Welcome to the Growing In Unity Blog Hop.  Back in September, I was lucky enough to be a GIU gal for a week.  Unity Stamp Company is the reason I have such a huge amount of stamps.  They have so many great and different kinds of stamps in red rubber.  The images always stamp so well from the start.  The participants from September and October are doing a blog hop this week and if you leave comments on all the participants blogs, you could win a great Unity grab bag as a prize.  

They are having a really great sale now through November 17th and you can get a couple of free stamps if your order is above $65 and free shipping if above $75.  I placed my order the first day of the sale and received it in record time, so I am using the free stamps along with a couple of others in my project.

These are little boxes that I made to put some ornaments that I made to put in Christmas stockings this year.  I did it last year and tied the boxes, but this year decided that a band around the box could slide off easily and then be replaced when storing the ornaments for next year, keeping the box together.  It’s Christmas-Oh Deer, and the Gnome -one Like You were the free stamps.  The other two were from Full of Merry and the October 2020 KOM . It was a simple and quick way to make the boxes cute and festive.  

Make sure to visit all of the participants on the blog hop and leave a comment.  The full list is below.

Misti    https://misti-acardaday.blogspot.com/

Denise  –  That is me!

Laura  https://unikmo.blogspot.com/

Karen https://beadlady6468.wordpress.com/

Jenni  https://wishiwasscrappin.blogspot.com/

Good luck and if you missed my original week, just click on September 2020 on the right hand side for Growing in Unity posts.  – Denise

Today we start the Thanksgiving Challenge on Bitten by the Bug 2 . Here is my project:

I purchased this mandala turkey image which is from Designbundles.net called Thanksgiving Mandala SVG bundle.  It has six images and I decided to do this one.  Once a month they have $1 deals where for an hour you can purchase various products for $1 each.  I have picked up some great products for only a $1 and I have liked the idea of these layered mandala images.  This one has four layers.  I decided that since there were so many cuts, I would make it as big as possible and sized it at 11.4″ for the biggest dimension.  I also set my Cricut to cut for intricate cuts and it took over 45 minutes for each of the middle two layers since each cut is done twice on that setting.  I wouldn’t have wanted it any smaller as some of the circles were pretty small.  Once I had it cut out and together, I couldn’t decide what I was actually going to do with it.  There have been a lot of Pinterest projects using pizza pans from the Dollar Tree, so I picked one up at my local store and the turkey just fit in it.  I tried using some of my markers and a burnishing wax to color the pizza pan but nothing worked very well.  I pulled out some burlap, cut it in a larger square and attached it just inside the lip with a glue gun.  I cut another layer and turned it 45 degrees so that the mesh filled in cover more of the silver pan, once again with a glue gun.  I then took my new favorite scissors which are applique scissors to trim the burlap even with the lip of the pan.  I finally found a paint pen to somewhat color the lip, but it still felt bare.  The trim was white and after experimenting with several things, I found an old Inkadoo watercolor marker that I colored the trim with to match the blue in the turkey and attached with 3 in 1 glue.  I propped up the pan on a wooden cross from Dollar Tree’s craft section and will figure out a better way to attach it and finish the back of the pan, but it worked for the picture.

Make sure to link up your own project over at Bitten by the Bug 2 by November 23.  You can also see some of the great projects by the designers there.  May everyone have a very blessed Thanksgiving. – Densie

The challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2 for the next two weeks is sports.

After my daughter graduated from high school, I decided to learn how to officiate Volleyball because I loved going to her games.  This marks my 10th season of doing it and I decided to make a layout.

Our local paper took a lot of pictures of a game I officiated between two county teams and posted them on their website.  I chose some of the pictures that included me and printed them out.  My son gave me a book of layout sketches last Christmas and one had a circle in the middle that seemed perfect for a volleyball.  The volleyball, whistle and volleyball logo all came from the cartridge Sports Mania.  The whistle had the word “coach” attached to it, so I sliced most of the word off both layers and after it was cut out, trimmed off the rest with my scissors.  The curved title at the top and the 2020 were the font Dom-casual.  I don’t use the curve function very often and I really should as it makes it easier to space things along a circle.  The OHSAA (which is the Ohio High School Athletic Association) logo was downloaded from the web and then I used the print & cut feature.  The patterned paper was Teresa Collins’ Sports Edition II.  I also used some washi tape to accent.

Here is the whistle cut after I sliced off most of the word, but before I hand trimmed it.

Link your own sports project using your Circut machine over at Bitten by the Bug 2 by November 8.  All of the designers have some great inspiration for you. – Denise

October is fully Fall in Ohio and that is the challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2.

I have been branching out from card making and scrapbooking into some home decor.  I turned again to SVG Cuts for my cut file.  There is a whole set of 3D letters (they also have 3D numbers) and I spelled out FALL with them.  I have used the numbers once for a 90th birthday party (found here.) I can tell you that these letter with their straight lines were a lot easier to put together than the curves of the 90.  I had a Craft Smart paper pad from Michaels that had a fall theme which I used for the fronts of the letters.  This pad also had a sheet of circle tags which I cut out and tied to the letters with twine to add some interest.  I use about 1/2 – 3/4 cup of dried beans inside of the letters which gives them enough weight to be stable and not tip over easily.  Fall is a beautiful time of year, so use your Circut to celebrate it and link up your project at Bitten by the Bug 2. – Denise

Today begins another challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2. This challenge is to create something for Halloween using the Circut.

I made one of my favorite things, a box card, from one of my favorite companies, SVGCuts.com.  This is from a collection called Halloween Box Cards.  I used a textured cream colored cardstock for the base and house.  I used Black Soot Distress Ink and a blending sponge to go over it all which gave a very distressed, spooky look.  Masking sections of the front where the fence is let me sponge green on the bottom and gray on the fence itself.  The other papers came from Athentique’s Halloween Essentials and the roof was from Carta Bella’s Haunted.  I fussy cut a cat from one of the papers and added it to the front. The back (pictured below) was stamped with a sentiment form Unity called Halloween Chatter.  Because the paper is so textured the stamped image is very distressed looking since the ink couldn’t reach the crevices.

Here are other views around the card including a picture of how it folds flat to mail.

Make your own Halloween creation using your Cricut machine and link it on Bitten by the Bug 2. Our challenge runs until October 11. Have fun – Denise

Did you know that Unity also sells some cool supplies? I have lots of cards today using Unity’s Toner card fronts and foil. I purchased a couple designs of these toner cards, but in my usual fashion, never used them until this week when I challenged myself to use supplies I never seem to get to. I am also using the toner sheets that are entirely covered with toner. I highly recommend getting these so that you can use the negative of your foiling and not waste any of that beautiful foil. In some instances, I like them better than the original pattern.

For these first cards I used the  Floral Card Front and the Silver Sequin foil (top) and Rainbow Shattered Glass (bottom).  It is really pretty simple.  You just cut a piece of the foil slightly bigger than the pre-printed card fronts, lay them, pretty side up, on top of the card fronts and run them through a laminating or foiling machine.  After peeling the foil off, I cut a piece of the black toner sheet the same size and ran it through with the negative image left on the foil.  Whitney has videos on the Unity page that explain how.  The silver one ended up with a crease when I ran it through the second time, so I cut it diagonally and fussy cut one of the flowers from the damaged side. I also cut a strip from the black toner sheet with the rainbow shattered glass to create a ribbon for the sentiment on the bottom.  The sentiments came from the following kits: May Strength Surround You, Mourning Dove, and My Sympathies.

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These card were created with one card front called Butterfly Fly Away Toner Card Front. I ran the card front through with a teal foil. It is on the first card.  I then ran the foil that was left on the blank toner sheet.  After it came through, I ran it again with a gold foil.  Because the butterflies from the negative didn’t have foil, the gold sticks to wherever there wasn’t foil from before.  That is shown on the middle card. Then the gold foil is run through again on another blank toner sheet and you end up with the third card.  It is fun to see what combinations you can come up with.  The sentiments come from the Unity sets Mourning Dove, My Sympathies, and April 2020 SMAK- Head Up, My Friend. 

These are the plain toner sheets- Deco Foil Toner Sheets

Deco Foil Toner Sheets.

Thanks so much for all of the comments this week, it has been fun.  Make sure to comment so that you have a chance to win one of two Unity grab bags of 25 stamps.  I would also like to thank Unity Stamp Company for this opportunity to be a GIU gal. – Denise

Welcome back to day 4 of my GIU week. All week I have been using previously unused supplies along with stamps that had never been inked up. The supply today is Alcohol Lift Ink. I believe Whitney did a video using this quite awhile ago and it looked like fun,

This technique starts with putting blending solution on a suitable medium (I used Grafix craft plastic) and then dropping alcohol ink randomly all over the sheet. I used two greens and a light yellow for the top cards; two blues and silver mixative on the bottom. Have fun blowing the ink around and adding blending solution or more ink if needed. After the ink dries, you then ink up your stamp with the Lift Off Ink and stamp the panel. When you take the stamp off, the alcohol from the panel sticks to the stamp. You can then use that to stamp on a plain panel (which are the examples on the white background). When I was doing the snowflakes, I accidentally dropped my stamping block after stamping the first snow flake on the white which resulted in another lighter image. I decided to go with it as a second generation stamping technique and stamped each image several times before cleaning the stamp and going back to the alcohol ink panel to lift another image. I liked it so much, I wished I had done it for the ferns too. After you lift the ink, you have to take a soft cloth or paper towel and rub over it. That takes even more ink off so that the image really shows.

Here are closeups of the images.

The stamp sets I used were June 2020 KOM called Change the World, September 2020 KOM called Elements of the Holiday and a sentiment from August 2020 KOM called Count Your Blessings. I did find that a more solid image or with larger lines work better. Below are panels I tried with the leaf and sunflower from the August KOM. As you can seen, they just didn’t show up as well.

Remember to comment and you will be in the drawing for one of two Unity grab bags of 25 stamps. These prizes are provided by Unity and always have some awesome stamps in them. Tomorrow is my last day, so stop by one more time. – Denise

Today is already day three of my week! The days really go fast and I appreciate all the wonderful comments. I work full time and also officiate volleyball this time of year, so it might be a few hours before I get to approve the comments. Don’t panic if your comment doesn’t show immediately. I will randomly pick two people from all of the comments this week to win a grab bag of wonderful Unity stamps. Angela is so generous to provide these prizes and it is so fun to see what is in them. See what great stamps they have at unitystampco.com.

On to today’s projects. Reversible sequins are really popular on kids clothing and you can also use them on cards.

I love using my Cricut and these cards allowed me to utilize my Cricut along with my Unity stamps. I also wanted to use this neat reversible sequin material I purchased from Inky Antics. I watched a demo of this material during a virtual scrapbook show earlier this year and it appeared that larger images work better. I also looked at Pinterest for ideas and saw a lot of balloons, so I picked a couple of cute critters from the Hoppy & Hedgie and Koala-ty Friends stamp sets. After putting the cloud effect on white cardstock, using a blender brush, Memento Sky Blue ink and a wavy mask, I sized a balloon shape on my Cricut to fit on a 5 x 7 card and cut the card fronts. The animals were stamped on white cardstock and colored with Spectrum Noir markers, then fussy cut. I positioned the images below the balloon opening and hand drew a string to the balloon. Scrapbook Pal has this wonderful product called Scrappy Tape which is double sided tape. It comes in several sizes, but I love the 5″ wide roll to place on large items that I want to stick. I cut a piece to fit the back of the sequin fabric. It holds it tightly and evenly which helps when flipping the sequins. After adhering the sequin fabric to the front of a card base, the card front was glued on top. I added a few loose sequins that came off the edges of the material to fill in some of the empty space. The sentiment on the top came from the June 2017 KOM called Time to Enjoy Life, while the sentiment on the bottom came from the Hoppy & Hedgie set. Below are the cards with some of the sequins, flipped.

Make sure to leave a comment for a chance at Unity grab bags. See you tomorrow. – Denise

Welcome back to day 2 of Growing in Unity featuring stamps from Unity Stamp Company  Today I work with Glow-in-the-Dark embossing powder. I purchased it a year ago from Brutus Monroe, but finally used it for this week.  

This cute card was made by stamping the image and sentiment from Boo-lieve on white cardstock .with Versafine black ink.  I then filled in the ghost with a Ranger Perfect Medium pen and sprinkled on the Glow-in-the-Dark embossing powder, then used my heat gun to set it.  I used Distress Ink in Pumice Stone applied with a blending brush to tone down the white after masking off the ghost.  The patterned paper went well with the image.

The bottom two cards used July 2018 SMAK kit called Look Up and Get Lost. Since these were stamped on black cardstock (the moons) and a darker patterned paper (the stars) I learned to stamp with a white pigment ink and put the Glow-in-the-dark embossing powder on top of that. That made it show up much better than just using Versamark with the embossing powder. I ended up fussy cutting the moons, so that I could arrange them the way I wanted on a slimline card.

Below are pictures of the way they look in the dark. The pictures don’t show that well, because it is hard to take pictures with the lights off, lol. They look pretty cool in real life.

Make sure to comment and I will be drawing two random winners for an awesome grab bag of Unity Stamps.  Unity is so generous to offer this prize each week.  Join me tomorrow for more. – Denise

I am so excited to begin my week as a Growing In Unity gal. It has been quite the year as I turned 60 earlier this month and the plans I had for celebrating that, as well as my daughter’s wedding scheduled for June were put on hold due to COVID restrictions. So being able to share projects using Unity stamps is a bright spot for me!

I decided that for this week I would use supplies that I have purchased, but never used (I am sure I am the only one who does that, lol). I get excited about a technique, but after purchasing the items needed, I get busy and don’t use them. And I always seem to have stamps that I haven’t inked up. Today I am using Alcohol Inks. If you have used Yupo paper with them, you know that you can’t heat emboss with it because it will melt. I saw a demonstration by Marco’s Papers using Grafix Craft Plastic on which they heat embossed and used alcohol inks.

This card was made by stamping an image from the June 2017 KOM called Time to Enjoy Life on the Grafix Craft Plastic with Versafine black ink and heat embossing with Clear embossing powder. This plastic won’t melt, but you do need to keep the heat tool moving. I put some blending solution in the bigger petals and them a few drops of orange along with a drop of yellow. I played around with blowing it around, but ended up using a paint brush to kind of move the ink around adding a little more and some gold too. I really liked that the embossing helped contain the alcohol inks to the areas and I could do my leaves in greens without them blending into the flower. I fussy cut the flower and popped it up on foam on a paper from the Unity paper pack called Holiday Intrigue. It is mostly Christmas, but has other papers such as this that can be used all year. The sentiment is from Unity’s May Strength Surround You.

This card uses an image from the July 2020 KOM called Life is Better in Flip Flops. I sort of went out of the embossing lines, so I used that with a paint brush dipped in blending solution and spread various colors outside the image to make a background. After using a stitched rectangle die, I used a paper from Authentique’s Pleasant collection. The sentiment is from Peace, Courage and Memories. It was heat embossed on velum and added to the front of the card. I have needed some sympathy cards, so I decided to add to my stash and have them ready.

Unity is generously offering a grab bag of 20 of their stamps to two people who comment this week. Be sure to come back and comment every day on my new posts to increase your chances. I will do a random drawing from all the comments on Sunday to choose the two winners. – Denise