I'm going to include pictures of the recipes I include in the book.

The page I made will sit opposite the recipe in the book.  This is a project that I've been wanting to start for some time now and I'm excited to make some progress on it.

Master Forger Tina

A fun sketch to play with here is what I created with it. 

Master Forger JoJo

Here is Jojo take on this month sketch, she used old photo of her mom and aunt to document this memory. She followed the sketch and added extra embellishments and even used the forgeries she made.

 Only one challenge left for the month! You know what to expect by now I hope. LOL

• 31st - Baby Use Those Scraps

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty

May 2026 - Challenge #2 - Tasty Stories

It is the second challenge of the month!

Before we dive in, here is a reminder peek at our kit.

Since stories are at the heart of scrapbooking for me, I have another story challenge for you! The original inspiration is very food themed. Go ahead and tell a food story? Family recipe? Great date dinner? Comfort meals? Spill the tea on all the... tea (or coffee).

Guest Designer Debbie

Debbie has a giggle as she describes her local coffee shop as her "dealer." What a fun way to capture everyday life!

Master Forger Julene

Lobster has been a favourite since I first tasted it in my early 20s.  We were served it on the last night of the cruise. This paper came from Canada and I've finally been able to use it.

Master Forger Brandi

My parents grow tomatoes to be used in homemade spaghetti sauce; the recipe was my grandmother's and now my mom makes it every year. My boys loved having the chance to help their Pappy pick tomatoes! 

Master Forger Laurie

 We go to the New York State Fair every summer and our favorite food to eat is Poutine with an ice cold beer. We never tire of this delightful dish. If you're not familiar with Poutine it is french fries with cheese curds and brown gravy.

 We are halfway through our challenges already! Luckily there are still two more...

• 22nd - Challenge #3 - Let’s Get Sketchy
• 31st - Baby Use Those Scraps

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty

May 2026 - Challenge #1 - Family Love

It is the first challenge of the month! Before we dive in, here is a reminder peek at our kit.

Since Mother's Day is celebrated in many places during the month of May we are going to talk about family! Tell a story about someone you love. It could be mom, but it doesn't have to be. Perhaps you have a close person that is much more like family than some of your actual family?! 

Guest Designer Debbie

Debbie made this beautiful layout about her Great Grandmother. What a way to capture a family member from the past!

Master Forger Brandi

No better way to celebrate Mother's Day than with a sweet photo of the little one who made me a Mama! 

Master Forger Amanda

I had a similar idea to Master Forger Brandi, and documented a picture of me with my first-born just after she was born. I used a mixture of  companies including Close to My Heart, 49&Market, Studio Calico, Mintay, Echo Park and Simple Stories! My process will be up on my channel.

 One challenge on the books, three more to go! Here is what we have next on the schedule.

• 18th - Challenge #2
• 22nd - Challenge #3 - Let’s Get Sketchy
• 31st - Baby Use Those Scraps

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty

May 2026 - Mini Kits & Projects Reveal

 There isn't always time in the month to make and use up a big kit. If you wan to keep it smaller, we have you covered. From page kits to small projects you can just take these ideas in a smaller direction. Let's see our inspiration again, and then check out what the team came up with.

Master Forger Tara went a little different way than the themey-ness of the original kit.  She really didn't have photos of baking to scrap so she went with florals and bright colors.  She swapped out the red in the inspo kit for hot pink and came up with this:

There's only 4 sheets of patterned paper, an alpha set, and the matching sticker sheets in the kit.  So, Master Forger Tara created some florals to go with her kit with dies, cardstock, and Nuvo drops.

 Master Forger Tara spent most of iNSD creating layouts using this kit and here's what she came up with:

During the iNSD zoom crop and chat she also played along with our Counterfeit the Master Forgers challenges and created this layout by counterfeiting Master Forger Julene.

 Master Forger Julene created a sketch based upon her original layout:

Master Forger Christine

Christine has a whole organizer full of kitchen/cooking collection pieces!  So as soon as she saw the inspiration kit, that's the little box she pulled.  And decided to go all in with the theme.  Notice the KitchenAid paper??  And how cute are those little aprons?  Most of these papers are quite old (one is from 2017), so this was a great opportunity to use them.  She pulled 3 full size sheets, one almost full, and then a ton of scraps from that little organizer.  For embellishments, she had one sticker sheet with a few stickers, a bunch of 2x2 cut aparts and some tags.  

The full size sheets Master Forger Christine pulled.

The 2x2 cut-aparts, a couple of journaling cards, and a scrap.

More scraps! Plus a tag.

And the sticker sheet.

Master Forger Christine was able to get 3 12x12 layouts completed.  Truth be told, she put a few scraps back in her little organizer.  

The first layout.  Master Forger Christine felt like making a swoosh.  Coz why not??  But, then she decided to flip one of her originally selected papers to the B-side for the more tone on tone dark brown base.  The cute apron paper was a nice contrast.  She fussy cut the mixer from a journaling card, as well as a couple of the other embellishments, and used 4 tags across the middle.  

The second layout turned about a bit more busy.  But it was just impossible to resist using both the mixer paper and the pie paper when the photo has both!  The journaling cards made perfect title/subtitle and the little 2x2 acted as embellishments.  She used the little plate on one of them as a journaling spot.

The last layout, she decided the cut-offs from the first layout's swoosh were just begging to be used.

She also pulled in a couple more 2x2 cut aparts plus some stickers.  She used the red cardstock to make  journaling tag.

And there we have it!  Three full layouts from just this little kit - with some going back into the cooking paper organizer :-) 

Now that we have our kits built, let's use them. Here is the inspo coming up for that!

• 12th - Challenge #1
• 18th - Challenge #2
• 22nd - Challenge #3 - Let’s Get Sketchy
• 31st - Baby Use Those Scraps

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty

May 2026 - Forgeries on the Fourth

 

When you look at a kit to replicate you may think "but I don't have that...."
No worries! Many times you can make your own version. See how the team takes our inspiration kit (reminder photo below!) and uses it to create their own elements.

Guest Designer Debbie Barton

Debbie was happy to build up clusters of icons to make her embellishments come to life. Did you spy the blingy martini glass? Now that is a fun twist on the food theme, right?

Master Forger Misty

Misty started with one idea and ended up doing something different! She wanted to make the chalkboard style word elements from the inspiration and ended up recreating the sheet of cut apart journaling cards. Take a look.

She had a lot of fun creating the bottom left card with some drawing skills! She has a video up if you want to learn some drawing techniques.

We'll be back in two days with some Mini Kit inspo. Stay tuned for that and much more.

• 6th - Mini Kit and Project Reveal
• 12th - Challenge #1
• 18th - Challenge #2
• 22nd - Challenge #3 - Let’s Get Sketchy
• 31st - Baby Use Those Scraps

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty

May 2026 -- Just the gist of it.

 Our kit this month has a very strong theme to it. What do you do if you have no interest in that theme? Don't worry, I'm here to help. As a reminder here is the kit we are using for inspiration: Echo Park Mom's Kitchen collection. 

  

You'll notice that many of the elements are food and cooking/baking themed. You can approach this in a few ways. 

1. You can absolutely ignore those images and icons if they don't work for you. Focus instead on colors or textures. 
2. You can sub in distantly related themes.
3. Nudge the theme just a bit.

Here are some examples of ways I used each of these tips.

1. The inspiration pattern has a repeating oven pattern. I had nothing like this in my stash. I've subbed in a cactus print! What jumped out at me from both these papers is the happy burst of color. Now I have a very different interesting paper in my kit for telling a range of stories!
   
   
   
   
   
2. This inspiration is all about baking. I thought about the idea of pies and ended up pulling several sheets of fruit prints. So this took the theme from cooking to the related theme of food in general with a more botanical twist.
   
   
   
   
3. I really liked the navy blue prints in the inspiration. They had baking & hosting imagery. If that isn't your cup of tea, then maybe tea cup imagery is! This is very closely related to the theme but more flexible in the stories you can tell. 
   
   
   
   

So this is what the start of what my kit looks like. Would you have guessed that I started with the original inspiration? That is what is so fun about building your own kit. You can take it anywhere you want to go.

Hope this gives you a good start to your kit build.
Now, here is what is coming up next for May. 

• 4th - Forgeries on the Fourth
• 6th - Mini Kit and Project Reveal
• 12th - Challenge #1
• 18th - Challenge #2
• 22nd - Challenge #3 - Let’s Get Sketchy
• 31st - Baby Use Those Scraps

We love to see what you are working on so don't forget to show us on our Facebook counterfeit kit community.

Enjoy your time with us this month,

Misty