Double take challenge, the big reveal

Way back on March 23rd I posted about a Doubles Swap I was doing with my blog buddy, the uber talented, Renee Lamb. What? You don't remember that post? You mean to tell me you all don't have all of my posts memorized. Geez! Well because I'm a nice person (and also can be counted among the seriously memory impaired) I will give you a recap. It worked like this...Renee and I each pulled all sorts of fun scrappy stuff from our stash that we had duplicates of...which by the way in my case was a lot...then we took all the duplicates and did one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me and each made identical kits...in total we each made 4 kits...we each kept 2 and mailed the twins to each other. Got it so far. Good. So once we got our kits the real fun began...we got to scrap with them. Not sure about Renee's take on the kits but I loved them...and I hated them...LOL. The kits themselves were awesome...lots of great papers and embellishments and the second I opened them I started getting a ton of ideas. Problem being I had to find photos to work with my ideas...so not used to working backwards...talk about a challenge. Our intention was to post about 2 weeks after we got them but being that Renee and I are both busy moms 2 weeks turned into 3...3 turned into 4 and well here we are ...30+ days later. But hey all good things are worth waiting for. So it's finally time for the big reveal...time to see what Renee and I did with our matching kits...oh and FYI...I have not seen what Renee did yet and she will see mine for the first time when I post this...exciting right...well it is for us. Your all just along for the ride ;)
so here is the first kit I sent to Renee... Papers: SEI, American Crafts; Journal Spot, Transparency: Colorbok; Rubons: American Crafts; Brads: Creative Cafe; Rubon Letters: Basic Grey; Photo corners: K&Company



and here's what I did with it...I used the back side of the AC paper which was a dark grey and layered my cardstock over that leaving a border. I didn't want to use the "good times" phrase on the journal spot so I tucked it behind a pic and I also wanted to funk it up a bit so I layered the transparency over it to make it a little edgier. Did lots of layering to make the background and hand drew a border to connect my photo corners and brads. I applied the rubons to the brightest paper and fussy cut around them to create the title. Sorry for the wonky colors on all the pictures...I edited these at 2 a.m. ...apparently not the best time to edit pics.



This is the 2nd kit I sent to Renee... Papers, Die Cuts: My Minds Eye; Chipboard flowers: Lil Davis ( I think); Journal Spot: Making Memories; Letter Stickers: Heidi Grace; Tickets: Tim Holtz; Photo corners: Heidi Swapp; cardstock: Bazzil; buttons



and heres what I did with this kit... the whole kit was really matchy matchy and the colors were on the sugary sweet side which I didn't really realize when I put it together so to funk it up a bit I used black and white photos and put the photos and title at angles. Some quick layering and voila ...done.



Here is the first kit I got from Renee...totally loved it...more My Minds Eye and lots of cool embellies to play with...

 

and here's what I did with it... had to go way back in my albums to find pictures that would work for this LO...that's my cutie pie daughter way back in 2003. I decided to something a little funky with the orange paper and did a large cut out frame then I fussy cut some flowers from the patterned paper and scattered them across the LO. I needed some more embellishments so I cut off the cute graph paper portion of the "fun times" journal spot and used it to make the bracket near the title and a cute scalloped circle.



and here's the 2nd kit I got from Renee... this kit was so pretty but the colors stumped me at first. Can't remember who the papers were from...journal spots: K&Co; thickers: American Crafts; cardstock: Bazzil; bling: michaels...not sure about the rest.



And here's what I did with this kit...which by the way was the hardest for me to work with but ended up being my favorite kit of them all. Because I was working with a variety of colors...brown, red, ivory, aqua and orange...I decided to use some various photos with a variety of colors as well. These are pics I took for my niece for her senior photo shoot...isn't she just gorgeous. When I first started the LO I didn't have an idea for the arrangement but since this weeks Lizzie K Challenge on ClubCK was to work with grids I decided to do my LO in a grid...totally worked for this LO. I layered 2 of the journal spots to create a background for my simple title and used the other one as a border for one of the photos. Cut up the prettiest paper and put a few pieces in between the pictures and then used the other paper to create a fun border. then I stitched around the whole cluster to add a little more red to the layout. The white white of the letters and buttons didn't work for my LO so I inked them both. I had the hardest time working with the flowers and the fleur de lis...had no clue where to put the fleur de lis and I rarely work with flowers and was having a heck of a time getting an arrangement I liked. Finally got a brainstorm on how to use both...you can see the close up shot of what I did below.



here's what I did with the 4 flowers and the fleur de lis that were in the kit... I cut the fleur de lis in half to make them look like leaves and I layered the ivory flowers to create the large flower and then made buds with the 2 red flowers...I will be posting the how-to for the flower on my blog tomorrow.



With the exception of the little letter stickers on the last LO, some inks and border punches, I didn't use any other product on my layouts except for what was in the kit. I also managed to use every element that was provided in each kit in some way.
This was totally fun and a wicked challenge...glad that its done and so looking forward to doing it again...hint hint...if you have your own blog and are interested in trying this challenge just let me know.
Now I'm off to check Renee's blog to see what she did...can't wait to see but I'm betting they're all amazing.