Not Be Perfect Card

Made a quick card yesterday after noticing a new challenge was up on the Unity Show and Tell site. After playing in mixed media all week, I really needed to try a card again. The Single Layer with no embellishments seemed a perfect contrast to tone down my efforts.

I wanted a smaller image and picked up Unity’s Not Be Perfect Kit. The girl is always depicted in a swimsuit or short shorts. Because of the season and the sentiment, I decided to change that up, have her in pants and let the focus be on the girl in retrospection. I found the perfect stencil to pair with the image, and, with that decided, pulled out some inks.

To begin, I stamped the image and sentiment on watercolor paper. Having read Shannon Edward’s rainbow post yesterday in her blog, I was inspired to create a mini rainbow effect with the stencil. I then used the edge of the stencil to add colored borders mirroring the rainbow effect. I used Distress inks to add color to the image. I then turned to my pencils and gambol to complete the coloring.

To finish, I added paint spatters and more hearts using a pen to extend out the image decorations. I die cut the paper, mounted it on cardstock and called it done.

Pretty simple card to make for me. And it’s not perfect, as the saying goes. I was hesitating on posting it as I wasn’t sure about it, but then decided to add it to the challenge and post it on IG last night. Given the positive response, I thought I better blog about it after all. So, that’s the story about this one!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great weekend! Happy crafting!

Mixed Media Canvas with Ever Changing

Just bought and received a Unity Kit in the last sale called Ever Changing (Through Time). It had been calling me for a long time. In cleaning this week, I also found another small canvas just waiting to be used. So, putting 2 and 2 together (along with about 100 other pieces ;-) ), I decided I had to try out some ideas I had to create a 3D mixed media piece (layered pieces). I started looking through various pieces of wood chip boards, metal pieces and other ephemera, I had bought on sale, hoping to try out a few on a canvas in this style. Given the theme and looks of the stamps, I decided to focus on the word “changing” and the circular image, numbers and lines in the main stamp for selecting pieces and stencils. For colors, I settled on teals, blue, gold and red.

To summarize some of the items I collected to use are: @ signs, gears, a dress form (get it, changing?), butterflies (metal, wood and paper), Seth Apter circle dies (one with numbers), an arrow, clocks (metal brad and wood), tiny hearts, circular brad, flowers, and circular letter pieces. I used a window shutter 7Gypsies Architexture piece as a stencil with the dark teal paint, as well as an Art Anthology stencil to create white numbers and dots. I also used a TCW stencil for the gold lines. I used a small teal clothespin for the wooden butterfly’s antennae.

Besides the Unity Kit above I also used a treadmark background stamp from the 8/18 SMAK kit to add a little red and the butterfly from the 12/12 KOTM Kit to stamp the painted wooden butterfly.

I used a variety of sprays, pastes and paints (Art Anthology, Ranger, Brea Reese, ...) and pens. I also used white gesso to highlight and tone down colors when needed. I used a tacky glue and hot glue gun. For paper for the dies, I gessoed the cover sheet of my Canson paper pad.

As usual, I learned a lot from this exercise... mostly, you need to take time for things to dry (sometimes overnight). I am relatively happy with how it turned out given it’s the first 3D kind. But I definitely need to focus more on creating a focal point and emphasizing it with contrasts (lights & darks, contrasting colors, brighter colors) than the rest. The coarse canvas also needs better paint coverage, I think. In closeups, I see white peaking through. Need to get better at applying paints to 3D objects as well. So, to sum up, I’m not discouraged with this effort. I stamped directly onto the canvas... another option may be to stamp onto tissue paper and decoupage that.

Well, that’s all for now. Back to Cards! Hope you enjoyed reading about what I did! Feel free to critique and offer advice. I’m definitely in a learning mode here!

Tulip Girl Card

Used the December 2018 KOTM from Unity for the image, the June 2017 KOTM for the sentiment and My Mind’s Eye Pretty Things paper pad for all pieces. After stamping the girl onto watercolor paper, I watercolored pieces of her. I then stamped her again on other pieces of paper and pieced her together. I also used pencils and pens on the completed image.

Pretty easy to put this card together with a brad, enamel dots, MFT dies and some lace.

Hope you like my vintage tulip girl! Have a great week! Happy crafting!

Back Again Making Cards

Took a break from cardmaking after hitting the winter blues. After a month of rain, I’ve been enjoying walking in the sunshine again, getting pumped up with Vitamin D and reorganizing my craft supplies. Thought I better get back to cardmaking, so I pulled out some supplies and some Unity stamps to makes these 2 cards. They show how rusty I am!

The first card was made following a technique posted on the Unity Show and Tell FG group. I modified it slightly by using Primary Elements pigments and water to paint the stamps, let them dry, then spritz them with water before stamping the image. The nice thing about Primary Elements is that they have a shimmer to them. I used the bike and sentiment from the 8/17 SMAK KIT, the flower and map stamp from the March 2019 LOL ki , and the background stamp from the 1/19 SMAK kit. I also used a small bicycle I picked up in a trade from an older KOTM, that I stamped around. It’s kind of a mish mash design, but I was feeling the sentiment. I used 5 brads 3 ribbons and a distressed patterned paper. Even one of the brads, has a bike on it!

The second card was made using Brea Reese Glitter inks for the background and Neenah watercolor paper. I used Lake Blue and Crimson Red, and a Pink. I started by adding droplets to my mat, spritzing with water and then drying the paper before adding the other colors. I had recently picked up a 6x6 BoBunny Butterfly Kisses pad that had paper matching the stamp from Unity’s 3/18 KOTM. I stamped the jar onto the colored paper, using grey archival ink, wondering to myself whether I could paint the jar and make it stand from the background. I pulled out my Gansai Tambi watercolor, which is more like a gouache, in that it’s more opaque than watercolor. I added more of the blue glitter ink to the sides of the jar to darken the edges, painted the inside images, used the white paint to add highlights, and added a greenish cast to the base parts of the jar and the shadow below. I also ended up using both the glitter inks and paints to deepen color around the jar to make it standout.

I wasn’t entirely pleased with the kind of hard line borders between colors in the background, so I decided to break it up using an Art Anthology stencil and white Brea Reese Texture paste. Not leaving well enough alone, I then combined white modeling paste with Primary Element Olive Vine pigment powder to add green netting using the same stencil, which ended up too dark and splotchy! So, to break it up I poured a Stampendous embossing powder (which has gold, white and pink flakes in it) over the green paste and heat set that. Now I was happy! I decided to make the butterfly in the jar stand out by adding embossing powder there as well. I used an embossing pen to do that. To add the sentiment, deciding I didn’t want to cover up the background, I had been thinking, vellum or acetate, but, instead, I happened upon some white scrap tissue paper. I stamped on it with black ink and collaged it onto the uneven background using gel medium.

To make this card, I mounted patterned paper, the die cut watercolor paper (with color coordinated Washi tape at top and bottom), fussy cut images from the patterned paper, ribbon and green crystals to a square cut card base.

Well, if nothing else, had fun trying some new techniques. Till next time, happy crafting!

Pretty Pale Prima Girl Card

Yesterday, I started another vintage card using Prima’s Pretty Pale paper pad and ephemera, and Unity’s 5/18 SMAK kit. 

I started by stamping out several browns and pinks and selecting complementary oxide and distress inks that would coordinate with the paper. I then stamped the pretty girl using several brown shades of Oxide inks onto a sheet of the Pretty Pale paper.  I then stamped her again on masking paper and fussy cut her out. Masking her off, I stamped the large background stamp across the bottom. I then took the circles and stamped those around. Finally, I took the butterfly and stamped just the script words to the side. 

I started watercoloring the girl using the same inks, very lightly as I used paper from the pad. I then die cut her and another sheet from the pad. I then took some 7 Gypsies coordinating paper and die cut a circle, a doily and the cage out. I added distress colors to the doily and circle. I backed the Fearless ephemera with the same paper. I stamped another sentiment onto scraps of the Pretty Pale paper and fussy cut that. I inked the edges of almost everything.

Finally, I put the card together using 2 ribbons and crystal dots. I took matching flowers, added glitter, attached them and called the card done.

Somehow, this time of year speaks vintage to me. I seem to be attracted to those soft colors and all the luscious details found in these cards and beautiful papers. Hope you like this one... now back to some mixed media! Happy crafting!

Lean on Me Flower Stem & Butterfly

I’ve been wanting to ink up a card with this beautiful butterfly from an American Craft Co. kit. I’ve been stumped with inks to use as the Distress line doesn’t have a total color match per se (and I just fell in love with the colors). So, the question was, how to set it off with a colored background with complementary stamps. I now have a pretty complete set of Tattered Angels Glimmer sprays, so I tried those and found the 3 purples were great for this.

I began by spraying a watercolor paper with the sprays, lightest all over and darkest in the corners, heat setting in between. I also spritzed a little Brutus Monroe Silver spray in strips. For a complementary soft green, I decided to emboss the flower bud stem from Unity’s Lean on Me using Sage embossing powder. Because I wanted to add color to the buds, I did this again an plain watercolor paper, fussy cut out the buds and adhered them over the original image. I then took a white and black pen and added shadows and highlights to the stems and buds. I added color to the buds using silver glitter ink, Pewter Perfect Pearls, Green Prima Metallic watercolor and a little purple Color Burst ink.

I then pulled out 2 coordinating Distress Oxide inks and stamped the flowers from the Lean on Me kit and a couple sprigs from Unity’s Insightful Meadows Kit. I added some white Distress Stain dots around and called it done. I then adhered the butterfly. I used a sentiment (the font matches perfectly with the stem, I thought) from Unity’s Magnolia Kit. I used a roller to add Color Burst paint to the stamp and stamped it out. I backed that with grey paper. I used a silver card base and added violet thread and crystal dots.

When I began taking pictures to post and trying different backgrounds, I remembered I had this special scarf I loved of Claude Monet Lilies, that I had picked as a souvenir at the Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris. This museum has an oval room filled with huge paintings of the water lilies, almost touching, giving a gorgeous surround experience. And the scarf almost matched colors...wow. Guess I really loved that color combination!

Hope you like this card! Till next time, happy crafting!

Friends of Unity March Blog Hop

Welcome to March’s Friends of Unity Blog Hop with the very intriguing and challenging theme of Creativity! (I can’t wait to see how the other hop participants addressed it!) I took the opportunity this month to dive head on into the mixed media world. I hope my fledgling foray into this wonderful craft venue inspires you to try, if not mixed media, something new to you. I’ll let you judge my novice attempts, but I have to say, I had fun doing it!

This blog hop, as usual, offers giveaway goodies. I will be doing a giveaway this month as well. To be eligible, please leave a comment on each blog in the hop. Winners are randomly selected and posted on or by the next month’s blog hop. 

I started off by using 3 small Ranger canvas mixed media boards I picked up discounted at Tuesday Morning. They are sized 3”x3”, 4”x6” and 5”x7”. I also picked up a Gesso Canvas 6”x6” at Hobby Lobby. In all cases, I started by laying down a cream acrylic paint, adding paper (magazine paper or patterned paper) and “gessoing” that, and then adding more paint and/or sprays. What I found out with mixed media was that, if you didn’t like something...just go over it again with other colors as many times as you want. That being said, I also found that it can be time consuming as you continue to “create” your art work day after day, especially when still learning. With all, I added different combinations of Unity stamps (I think from 11 kits). I used stencils, embellishments, pastes, inks, sprays, glitter, ... I also used pens, a lot! and took liberties in using the images. (See product images below).

So, on to the first set of 3. I started by preparing all the canvases the same way, with the only difference being the color scheme. I then started layering on colors and designs, completing each one before moving on to the next (smallest to largest). You may not even see the layered paper pieces except for the colors. I used primarily a small flower/butterfly kit for the littlest canvas.

I used a vintage era background stamp kit for the focus of the second, but added a different butterfly over it.

For the largest of the 3, I actually started by using an Art Anthology stencil to start the flower branch, but penned my own flower heads, which I added chunky Vicki Boutin glitter to. Again, Unity stamps clutter the background of this one.

For the last canvas, I started the same way, except I also included the sides (painting, stamping and stenciling).

Hope you enjoyed seeing these unusual, strange and unique art works of a novice. At a minimum, I hope they demo the versatility of the wonderful collection of stamps offered by Unity Stamp Co. Be sure to leave comments on each hop for your chance to win a giveaway.

Just to remind everyone, we are not sponsored by Unity Stamp Co., but they do approve of this hop. I and my fellow crafters on this hop are keen users of their products and enjoy focusing our attention on monthly themes where we can showcase their products. We use our own stash as giveaways to share our inspiration and ideas with others. Hope you enjoy these efforts as much as we enjoy doing them! If you are interested in my art journey, I invite you to follow me by clicking the follow button, or adding your email!

Now on to the hop:

Crystal Minkler
Joyce Verdon => You are here
Eileen Mathys

Jeanie Hays

Bobbie Sue McConathy
Kim Klinkovsky

Robyn Jordan

Dawn Fields