Sketch Saturday #725

Hello Everyone!! Welcome back to another challenge with Sketch Saturday! Our bi-weekly sketch challenge gives you great inspiration for your crafty adventures. Play as many time as you want during the two weeks, and try rotating the sketch or using the inspiration suggestion we’ve included in our post!

Here is Sketch #725:

Each challenge, we have an optional twist. You can use this twist on your submission, or use it for an added challenge on a second submission! This weeks’ twist is to use a floral image for your main design. Will you use a stamped image? Or perhaps some floral die cutouts? I can’t wait to see your creation.

My card used images and paper from a kit. I love the combination of the elegant black and white background with the bright blue and yellow. It’s so cheery!! It was difficult to figure out what to put in the upper right part of the image, but I settled on a bow…nothing else looked quite right!

I hope you’ll come play along with us!

Sketch Saturday #724

Hello Everyone!! Welcome back to another challenge with Sketch Saturday! Our bi-weekly sketch challenge gives you great inspiration for your crafty adventures. Play as many time as you want during the two weeks, and try rotating the sketch or using the inspiration suggestion we’ve included in our post!

Here is Sketch #724:

Each challenge, we have an optional twist. You can use this twist on your submission, or use it for an added challenge on a second submission! This weeks’ twist is to make your card monochromatic – use different shades of one colour for your card.

My card is a bit out of season, I know. I had this super cute pumpkin image and matching Halloween coloured papers in a kit I received. I just had to use them for this sketch! I’ll have the card ready in my stash for this October!!

I hope you’ll come play along with us!

Growing in Unity Winners!

Thank you to everyone who left comments on my Growing in Unity posts last week. My two random winners were:

sandravb1

mycraftyplace

Congrats!!

Growing in Unity 2023 – Day 5

Hello Again! Thank you for coming back to check out my Day 5 projects. And, if you are here for the first time this week, I am the Growing in Unity Girl for the week of March 6th, sharing creations made with Unity Stamps. Head on back through my posts for this week to see all my projects using their stamps and please leave a comment as you visit!

Today I have a final two cards to share with you. I “over created” for this week, so to speak, so I’ve had two cards to share with you each day and posted them in different themes. Today’s themes is florals. Both of these cards feature a different Unity Stamps floral image, but they also allowed me to play with some of my floral dies. I am so addicted to floral dies right now, but they sometimes take SO. MUCH. TIME. But, I love the result each and ever time.

Okay, before we check out this first card, I should tell you that I have many addictions. This week I’ve talked about my love of coffee, my love of paper scraps and my love of floral dies. But, the one stamp addiction that tops each and every one of these??? Umbrellas. Yes, that’s right. Open, closed, striped, solid, with rain, without. With matching rubber boots??? Oh my, take my money now.

Therefore, this When It Rains set landed in my cart so fast! It is new and this is my first time using it and it WILL be used again. I finished the layout of this card and then sat back to decide how I was going to embellish it. The floral dies were calling my name and it was fun to sort through my paper scraps finding the perfect colours to pair with this beautiful image.

This last card for the week is a pairing of a few great sets at Unity. With so much variety, mix and match is easy with these great stamps. This image is probably one that attracted me to this KOTM. I comes from A Summer Story (05/16). The sentiment is from Beach Girl, which is a great image, but one I featured the last time I was GIU Girl…so this time it was the sentiment only! This was one of the last cards I created and the layout really threw me off for a bit! But, very happy with how it turned out.

And sadly, that brings us to the end of my week! Thank you so much to Unity Stamps for running the Growing in Unity program and allowing me to post for a week. It’s inspiring to see what other papercrafters create and a joy to share my own creations with the community.

And to the visitors here this week, thank you for your time and for leaving me a comment! Remember if you are one of the two names drawn to win a prize from Unity Stamps, you need to claim it within two weeks.

Until next time, stampers!

Growing in Unity 2023 – Day 4

Welcome back to my blog! I continue my posts featuring Unity Stamps as the Growing in Unity Girl for this week.

I have two cards for you today. Is there a theme? I don’t know. Celebrate Yourself? Inked Backgrounds? Too Cute? Regardless, I loved these two cards and couldn’t wait to post them!

For this first card, I was playing with masking techniques and using monochromatic inks. It was the perfect colour to pair with this bubblegum machine, which in my childhood memories, was often a bright, shiny red. I love the Unity KOTM because of the variety of stamps you get in each set. So, it’s no wonder that this stamp and sentiment comes from sets I’ve already featured this week. The bubblegum is from Smile Wider Laugh Louder (12/21) and the sentiment is from A Summer Story (5/16).

This next card features the Celebrate the New stamp set. I saw this set and just had to have it! First of all, it felt very “new year” to me, which is a gap in my stamp collection. And, this joyful gal just embodied how I was feeling about a new year…come and get it! I tried a distress ink background technique for this one and wasn’t 100% happy. But, when I tried to redo it, I just couldn’t get the joyful colour I wanted and so I used my original. The splotches on this background come from the firework stamp with in this set. I just applied water to the red rubber and pressed it on the background to create the water spots.

Last day tomorrow! Whew! It’s gone by so fast and I hope you’ve had as much fun as I have had. Remember to leave a comment on the post, as there is a Unity Stamps prize to be won.

Growing in Unity 2023 – Day 3

Happy Wednesday! This is my third post as the Growing in Unity Girl for the week of March 6, 2023. I am very excited to be sharing my projects with you this week and hope you are enjoying my daily creations.

As mentioned in early posts, I went a little “over and above”, with two cards for each of my posts this week. I wasn’t a firm plan, it just ended up that way. It’s probably because there are SO MANY wonderful stamps in the Unity inventory. The theme of today’s projects is Winter.

This first card was an experiment that turned out, in my opinion, pretty great. I started by making the blue distress inked background. My initial plan was to use this image (from Smile Wider Laugh Louder KOTM 12/21), coloured and cut, on top of the background, but quickly realized that would hide much of my beautiful background. Instead, I decided to stamp the image directly on the background and colour from there.

Would I make some changes in retrospect? Yes. I realized that stamping on top of the background changed some of my colouring ink colours. A “perfect” technique might suggested that I masked the background before applying the distress ink. But it doesn’t take away from the joy this card brings me. Sentiment is from Our Hearts to Yours KOTM (09/15).

I think the Our Hearts to Yours Kit (09/15) might have been the kit I received the last time I was a GIU Girl, back in 2017. And, since my crafting subsided during the pandemic, I think I’ve hardly used it. It seemed like an excellent reason to pull the set out and use it this week! Which means, this next image and sentiment also comes from this kit.

This was another “let’s play with backgrounds” and “let’s play with colouring images” match-up. I thought those beautiful swirls looked like hot chocolate steam. Plus, the orange kinda paired nicely with the pink I had used in the mug. And so, it became a pair!

That’s all for today, but I’ll be back here tomorrow and Friday with my final cards for the week. I can’t wait to see what you think about my cards, so leave me a comment before you go!

Growing in Unity 2023 – Day 2

If you’re here for the second time this week, welcome back! Thank you for taking time in your day to visit my lil ‘ole blog. I’m the Growing in Unity Girl this week, which means five days of projects featuring Unity Stamps.

I started crafting for this week and just couldn’t stop! Which means each day of my week features two cards. Today’s theme is birthdays.

One of the great things about the Growing in Unity weeks’ is it’s a chance to see someone’s favourites in Unity’s vast stamp inventory. Gems that you never saw, never thought of using in a certain way or simply overlooked! I can’t remember if it was a GIU week that I first saw this stamp set, but when I did see it, I HAD to have it. It’s from Voodoo Vibes and it gives me a giggle ever time I look at it. I set it off against this lovely inked background because creepy stamp + elegant background is a true win every time!

And if creepy themes aren’t your thing, then you’ll probably appreciate this card, which is much less creepy and includes two of my current addictions. 1) Coffee….always and forever. And 2), quilted backgrounds. I have an issue (shared by many) with throwing out scraps of paper. Quilted or collaged backgrounds of all types are a way to use up those adorable little bits and create some interest on your card backgrounds. This stamp and sentiment comes from A Summer Story KOTM (5/16).

It’s Day 3 tomorrow! Don’t forget to leave me a comment before you leave and be eligible to win a $20 GC to Unity Stamps. Hope to see you here again tomorrow.

Growing in Unity 2023 – Day 1

Hello Everyone! I am super excited to be part of Growing in Unity this year. I have been crafting for about 15 years, but COVID made my craft space my at-home work space and my crafting time (and desire to even be at my craft desk after hours) dwindled. This year, I am ready to get back into my creative space and was thrilled to celebrate with a spot on the GIU list.

If you have ever been intimidated by applying for Growing in Unity, let me assure you…it is intimidating! But, it is also worth it and I encourage you to try it sometime. The community of card makers is so supportive and it’s lovely to see the stamps come forward in ways you wouldn’t have thought of yourself. Everyone has a different style and it’s nice to see that style reflected in the creations.

I felt it appropriate to start the week with this “hello there” sentiment. Both this stamp and sentiment come from the Smile Wider, Laugh Longer KOTM (12/21). When I colour, I don’t always have a long term plan for my image. I also decided to play with some distress ink combinations this week, which meant I had to match image to background during the creative process. I saw this background paired with the image and knew I needed to use them together. I think this might be one of my favourite cards from this week.

For me, returning to stamping after a couple of years, I developed the game plan to make 6 or 7 cards and pick the best 5 to post. But somewhere along the line I decided why not post two cards per day? And so here we are, with a week of two creations. My second card for today also uses stamp and sentiment from the same Smile Wider, Laugh Longer KOTM.

That’s it for today! But, I’ll be back tomorrow. Thanks so much for stopping by and please leave me a comment to be entered to win a $20 GC to Unity Stamps. Two lucky commenters from my posts this week will be eligible to win! Good luck!!

Sketch Saturday #719

Hello Everyone!! Welcome back to another challenge with Sketch Saturday! Our bi-weekly sketch challenge gives you great inspiration for your crafty adventures. Play as many time as you want during the two weeks, and try rotating the sketch or using the inspiration suggestion we’ve included in our post!

Here is Sketch #717:

Each challenge, we have an optional twist. You can use this twist on your submission, or use it for an added challenge on a second submission! This weeks’ twist is to use an old stamp in your collection. We used a new stamp as our twist a couple of weeks ago, so now it’s time to pull out an old favorite and give it some love!

My card is this birthday card. I had some leftover papers from a project and wanted to use them on a pieced background. It was the perfect color palette for this cupcake tower. The diagonal stripes blended in a bit too much for my liking, so I backed them with white cardstock to make them stand out. I did not use the twist this challenge, which is perfectly alright! Sometimes you use it, sometimes you don’t. As for the twist, this image came from an OLD card kit I had on hand. But, I think I just might have this stamp in my own personal collection, so I guess that counts, right?

I hope you’ll come play along with us!

Monthly Image Swap – The Pandemic Catch-up (Nov/Dec)

Ahhh! Almost done! It did not feel very good to let these lovely swappers down back in 2020, so it feels somewhat better to have caught up with my missing cards and get them posted. And then I can move onto the many other unfinished projects in my craft room. Clean up 2023….we have begun!

November’s image came from Vickie who sent Changito Coffee, by Stampendous. I admit, Changito’s aren’t always my favorite images. But, this coffee one is SUPER cute and fun to color. Here he is paired with this blue/green background papers.

My second coloring of this image, I decided to give him striped pajamas. I also tried using my new layering diorama dies (harder than it looks!). I love how this cute card turned out!

And the last image of the year, for December 2020, came from Diane. Oh my gosh, this one is a cutie!! It’s La La Land Crafts You Lucky Ducky. So cute!! Played with some different leaf colors here, as well as giving him slightly different boots. This paper was picked because the blue flowers matched his boots.

These papers came from one of my recently used card kits and were also a match to his (or her?) boots. I have been having fun making some backgrounds with striped paper, so the excellent variety of papers made me do it again!

And that’s it! 2020 is all cleaned up and I’m ready to proceed forward with the 2023 Monthly Image Swap! My February image has already arrived, so it won’t be long before I’m back with my creation.

Thanks for stopping by!