The parade of cards……

I’m about to fall over with shock because I am actually uploading something new to my blog! I have been working on some cards for the past week but some I have torn apart several times and re-worked them. So I thought that first I would share some cards made with the new Unity releases.

This first card uses the fabulous cute set “Hey chick!”. And to explain the BRIGHT psychedelic theme I had just watched “Across the Universe” (Beatles musical)  the night before.

There isn’t much that didn’t get used on this card; copics, nesties, spica copics, stickles, rhinestones and a whole lot of Sassafras Lass Sunshine lollipop paper.

The next two cards use the Unity August Kit of the month “It’s the little things”, if you email Angela she can hook you up! Just follow the link and also take a peek at the new kit…….man it’s awesome!

I made the butterfly about a week ago and it didn’t have a home until yesterday. There is some angel wings shimmerz on the card, as well as a little pop of Cosmo Cricket Honey Pie.

 Honey Pie paper was the inspiration for this one, as well as the blackboard shapes. The swirl under the chicks feet is from the journaling stamp, I just inked up the swirls, cut them out and flipped it upside down.

And now I’m off to ice my back! I’ve got some more cards to share and hopefully I’ll be back more often this week.

Lost treasure

I can’t believe I’ve never shared this with you all on my blog! I’m glad I found it so I could redeem myself from my past 2 cards.

This uses the super cute Love is toxic set from Unity, some Prima paper from Jacksonbelle and it’s one of my favorite cards!

 Ok, I’m off to my weekly slumber party sleepover with my Ava girl. Cookies, games, friendship bracelets, glow in the dark toys…….always fun!

Quick and simple thank you

I needed to make some quick and simple thank you cards, which have proven to be very difficult! I am not a quick or simple gal, so I have made about 12 different cards each leaving me with the feeling of “Eeeew”. I should just get over it and make things I want since this is taking me just as long, maybe longer.

Anyway, here are the cards I made last night. So far these are the least horrible (be gentle with your comments please):

I like the one on the left better, BTW.

Both are using the same ingredients, PTI sweet blush, spring moss, lemon tart and white CS/ink/ribbon. Flirty flowers and believe from Unity stamps and Mambi rhinestones from Jacksonbelle.

Can I just take a minute and say how much I ADORE the PTI colors? I didn’t order the spring moss or lemon tart until last week. I really love SU mellow moss and barely banana so I thought I didn’t need another green or yellow. But I was needing a sweet blush reinker, so while I was on the PTI website I just decided to go for it. Anyway, the lemon tart is just the most perfect yellow ever! Putting it next to the barely banana was interesting, as it made the banana look more beige or pinky. And the moss is different enough to be in it’s own category. I still haven’t tried the brighter versions of PTI colors, maybe I’ll be brave some day and do it.

Happy Friday everyone! I am having a slumber party with my Ava tonight and hope to get a TON of sleep so I can feel energized again to create. I have been feeling less then creative this week.

Some cards, a new title and a question

Yesterday when I mentioned I had 2 new cards being published, someone wanted to know what kind of hit I would be now. After some googling and research I have concluded that I am a 4 hit wonder, as is Whitesnake: Here I go again, Is this love, Fool for your loving, The deeper the love.

Now for some eye candy:

Bunny slippers…..looks mighty comfy! I wanted her robe to look lived in so I created a faux chenile texture on it. This could also be what I needed this week, with both the girls sick and all of my back issues I need a big comfry robe to stuff all the tissues in.

This is just one of my favorite quotes! I love looking at it, reading it makes me feel good inside. The cards are pretty straight forward, MFT stamps on the first and Unity on the second. I’m tired so I want to scoot off the computer, I’ll come back with detail information in the morning.

Bloggers challenge and a little extra!

This week’s challenge is insects……pretty easy and fun for me, I love insect stamps! I guess the challenge would be picking out which one I want to use. I chose the ‘Fantastical floral’ set from Unity:

Ah, a butterfly! Probably the most “friendly” or non creepy insect around. Although I think a ladybug is people first choice for insects that don’t bother them. No, I haven’t been watching a marathon of family feud, lol.

And since I’m feeling generous again, I thought I would share another card made for a sketch challenge on SCS.

These little images are sooooo darling! And the sentiments are so fun……”Lovin from the oven”.

Those silly clear buttons. I just HAD to have them and I rarely remember to pull them out! I have developed a button obsession, infact I received a new bag o’ buttons today! YIPPEEE!

Oh, and I’ve got a special project that you can see over on the Unity Stamp blog. So if you haven’t been there take a peek!

Unity for cardmakers, scrapbookers and jewelry designers!

One of the things I love so much about the Unity Stamp images are they are so visually appealing! There is something for everyone! When looking through the images, what I like to see is versatility. Not just for paper crafts, but to see if I can extend it to anything else. There are so many images that are perfect for jewelry design, and I am so excited to share this project with you.

The picture below has the basic supplies; polymer clay, rolling pin, cookie cutters, embossing powders and inks. The rolling pin and cutters were all in the cake decorating dept. at Michaels, as they are used for fondant. But the roller comes with attachments on the end to allow you an even thickness and the cutters are sized right for what I have needed so far. PLUS they were all super cheap! After standing and staring at the polymer clay accessories thinking there had to be something cheaper……..I walked to the other side of the store!

You will roll out your clay and then cut in the desired shape, place on parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake 15 minutes at 275. EASY!!!!

To stamp and emboss an image on the clay you need to use either a craft ink, versamark OR brilliance graphite ink. The brilliance is a thicker ink and holds onto the embossing powder the same as the craft or sticky versamark.

I used the round shaped tree from Tiny Trinity for this pendant:

Using your heat gun on this is similar to on paper, you want to watch the EP “change” and get glossy to know it is done. Then you can color it in! YEP, copic markers work on polymer clay! They have much more texture and look like painting, but I really like the effect.

I started with a pale olive, then added olive to it. You can see that it starts to look like stained glass, with the different colors peeking through.

I wanted to add even more texture, so I used some lace stickles on the tips of the leaves and poured microbeads onto it.

I have these punched metal tins from Making Memories that I love to use in jewerly. You can stamp on them, do photo transfers…..just ton’s of fun stuff. The sad thing is that they are discontinued and I have had to do lots of ebaying to keep up a good supply. I adhered the clay to the metal base with resin.

To finish the piece, I added half back pearls, some jewelry findings and platinum stickles around the pendant.

The great thing about using your stamps for jewelry is that you can make it as simple or detailed as you want. You don’t need the metal base, or coloring. Simply stamping and embossing then giving a sealant in resin would look fabulous.

I hope I have inspired you to look at your stamps a little differently. Take a look at your stamps, notice how the design looks on a smaller scale by stamping it and then punching out a small circle. The possibilities of stamping with clay are pretty big and I’m excited to share even more of those with you throughout the month!

Please let me know if you have any questions, or if you try this! I would love to see your creation!

Beautiful Life

Hello and happy 4th of July! Thanks for stopping by today, I have something very special to share with you! A few months back I ordered that big cosmo cricket special from QVC that came with some chipboard pieces, including a photo cube. That cube has been sitting on my shelf for months because I just wasn’t wanting to make it, but then I had an IDEA! So I whipped out my stuff and started to work.

The box is covered outside in ”Tea and silk” Prima paper that I stamped with the flowers from ‘Beautiful Life’, the inside has cocoa paper. Lots of prima’s, cream pearls, hearts and ribbon on the top, including a ribbon pull with a little tassel.

 And what is inside?

A little tag scrapbook! Again I altered the unity wooden tags that come in the handles or with the wooden sets. I had these in a little stack on my desk and thought it would look cute as a little scrap book. Here are what the tags look like before, in case you don’t have any. (you should get some though……the stamps that come with them are pretty amazing!)

Again, the pages are covered in ‘Tea and silk’ and distressed edges. I decided to use some of my extra photo’s I have of the girls from their birthdays and the first sister Christmas.

 I just kind of kept adding to each page until I couldn’t fit anything else. It has been so long since I scrap booked and I’ve gotten used to the small size of a card. These little tags made me feel nice and at home because I didn’t have a huge page to fill. 

I hope you all have a safe and wonderful weekend. We have no special plans and will probably just chill at home. There were some AWESOME thunder/lightning storms today, lots of rain to make the grass safe for all those fire works.

Details:

Stamps: Beautiful Life- Unity Stamp Co.
Ink: guava, chocolate, river rock-SU, tea stain/antique linen, palette boudoir blush
CS: cocoa, PTI white, ‘Tea and Silk’ Prima collection
Accessories: pretties kit, nesties, MAMBI rhinestones, may arts ribbon

Did you see????

If you the Unity forum on SCS you’ll find some fun news……..HERE

yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so excited to be sharing the Unity love (officially) for the month of July! And to spread some more love I made a quick little reminder for my hubby for his desk. A reminder of who he belongs to:

I love that this doesn’t say, “Will you be mine?” but just “MINE”! The stamps in “Love is toxic” are so different and fun then anything else I have. Don’t you love unique, cool images?

This started out as a bare wood tag that you get with the handles/or hanging from the wood mounted Unity sets. I have a BUNCH of these……and this is not the only time you will be seeing these this week! I also can’t take credit for altering these, the idea was from Kristine who shared her awesome creation on the Unity forum. Thanks Kristine, you gave me so many ideas and I can’t wait to share them!

Let us eat cake!

Well that’s what I am planning on putting on the inside of this card and make it a fun little birthday card:

I was inspired by the movie Marie Antoinette, all those beautiful costumes in delicious colors, and fabrics. I love movies like that, a feast for the eyes!

I also really like the background on this, stamped in aquamist ink on white and then in white on aquamist CS with white EP over it. I love the reverse it gives but with the soft colors it’s just yummy! And of course I had to add my flowers, so I bought in some more red and pearls.

And I’ll say it again…….I am LOVING my unity handles! They seriously rock my socks.

Tomorrow I should be able to play in the Ways to use it challenge, so be sure to stop by the forums and find out what it is! I can tell you it’s a fun one!

Deets:

stamps: queen for a day- unity
CS: red, grey-SU  white, aquamist-PTI
Ink: red, grey-SU white craft, aquamist PTI
Accessories: ticket corner punch, rr gg ribbon, aquamist satin ribbon, flowers from the MM ‘Ava’ collection.white ep, dimensionals, sponge.

It’s this easy…..

Today I am pimping out my kid to do a product review and she was more than happy to help me! I received my handle kit from Unity, as well as a few stamp kits and as I was taking them out of the box she wanted to see them. So I took the opportunity to see how easy it is to use the handles and understand the system for their wood mounted stamps.

If it’s easy for my 4 year old then YOU can do it!

First I layed out all 4 handles, marked with A,B,C or D on the bottom corner. Next to them I placed 3 stamps that would fit the A,B and C handles. These are also marked with the letters on the bottom corner. (I left out the big D stamp because I didn’t want anyone to think I was cheating since it’s really obvious to figure out, and her small hands had a hard time with it)

Then I asked her to find the handle with the “A”

Then to find the stamp with the “A”

A little shimmy

A little press

And she is ready to stamp!

So if you’ve been worried that it is too hard to figure out or that it was ackward this should erase all of those doubts!

Now go stamp something!