Apparently the Counterfeit Kit Challenge was just what I needed. After a bit of assembly, I have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR kits to work with now.

FOUR.

What does that say about the size of my stash?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

One of the things that inspired me the most about creating a kit was the idea of naming it. That helped me decide what kind of themed papers to add to the basic, more useful, multipurpose patterns.

So the first kit for you? Number one son saves the world:

This kit was inspired by oldest’s love of maps, and the color palette took its cues from the Basic Grey sticker sheet on the left below.

Since I’m trying to use up stash, there are lots of partially used packs of embellishments and alpha stickers. This is the season of making them go away. (So I can get new ones eventually!)

Kit number two: Number two son has dastardly plans. Because well, they make him laugh, not because he’s actually evil or anything. 😀

This kit needed mustaches for twirling, and evil dolphins. Since I didn’t have any dolphins, I settled for whales and robots and an octopus and crab. This kit came closest to the original inspiration, with its emphasis on red and black and cream.

Hopefully there are enough bits and pieces to make pages fun. The striped paper between the alpha sets is actually a sheet of washi paper. That should be fun to play with.

Kit number three: My nieces take over the universe. Because they could.

This kit called for rocket ships and secret hideaways and glittery tiaras. It’s a fun combination of elegance and playfulness and action. I think this one is my favorite.

Once again, the large sheet of Basic Grey stickers helped narrow down the color theme.

The last kit, kit number four, has little bit of a music bent, since I’ll be working on pages for May’s ScrapHappy only LOAD, and we’re going with a musical theme for the month. Tentatively called Musical Memories, it may be the kit least inspired by the kit from A Beautiful Mess.

This kit was built off the cassette and blooming tree paper. There are some older papers in this pile, most notably, the  papers from Becky Higgins Turquoise Project Life kit. Why does 2010 seem like it was so long ago?

Apparently, I’m going with yellow as the accent color for this kit. That should work, we’ll see how it goes.

You’ll be seeing pages from these kits a lot over the next few months, with May’s LOAD coming up.

Have you put together a kit or two or more? If you haven’t, don’t you think it’s time to put one together? It’s fun, and it will make your scrapping process so much faster!

Have any of you ever bought a kit from a kit club? There are hundreds of different kit clubs out there. (At least!) They all have different themes, and different ways of finding and assembling scrapbooking supplies, so there’s usually a kit club out there to suit everyone’s tastes and desires. (My personal favorite is Gossamer Blue. I love their style!)

(If you don’t know what a kit is, it’s a preselected group of scrapbooking supplies that you use to create pages. A kit club is a monthly subscription where someone selects the supplies for you.)

But what’s a girl to do when she’s trying to stick to a scrappy budget of almost zero dollars? How about making your own kit?

Does that sound intimidating? It doesn’t have to be. Choosing products from your stash to create your own kit can be fun and easy, especially if you use a kit from a kit club as inspiration. That’s the big idea behind the Counterfeit Kit Club.

Each month the wonderful ladies at Counterfeit Kit Club choose a kit club kit to use as inspiration and create their own kits based on the kit club samples.

There’s no purchasing of supplies or kits. They build personal kits out of their own stash.

This month, they chose a kit from A Beautiful Mess.

It’s an interesting assortment of papers in different sizes, with a decidedly graphic designer bent. Lots of handwritten fonts and black and white patterns, with a few dashes of color and gold foil thrown in.

The folks over at Counterfeit Kit Club have a blog hop each month where they share their kit and talk about how the inspiration kit led to their kit. It’s a great way to start thinking about how to create a kit of your own.

You should check them out.

Me, I’ll be over here, pawing through my stash, pulling together a kit or two. I need to use up my stuff, and this will be a great way to do that!