Spring showers and shamrocks.

It might be snowing outside but I am channeling some spring in here!  I created this card for the February Unity Stamp Company challenge which is to use hearts but NOT red or pink hearts.  FUN, FUN, FUN!!!  As soon as I saw this challenge I knew that I wanted to make a shamrock out of a heart stamp and thankfully it didn't take me too much time hunting through all of my Unity stamps to come across the perfect one to use.  This cute little woodgrain heart is from the Jillibean co-brand set Hearty Barley.  I used a light green and dark green brush marker to color the stamp and stamped it 3 times to make my shamrock.  I braided a small length of embroidery floss for the shamrocks stem.

I was also inspired by all of the wonderful rainbow creations in the March/April issue of Paper Crafts and pulled out my watercolor pencils to play.  I made a rainbow for my shamrock to rest at the end of and then masked the rainbow and stamped the raindrop background stamp from the February 2012 kit of the month.  It doesn't show up very well in the picture but it is embossed with a clear glitter embossing powder from Ranger and has a pretty sparkle to it.  The sentiment is also from the February 2012 KOM.

I'm hoping for some nicer weather this week cause I would LOVE to get the kids outside to play, we've all got a bad case of cabin fever!

Lucky

Happy Friday!!!  I should actually say late, late, late Thursday night, early, early, early Friday morning.  :)  It just started snowing here and I am very much hoping for a real snowstorm and not just another bit of weatherman hype.  We've barely had any snow this winter and I am hoping to get enough to build a giant snow fort!  Of course after that it can all melt and spring can come!!!

And since I've had spring on the mind this week I created this St. Patty's Day card for Unity's Friends With Flair.  The February KOM has this beautiful Celtic knot stamp that I just love and I stamped it multiple times for a border and heat embossed it with gold embossing powder onto a bright kelly green cardstock.  I wasn't sure where I was going to go from there until I pulled out my folder of St. Patty's Day papers and found this wonderful shamrock Celtic knot paper by Moxxie.  I edged around the paper with a Krylon gold leafing pen and then heat embossed the sentiment Lucky to have You in gold.  I popped the patterned paper up with adhesive foam and really love how it turned out.  Once again my photography skills don't do the card justice (I always find it harder to photograph embossed cards) and it looks much better in person.  

 I am going to enter it into the February Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge on Unity's blog. 

Wishing you all a fantastic Friday and a happy weekend!

Note To Self

I created this card for the Unity Pinterest WINTER CHA 2012 Challenge.  I'm kind of in love with Unity's stamps and these new ones are so amazing that this cute little card came together with a life of it's own! 

The butterfly is from Fly with Wings of Hope and I heat embossed it with some aqua Zing embossing powder onto a script pp from My Minds Eye.  The Note To Self and Banner with Be amazingly AWESOME today are 2 separate Itty Bitties from Unity/Jillibean Soup that I stamped with Ranger's Walnut Stain distress ink.  All of the PP's are from My Minds Eye.  It was still missing something until I found this cute little flower at my LSS
If you like my card I would love it if you would follow this link and LIKE it to vote for it.  The prize is 6 months of free stamps every week in the lucky winners mailbox.  That is BEYOND AWESOME and I can't even imagine how excited I would be if I was lucky enough to win!!!

Hello and encouragement

I have 3 cards to share today for Friends with Flair.  I made all of these for a recent submissions call for Paper Crafts but since they didn't get chosen I can share them with my Unity peeps today!  For a list of all of the Friends with Flair participants check here on the Unity Stamp Co blog.  I love hopping through the list every week and seeing all of the wonderful creations my crafty friends have to share, so much inspiration to be found!
I love the spring colors and the butterflies on the first card.  Green is my favorite color and I am thrilled that spring is just around the corner!

 Supplies:  Stamps: Unity Stamp Co (Love Never Fails and Folk Inspired), colored with Copics and a glitter pen.

 Supplies:  Stamps: Unity Stamp Co (Everyday Adorable and Inside & Out), PP: My Minds Eye

Supplies: Stamps: Unity Stamp Co (Heart and Soul (Jan 2012 KOM) and Together We Bloom), PP: Authentique
I wanted to try something different on the last card so instead of using colored embossing powders I used clear powders on different colored PP's.  I like the way it turned out, I'm a terrible card photographer and it looks much prettier in real life.
Thanks for stopping by my blog, wishing you all a wonderful and crafty weekend!

Friday...at last!!!

I lost track of my days of the week last week and forgot to post for Friends with Flair.  :(  Oh life, I just need you to slow down a little so I can keep track of what day it is!  Even though I was sick and didn't leave the house a couple of days this week I know that today is FRIDAY!!!  Check in at the Unity blog for a list of all of the crafty participants for this weeks Friends with Flair!

I made this last week and didn't really know where it was heading I was just having fun playing with my stamps and getting the creative juices flowing.  It finally morphed into a card but I think I'm going to cut the back half off and just use the front in my Project Life album.  It's just kind of perfect for that!
Supplies used:
My Mind's Eye: Fly a Kite, Unity Stamps: Heart and Soul (house and flowers), Here and Now (family heart), Glossy Accents.

My next card came together with the scraps from the first one, love using scraps of paper to make fun new things!  I added the star gem next to April but really I can just move it to any month I need and make the card extremely versatile!

Supplies used:
Kraft paper, My Mind's Eye: Fly a Kite, Unity stamps: Sweet & Sour Soup, All About Today, Antique Linen Distress ink.