GIU Day 3: Beautifully Confused Anniversary

Hello and welcome to my Day 3 of my Growing in Unity week!  Today I am sharing an anniversary card I made for my awesome hubby (I hope he's not peeking cause our anniversary isn't until next month).
I love script backgrounds and they seem to be everywhere right now so I tried to make my own.  My first attempt was me with my watercolor brush and black paint.  It turned out okay but I didn't love it.  I had already inked this fabulous heart from Beautifully Confused so the set was still on my table and I thought that the rest of the set had a pretty script and so I experimented with it and the July 2014 SMAK kit By The Numbers and came up with a background I really liked!
The sentiment stamped onto the heart is from July 2014's KOTM Beautiful Inside and Out.

 

GIVEAWAY!!!
The wonderful and generous Unity Stamp Co is giving away 2 Itty Bitties of your choice to one lucky commenter this week.  To qualify simply leave a comment on any of my 5 GIU posts this week (M-F) for a chance to win.  I will pick a winner on Monday July 28th.

GIU Day 2: Sunshine

Welcome back! It's supposed to be a hot one here today.  Thankfully we haven't had too many of them this summer because when it hits 90 I can be found inside enjoying the A/C and missing my run. 
Here is another card using the Beautiful Inside and Out Kit of the Month by Unity.  I LOVE that kit, it's so fun and there are so many fantastic quotes and images.  I used the lovely girl and sun and finished it with the You are my Sunshine sentiment. 

When I get a new kit I tend to get super excited and want to ink it up ASAP!  Recently I've been loving watercolor because I can stamp a lot of images onto watercolor paper when I get a chance and then color them anywhere (which is often outside while my littles are playing).

GIVEAWAY!!!

The wonderful and generous Unity Stamp Co is giving away 2 Itty Bitties of your choice to one lucky commenter this week.  To qualify simply leave a comment on any of my 5 GIU posts this week (M-F) for a chance to win.  I will pick a winner on Monday July 28th.

 

I am linking this up with Lawnscaping Challenge: watercoloring.

Growing In Unity Day 1: Hope

Happy Monday to you all!  I am super excited to be your Growing In Unity gal this week! I don't know about you, but if your Mondays are anything like mine I can usually use some inspiration to get me through the week. 

Hope is the thing with feathers,

that perches in the soul,

and sings the tune without the words,

 and never stops at all.

 

I love this Emily Dickinson quote and this gorgeous feather from Unity's July Kit of the Month-Beautiful Inside and Out.  The feather is so fun and funky that I got a little wild with my watercolors and Dylusions sprays. 

I added a little bling to finish it off. 

GIVEAWAY:

The wonderful and generous Unity Stamp Co is giving away 2 Itty Bitties of your choice to one lucky commenter this week.  To qualify simply leave a comment on any of my 5 GIU posts this week (M-F) for a chance to win.  I will pick a winner on Monday July 28th.

 

 I am linking this up with the Lawnscaping Challenge: Watercoloring.
 

Thanks for visiting!  I have more Unity creations to share with you this week so I hope you'll stop by each day to see what I have in store!

Birthday Girl, you are FABULOUS!

Five years ago today I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, became a mother and my life changed forever.  I loved her before I met her and over the past 5 years have grown to love her more each day!
I have 3 cards to share today for Unity's Friends With Flair, all 3 birthday cards for my girl.

The first used Unity's Chic Fabulous and Fabulous Girl Itty Bitty and watercolors.

 Some detail of the sparkle gel pen I used in spots.

 The next cards I made for her brothers to give to her.  This one uses the Phyllis Harris Sense of Wonder stamp set from Unity.  Watercolored the image and used Twinkling H2O's on the dress.

 The last card is going to be from her baby brother.  She loves giraffes and will adore this one with the heart and flower!  The stamp is Unity's Longing to be Giraffe.

And because I couldn't resist going down memory lane I have some pics to share.  Time really does fly by!

Newborn

 

1 year old

2 years old

3 years old

4 years old

5 years old (almost)!

Linking to Unity's Friends With Flair and off to spend the day celebrating my FABULOUS birthday girl!

Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful weekend!

Free Spirited Gypsy

I have been dying to ink this beauty up and I got my chance tonight.  Oh, is she ever gorgeous and I had SO MUCH FUN coloring her!  She is Suzi Blu's Gypsy Warrior by Unity Stamp Co and I believe she is ON SALE this weekend if you don't already have her!

When I see this gypsy beauty I always get a song in my head from The Zac Brown Band called Colder Weather so I wanted to incorporate music onto my journal page.  I stamped Worn Sheet Music by Unity Stamp Co all over the background and then covered it with a layer of gesso to mute it a bit.  I stamped her and then used a Moroccan tile stencil from My Favorite Things and sponged Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry and Peacock Feathers distress inks around her.  Then the coloring fun started.  I used the same color distress markers as well as Mustard Seed and Vintage photo and colored and used a wet paintbrush to move the color around.  The Free Spirit is an old rub-on from Scenic Route Paper Co and the quote is from the Unity set Whitney Girl.

I added a few touches of gold smooch ink to the flowers in her hair and then left her alone. 

I am linking up with Friends with Flair on Unity Stamp blog cause it's FRI-DAY and they have a linky party every Friday with prizes and all!  Lots of lovely inspiration every week guaranteed! And you can leave a comment for a chance to win some Unity, they announce winners every Monday!

I also just discovered Art Journal Everyday so this will be my first time linking there.

Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs,
Crystal

You have made a difference.

I haven't played along with the Unity Stamp Company Challenge for a while but I needed to make a card for my sons speech therapist and I new what stamps I wanted to use so I decided to give the card sketch a go.  Here is what I came up with:

Here is the sketch:

I had a tough time with this one!  I stamped the flower and sentiment (from the Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful KOTM) onto watercolor paper I had cut into an oval and used some very old Luminarte twinkling H2O's that I had forgotten about to color it in.  Thanks to Terri Burson at wavingmywand for reminding me that I had these beauties!

For the card base I used watercolor paper as well and sprayed it with a yellow Glimmer mist and an Sunset Dylysions spray.  After that dried I stamped Unity's Whimsy Border with an orange gelato on the bottom and splattered some orange watercolor up in the top left corner. 

The sentiment banner is where I had some problems. The sentiment is from another Unity KOTM called Let Love Grow.   Eventually I got the embossing to come out clear after about 3 failed attempts.  Then it was crooked on the black paper and that bothered me so I cut it down and then cut it down some more until I was left with a very small piece of paper that didn't look right under the oval.  After playing around with a lot of options I just moved it off to the side and added the orange ribbon up in the opposite corner and called it done.

The whole card has a beautiful shimmer to it.  Here are a couple of close ups to try to capture that.

I recently started a Facebook page for Crystal Amaris Creations and I would love it if you use FB to stop by and "like" my page to stay up to date on news and giveaways!  Thanks for coming by today and I hope you all have a very crafty week!

Day Dreaming

This might just be my favorite art journal page that I've made so far, this color combo just makes me happy!  I am excited too because I discovered several new mixed media challenge blogs that just started up yesterday.  There is just beautiful inspiration everywhere and SO much talent!!!

I started this page a couple of days ago by first stamping the script background (Hero Arts) over the entire page and then stamping the flowers (Insightful Meadows by Unity Stamp Co) in versamark and clear embossing.  I then used several Dylusions sprays over the background and blended with a spritz of water.  I stamped the Day Dreaming (Unity Stamp Co SMAK) and outlined with a white gel pen. 
Then the weekend came and it was gorgeous and we played outside all day and I was too exhausted at the end of the day to do anything but zone out so it remained unfinished until today.

When I originally sprayed the page with the Dylusions spray inks I took a scrap piece of fabric I had laying nearby and soaked up some of the colors from my craft mat to use for something else later.  Today when I went to finish the page I saw it and thought why not use it on the same page.  I stamped the heart (Unity Stamp Co Let Your Heart Take Flight) onto the fabric and adhered it with a gel medium.  I stamped the sentiment from the same kit onto watercolor paper and inked the edges with a paintbrush I dipped into my Dylusions bottle.

I used a piece of vellum with a quote on it (DCWV Vellum Quote Stack) and adhered it down with a gel medium.  It was an experiment and came out a little weird but that's okay.  I finished the page with some gesso applied over a Heidi Swapp confetti stencil for the random hearts on the top of the page. 

I am entering this into the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #1: Spray Inks and Mists.
I am also linking to the Mixed Media Mojo Challenge 1, which was to use stamps and two mediums.

These challenges just started yesterday and run the whole month of June so there is still LOTS of time to make something and link up!