CELEBRATE!!!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!  I certainly have missed Friends with Flair the past few months.  Life gets hectic and I've barely been able to find the time to craft let alone blog anything.  I do have a backlog of projects that need to be blogged so hopefully I'll find some more time to catch up soon.

I wanted to play along with the new Unity {be inspired} Challenge and was inspired by the color challenge and especially that picture of the pinwheel in the clouds which reminded me of several stamps that I've had for a while that had yet to be inked (yikes)!


Here is my creation:

I clear embossed Written in the Clouds for the background and paper pieced Happy Pinwheels.  I used bamboo skewers as the sticks and popped up the pinwheels and the celebrate banners.  The paper is from My Mind's Eye Dilly Dally collection.
 

Thanks for stopping by today, I can't wait to browse through everyone's FWF entries and see what you've been working on!

Welcome Little Guy

Happy Friday and Unity Friends with Flair Day!!! I can't believe it's almost Halloween, where has this month gone!?!  We had an 80 degree day here in Michigan yesterday and in the 5 day forecast it's calling for snow.  Typical MI, guess I'll have to really bundle the kids up for Trick-or-Treating.  Oh yeah, and I have 2 winners from last Friday's giveaway to announce at the end of this post!

On to this weeks creation.  It has been another busy week this week and I was surprised last night to realize that it was already Thursday and I didn't have anything done for FWF, eek!  What's a girl to do when complete exhaustion sets in and there is no mojo to call on?  I was staring blankly at my stamps in a daze knowing I needed to get a baby card made ASAP when I remembered Mojo Monday sketches.  Between all of my awesome Unity stamps and the Mojo Monday sketch I was able to come up with this card fairly quickly.

Here is the sketch:








And here is my card for a special little guy who is 2 days new to the world:

I used Unity's Absolutely Priceless itty bitty and the bowtie, vest and little guy are from Unity's August 2012 Kit of the Month.  The papers are My Minds Eye.  I used Copics for coloring and distressed all of the edges. 

And now for the winners of last Friday's giveaway!  I just want to say thank you to all of my FWF peeps for always leaving such sweet comments on my posts every Friday, you all are so very sweet and I love looking through your Unity creations and sharing ideas/creativity with you all.  Thanks as well to all of my followers, I jumped from 45 to 55!  It's nice to be able to give back some of the extra Unity stamps I've accumulated from FWF over the past year or so.  The winners of the Unity Grab bags are....JULIE O and TAMEKO!  Congrats ladies!  If you could leave me your e-mail in a comment here I can get those stamps in the mail to you soon.

Dream Big

Three posts in one day!?!  That's right, I've got another card to share!  This is my entry for Unity's WCMD Challenge #7 (coloring).

On a white panel I stamped the text from Unity's Bloom & Simplify in a dark grey and then stamped the flower on top of that in Versamark ink and heat embossed in black.  I painted it in with Pearlescent Watercolors for a beautiful shimmery effect and when that was dry I sponged some Tumbled Glass distress ink around the edges.  I heat embossed the Dream Big itty bitty onto a cream panel and popped it up with some pop dots.
Now it's off to make some more cards to finish the rest of the challenges!
Supplies used:
Unity Stamps:  Bloom & Simplify and Dream Big
My Mind's Eye patterned paper

So Many Thanks

World Card Making Day has come and gone and although I didn't get to play along on Saturday I got a few hours to myself on Sunday and decided to play along with the awesome WCMD challenges over on Unity Stamp Co's blog.  They have 8 challenges in all and you have until October 20th to link up and as always they have awesome prizes to give away!
Here is the card I created for Challenge #3 (embossing).

 I stamped the butterfly onto a white shimmer panel with watermark ink and clear embossed.  I sponged distress inks over the top and wiped away the excess from the butterfly.  I lightly sponged some Tumbled Glass distress ink onto the cream flower and tied a twine bow behind it.
Hopefully this week I can find some extra time to do all 8 of their challenges, I love inking up my Unity stamps!!!

Supplies Used:  Unity Stamps (butterfly from July SMAK, so many thanks from Happy Everything), My Mind's Eye patterned paper, Tim Holtz distress inks (Dusty Concord, Tumbled Glass, Peeled Paint), flower from Michaels, Watermark ink and clear embossing powder.

Brave Adventurous Boy & Silly Mermaid Girl

I have 2 layouts to share this week for Friends with Flair!

The first one is of my sweet 14 month old boy.  We were goofing off the other day and I took some snapshots of him.  He's smiling and laughing in most of the other pics but there is just something I love about this one.  Even though he's got his hand in his mouth teething and it's slightly blurred on the edge I really just LOVE this picture of him and so of course I had to scrap it immediately!  Since I received my May KOM I've been itching to use that cute Polaroid frame and this picture almost begged for it.  The sentiment/poem/title was something I saw on Pinterest a while back and bookmarked it to use for maybe a sign for his door but scrapbooking is my thing and I don't know how to make signs so I turned it into a layout!

I don't even know how many different types of alpha stickers I used on here.  I also used some old rub-ons and several Unity stamps as well.

Supplies used:  My Minds Eye Wander paper, Unity Stamp Company stamps (polaroid frame, brave crown, live each moment banner from May 2012 KOM; adventurous from Nuts and Bolts; Imagine from Donna Downey Inspire Words; Dream Big Itty Bitty; boy from SMAK Nov 2011; Chicken Wire background)
Tim Holtz Distress markers, assorted alpha stickers mainly Echo Park, Authentique and Fundamentals.

The second layout I want to share this week is another princess layout of my daughter (you may recall the Cinderella layout from last week).  She is SO VERY princess obsessed right now but her absolute FAVORITE is The Little Mermaid, Ariel.
We were playing outside a couple of weeks ago in the 80+ degree May weather at the splash table and I guess it wasn't enough for Jasmine just to splash in the table, suddenly she was climbing in it and said "Look at me, Mom, I'm cooling off!  I'm just like The Little Mermaid!

I have always had a hard time leaving "white space" on layouts so I had to stop myself from adding too much here.  It was SO challenging for me to match colors with the mermaid!  Orangeish red hair, turquoise fin and purple top, I went through almost every paper in my collection to finally settle on this light green vellum.

Supplies used:  Sandylion paper, Cricut Dreams Come True cartridge (Ariel border), Cosmo Cricket alpha stickers, Unity Stamps (He, She, You Said, Boys Rule and Bitty Regards)

That's all for me today, happy June to you all!!!

A little birdie told me...

It's Friday and Friends with Flair!!!  I missed last week for the first time in a long time, what can I say but sometimes life gets hectic.
Today I have a card to share that I made for my daughter this week.  She will be 3 next month and she's such a little girl all of a sudden!  Last month she painted a beautiful bird feeder and had so much fun watching the birds eating out of it until a giant mutant squirrel came along and demolished it after only having it up for a week or so.  :(  We got her another feeder but it's not the same as the one she painted herself and even the birds don't seem to like it as much.  We had to get a squirrel proof one so maybe that has something to do with it.  I made her this card to cheer her up.

I made this with the Unity color challenge in mind using greens, pinks and off white.  The inspiration for the design came from a cover card from the March/April issue of Paper Crafts designed by Kalyn Kepner.
Supplies used:  Kraft cardstock.  Unity stamps (One of a Kind and My Dear), My Minds Eye Howdy Doody PP, Spellbinders Die, EK Success border punch, Copic markers.

Happy, happy, happy birthday

I've been so sick with an allergy/sinus/cold infection that I haven't gotten one project done at all this week.  :(  Good news is that it's finally clearing up and it doesn't look like I've passed it on to the kids (a first)!
A Friends with Flair and nothing to share...time to look back through projects I've forgotten to link up.
This was a card I'd submitted a few months back and it didn't get picked and then I just completely forgot to blog it.

It uses 3 different Unity stamp sets - Echo Writer, Sweet & Sour Soup (happy & birthday) and Love in Return (banner).  I inked the happy up with 5 different distress inks and stamped it multiple times to make the background.  The PP is My Mind's Eye.  I distressed the edges and folded up one corner to show the dot theme that I used for color inspiration.  One of the happys is popped up for dimension.  This isn't the best photo of it but I've already given the card away so no detail shots.
Wishing you all a wonderful and crafty weekend!

Beauty

Here is my 2nd attempt at the Unity Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge.  See post below for my first attempt where I forgot to use KOM!  Sketches for me are always a jumping off point and I almost always flip or skew them in some way.  This one is just flipped upside down.

Here is my card made using the sketch and some fantastic Unity stamps!

I used Marvy brush markers to color in this great image from the June 2011 KOM.  When I had it finished I still thought it was missing something at the top and after playing around with a few different things I finally decided on this floral border stamp from the January 2011 KOM inked in a dark grey.  Patterned Paper is from My Mind's Eye. 
Here are a couple of close ups:

I just LOVE my Unity kit of the months, they are so versatile and always have the perfect stamps for so many occasions and the funnest images!

This too shall pass.

I wasn't expecting to get any crafty time in today but wonder of wonders the kids both napped at the same time today and for more than an hour!  I was able to throw together a quick card for the Unity Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge.  Since it's still Friday as well I'll just toss it into Friends with Flair too!
Here is the sketch:
 And here is my card created from this sketch:

Supplies:
Kraft cardstock, PP scraps from My Minds Eye (Gertie).  Unity Stamp Co Feb 2012 KOM.  Diamond Stickles on the raindrops.  Distressed edges with Antique Linen and rounded corners.