Enjoying the Counterfeit Challenge

I'm enjoying the challenges being set in this month's Counterfeit Challenge Blog.  We were challenged to counterfeit the recent Studio Calico City of Lights range of kits - and being a lover of SC but currently not able to justify having their kits, it's been fun to try and mimic the range of beautiful goodies.

I started by taking up Crystal's challenge to make your own background paper and not use standard shapes.  Being the proud possessor of a bicycle stamp, and in an attempt to counterfeit the 'Lady Bike' paper in  the kit, I ink-shaded half a pale yellow sheet of Bazzill Basics in stripes and stamped my bicycle stamp on it.  I decided I prefer it without the white line of the original kit version, and of course my bikes only face one way, but it's good enough for me!  I will team my layout with one or more of these gorgeous bicycle clips from Oliver Bonas.

My next attempt was at the Kesi'Art paper from the CE2 collection - the original has part of a big circle on it, but my scraps weren't big enough, so I made a smaller circle instead in the spirit of the same colour scheme.  I am definitely going to have a go at the larger part circle - with a different colour scheme at some point as I really like it.  This is my attempt.

I'm feeling a trifle smug as I already had a go at punching shipping tags to make patterned tags a la Pebbles in the Sorbonne kit, and my recent post here counterfeits the butterfly paper from MME.  I think I might have a few extra left over to counterfeit the stickers  :)

Finally, I also had another go at stamping a background - not too large a piece as argyle is very bold (and I have a feeling it will be more prevalent in scrapbooking over the coming months), but just enough to try out this stamp which I have had for years but never actually used before - mainly because it is unmounted and not clear - I'm definitely a clear stamp fan!

I have plans to use this on a golf layout of my son.
Now to have a go at some of the other blog hop challenges...