A creative journey

I haven't had any time to play in my art journal in months and I've been missing it terribly.  Last night I just had to escape and play so when the hubby got home I left him in charge of the kids and hightailed it down to my craft room (it's not like they've been sick all week or he's been working overtime or anything). Well, yeah, it's kinda like that.

 After playing around with my new Unity/Donna Downey stamp, some washi, stencils, and stippled ink I remembered there was a Tic Tac Toe challenge on the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge blog so I headed over there to see if this would qualify.  All I needed was some glitter so I added some gold glitter glue to the center of the flower!

Tic Tac Toe: I've got washi tape, glitter, stamps as well as a stencil, glitter, patterned paper.

It didn't quite look finished to me so I added a little bit of patterned paper confetti and my heart felt much more refreshed after the freedom to play in my art journal. It's amazing what a quick break and some crafting can do for your soul! Today it's back to wiping snotty noses, cleaning up throw-up and about a billion loads of laundry 'cause that's our exciting winter break!

Supplies used:
Unity Donna Downey stamp You Are Important (flower)
Tim Holtz stamp Stuff To Say (sentiment)
Studio Calico triangles mask
Dylusions spray (red)
Momento Ink (blue)
Washi tape
Chevron patterned paper
glitter glue

Aged to Perfection

It's Friday, it's Friends With Flair and it's a beautiful day (even if the weather isn't reflecting that)!
Some Unity stamps, watercolors, a stencil, and pastels and you've got a quick and easy birthday card for a friend!

P.S.  The same is true for chocolate wrappers, they should never be counted!

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ahead!!!

Advent tags

I started a new tradition in our home this year, a book advent calendar. I gathered together all of our winter, Christmas and Holiday themed books and borrowed a few from the library as well and wrapped them up so the kids could open a book a day (often 2 books) each day in December to count down to Christmas. They are LOVING it!

Of course I used my Unity stamps to make the tags. :)  Thankfully I have quite the collection and it was easy to find lots of holiday themed stamps and different number sets from SMAK kits and Itty Bittys.

I will definitely be continuing this tradition each year. Even my 18 month old gets excited each evening to open the books and loves to sit and listen as well as browse through the books throughout the day.

Linking up to Unity's Friends With Flair today and wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years!

Best friend therapy

Every month I mean to play along with Unity's {be inspired} Challenge and this month I actually got a chance to!  I used the pretty colors from the challenge in some cards I made for a swap and used stamps from the newest Kit of the Month, Warmth of Winter.
                                    
Here is my card:

There is still lots of time to play along!

Where love grows

Quick card to share today for Unity's Friends With Flair.

I used the sentiment kit Today I Am Thankful, which is full of beautiful sentiments and just happens to be on sale this weekend at Unity as well! I also used the kit Thanks & Giving for the pretty leaf and background and that is also on sale this weekend too!
I stamped the image in versamark and used chalks over it.  I then stamped it again and chalked just the leaf to pop up.

Linking to Unity's FWF where there is always tons of beautiful inspiration and one random commenter from the participants has a chance to win some Unity stamps as well!

FWF and a Winner!!!

Just a super quick post today.

I have a card to share for Friends with Flair and a winner from my giveaway last weekend to announce!

Here's the card, made using Unity's Gina and Me set.

And now for the winner of the fabulous Unity kit....................................................................

Penny said...

Crystal I liked your facebook page and that is a great stamp set... thanks for the opportunity.

October 19, 2014 at 1:24 AM

 

Congratulations Penny! Thank you all for the new likes and follows on my page and the sweet comments here on my blog!

 

Have a wonderful weekend and happy crafting!

 

Crystal

GIU Blog Hop!

If you are hopping along with the Growing In Unity Blog Hop then you are in the right place.  If you are coming in at the middle of the hop you can start here: Unity Stamp Blog. I was lucky enough to get a GIU spot over the summer and it was so much fun to blog my Unity creations for a week and now I get to hop along with the other talented GIU girls, super fun!

We are showcasing the newest Stamp of the Week by Unity Stamp Co, a super deal at just $5.79/week you get a great new stamp in your mailbox every week!

I was so happy to see the little package in my mailbox and ripped it open ASAP to see what the newest stamp was and what a beauty it is! It is called Winter Forest and was created by the talented Joslyn Nielson (I just love her stamp designs).

I didn't get a chance to get crafty with it as soon as I would've liked and then one of my little ones came down with a nasty cough that turned out to be croup so I've had my hands full disinfecting the house and trying to keep everyone happy and healthy. I was afraid that I wouldn't get anything made for the hop! Thankfully I was able to get a little time right before the post was supposed to go live to play and here is what I came up with.

I embossed the image on kraft paper with black embossing powder, colored it in with some sparkly, pearlescent watercolors from US Art Quest, cut it out and popped it up on another kraft panel where I also black embossed the winter wishes sentiment. It looked kinda plain so I tried to doodle around the edge (does anyone else doodle with a pencil first or is that just an OCD tendency of mine?), and I mounted it onto a dark blue cardstock that reminded me of a night sky.

Next up on the hop is the talented Angela, you can see what she created here at angelascraftyspot.BlogSpot.com.

Thanks for hopping with us today! One lucky commenter in the hop will win a week of Stamp of the Week, how awesome is that!?!

I also have a personal giveaway going on right now. You can check out this post here, Happy Birthday, for details!

Happy crafting,

Crystal

Happy Birthday!

I had to make some birthday cards for a monthly swap that I do and it just so happens that this is also my birthday weekend so I thought it'd be fun to do a little giveaway, don't you think!

First the card I made for the swap, which I am sharing for Unity's Friend With Flair today. It uses Butterfly Beauty and the sentiment is from the January 2014 KOTM.  I gold embossed both and added some pretty teal sequins.

Now for the fabulous giveaway information!

 

GIVEAWAY!!!

I've got a great Unity stamp kit to giveaway to one lucky winner! This is one of my favorite KOTM's from Unity, with so many fabulous stamps both images and sentiments.

To qualify please head over to my Facebook page Crystal Amaris Creations, like my page for one entry and share it for an additional entry, commenting here to let me know that you did. Giveaway open to US residents only please.

 

Wishing you all a happy and crafty weekend!

 

Crystal

Good things

Yippee, it's Friday!!! Can you tell that I love October weekends the best of all the weekends? Yesterday we had the perfect fall afternoon weather so when I picked my daughter up from school we skipped out on homework/chores/cooking dinner and instead went to the park to play for several hours and then had a pizza picnic.  Lovely, blessed day!

I also have a card to share today for Unity's Friends With Flair!

 

It uses Unity's Lasting Thoughts kit which I just saw is on sale this weekend for $10, what a great deal! The background was made from soaking up some leftover Dylusions spray inks that were on my kraft mat from another project. I added some Studio Calico wood veneer stars and that was is, easy-peasy!

 

I hope you all have a great weekend!  The weather here is looking like it's going to be perfect fall sweater weather and I am looking forward to hitting the pumpkin patch!

 

Happy crafting,

 

Crystal

Love Potion #9

October is here and I got the Halloween decorations out today!  It's my favorite time of year, I just love fall and of course Halloween!
Here is a card I made last year and never had time to blog so here it is today. 

I used some rub-ons that I had had in my stash for a while, a Cricut cartridge to cut the spiderweb frame, and the sentiment is from Unity's Halloween Chatter sentiment kit, which if you love Halloween like me is a MUST HAVE!

Happy fall, happy October and happy Friends With Flair!!!

Grateful

TGIF!!!  Seriously, I have never been so happy for a Friday before.  It was my oldest daughters first week of Kindergarten and it's ALL DAY, that is C-R-A-Z-Y!  Anyway, it's been a bit of an emotional and exhausting week and in about 40 minutes I get to pick her up and start our weekend, YAY!!!

Quick post today for Unity's Friends With Flair.  I have been wanting to do a card swap for a while now but with 3 littles at home my craft time has been very minimal this past year.  With my oldest starting Kindergarten this week and my middle starting preschool next month I thought I might have a few more hours in the day to craft so I signed up for one finally!

Here is the first card I created for it.  I made 7 of them (6 to mail out and 1 for myself).  I rarely create more than one of a card design so I had to factor that in when making it.  The theme was fall so I grabbed this fabulous Bold Bloom from Unity and colored it with my Faber-Castell gelatos and stamped multiple times on watercolor paper.  The sentiment is from Unity as well, an old Kit of the Month called All Seasons from September 2011.  It is popped up for some dimension.  The mini pearls are from Martha Stewart.
 

Have a happy weekend everybody!

Entering into Mountains Plains Crafters Fall/leaves challenge and Unity Friends With Flair.

Floral sympathy

Just a quick post today for Friends With Flair.

I was the lucky winner of the Unity hop a few weeks ago and this was one of the kits I won, May Hope Sustain You sentiment kit.  Sadly, I needed to make a sympathy card for a friend this week so this was the perfect kit.  It is so hard to make sympathy cards, especially when you need to send one out quickly.  This kit is perfect and filled with great sentiments that make it so much easier to create during a difficult time.

The card is made with an old brass stencil dry embossed on vellum and chalked on the backside.  There is a little glitter on the front of the vellum and I also stamped the sentiment onto vellum.  The inside has another sentiment from that kit stamped. 

Thanks for coming by my blog and I wish you all a wonderful and crafty weekend!

Dance with fairies and talk to the moon

I got to play in my art journal this week!!!  Can you tell it's been a while?  :)  Not a lot of crafty time this summer and this background has been waiting for me to finish it since the beginning of June, when I first started it with some Dylusions sprays.

Over the Dylusions I stamped some lovely butterflies from Unity Stamp Company's Butterfly Beauty and some flowers from Unity's Insightful Meadows.

 Next I added some gesso onto Unity's Tattered Chicken Wire stamp and stamped the gesso randomly for some texture. 

 I cut some fabric and used a gel medium to adhere it to the page and added a smiling moon sticker from my Halloween collection.

 The girl is from Unity's Reach For the Stars and was stamped onto watercolor paper and colored and adhered with gel medium with a couple pieces of tissue paper under her to soften the stamping in the background.

 I used a few butterfly rub-ons I had in my stash to add some bright spots of color to the pages.

 I had an old card with little fairies on it that I cut out and added glitter to their wings and adhered to the pages.

 I added some gold star gems in the sky and printed the words out from my computer and cut them out, distressed with Antique Linen distress ink and adhered with a gel medium. 

I have never taken this long to do a page from start to finish and am happy to have finally had time to complete it.  I love this quote/sentiment and this page very much reminds me of the dreaminess of childhood and my daughter.

 

I am linking this to Art Journal Everyday as well as Unity's Friends with Flair.

Color Happy

I love playing with colors, usually the brighter the better!  Today I have two colorful cards to share for Unity's Friends With Flair!
The first card uses the beautiful feather from July's KOTM Beautiful Inside and Out.  I love that kit!  I embossed the feather onto a rainbow striped paper and fussy cut it.  For the background paper I sprayed some of my Dylusions Sprays randomly and them embossed the sentiment from Unity's Quotes a la Happy.

I mounted them onto a cheerful teal card and done!

 

The next card came as a result of the first.  There was so much beautiful color left on my craft mat after using my Dylusions sprays on the first card that I didn't want to waste it so I spritzed the mat with water and grabbed some scrap watercolor paper that was ruined on one side and soaked up the extra.  I love how it blended so prettily and when it dried I had to figure out which stamp would get the honor of being stamped on it.  Unity's Whitney Girl won out!

 

 The sentiment was a quote that I've been wanting to use for a while and since I don't have it in stamp form I printed it out from my computer and then put vellum over it and traced onto the vellum with a slick writer.  I got the idea for the vellum cloud with sentiment from a fabulous card I saw by Carmen over on Unity's Facebook Show and Tell and I loved it!  You can see Carmen's card here on her blog, Visionary Art by Carmen Alicia.

 The paper and cloud stickers are from Amy Tangerine's Sketchbook collection.

That is all for today folks, my colorful contribution to Friends with Flair!  Out of curiosity, what are your favorite colors/palettes to design with?

 

 

Awesome and Amazing

Have you seen this months SMAK kit from Unity Stamp Co?  It is pretty much AWESOME!  It's called AlphaSMAK and the font is super cool and at 1 1/2 inches tall it's great for scrapbooking, mixed media and anything else you can think of to use it on!

Check out this shirt I made my 3yo using the stamps and some Marvy fabric markers!  I wanted to stamp Everything Is Awesome but didn't want Lego to come after me for copyright violations. :)

 I also wanted to give a shout out to the amazing peeps at Unity, you all ROCK!  When my kit arrived this month there was a fabulous bonus stamp set that they added as a free gift (they are always doing sweet things like that)!  I created this card using the free kit and I love the interchangeability of the banner, so fun.

If you don't have this kit yet you should get it.  It's totally rockin' and if you get it before the end of the month you get this fabulous free kit included! 

I hope you are all having a great and crafty week!

Unfold the future

Friday is here finally and what a busy, busy one it's been but I am happy to say that nearly ALL back-to-school shopping is done!  Can't believe that there are only 3 more weeks of summer here before I have a kindergartener and a preschooler.  We've certainly been having a fun summer though.

 I have a card to share today for Friends with Flair that I created a couple of weeks ago for the Unity {Be Inspired} Challenge with the color challenge in mind and I just never got around to finishing it.  I didn't love the way the colors turned out and it looked kind of flat so I spritzed it with some gold glimmer mist and I'm not sure you can tell in the pics but it makes it look prettier in real life.

The stamps are from Unity Kit of the Months (girl from Hey Girl and sentiment from Strength and Dignity).  I watercolored the image and then used gold glimmer mist over it. 

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer (although I know it's already BTS time for some of you) and happy crafting!

Alphabet wall hanging

I could not wait to ink up this wonderful alphabet by Unity Stamp Co called Alpha SMAK and I knew just what I wanted to do with it first!  I have so much in mind for this fun alphabet but here is one project that has been waiting for the perfect alphabet, a wall hanging for my 3YO's bedroom.  He is very into learning the alphabet right now and gets super excited anytime he recognizes one of the letters he knows so I wanted to make something to put up in his room so he could see it all the time. 

 He was sitting next to me and exclaiming excitedly while I inked up every letter and hoped they fit onto a 8x10 paper (it was tight but they did)!  When I asked him what he wanted in the blank space at the bottom he didn't hesitate all and said "TRAIN!"  Thankfully I had just the stamp.
The train is another Unity stamp from an old kit called Boys Will Be Boys and it fit perfectly. 

I am so excited to play with this stamp set tons more and have lots of awesome ideas for it!  Thanks for visiting today and happy crafting to you!