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

I have am the host of the challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2 for the next two weeks.  I chose projects that are 3D because I just love them.

This is the first set of buildings that I have done.  SVG Cuts has some wonderful cut files and this pair is from the set called Seaside.  I decided to make the Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage first to see how it went.  I used cardstock I had on hand for the base and patterned paper from Graphic 45 called Sunkissed.  I used both their 8 x 8 pad and 12 x 12 (patterns and solids). Mary has wonderful videos to show you how to put these projects together and it went so well, I decided to tackle the lighthouse using the same paper collection.  I used a Sizzix embossing folder called Cobblestone on the bottom sections and a Fiskar’s texture plate on the panels at the bottom.  Applying Distress Ink with a sponge applicator really brought out the texture.  If I had to do it over, I would have used that same Cobblestone folder on the base of the cottage too, as it would have really added to it.

Here are a different angle of the cottage as well as a closeup of the base of the lighthouse.

Some twine around the bases along with colored twine on the door added a little interest.

Jump out of the 2 dimensional into 3D and link your own project at our challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2. Wait until you see what the other designers have done. – Denise

Hi, I am back again for the Bitten by the Bug 2 challenge – Back to School.  Here are a couple of cards celebrating that in whatever form it takes this year.

These were made for my granddaughter as she starts 6th grade and my daughter-in-law as she starts her second year of teaching.  She certainly had an different start to her teaching career last year with COVID.  I used Recess , Autumn Celebrations, Back to School and Just Because Cards to create these cards.  The paper was cardstock I had on hand along with a 6 x 6 paper pad called Hall Pass from We R Memory Keepers.

Use your Cricut to create your own back to school project and link it up for the next two weeks at Bitten by the Bug 2.  Our designers have lots of great projects there to inspire you. – Denise

Who doesn’t like watermelon (besides my husband, lol)?  The challenge at Bitten by the Bug 2 is to craft something on the Cricut with a watermelon.

I love watermelon and have a cat that also loves it, so he gets part of the rind to lick when I cut one up.  I searched Design Space for watermelon and found this image and sentiment as part of the Just Because Cards cartridge (melon #M472AF).  I adjusted the size of the watermelon a bit and used some perfect paper in a paper stack by The Paper Studio called Fruit Art. Since there was some paper with the seeds already in it, I used that and didn’t use the top red cut of the file. The file also contains an envelope, so I cut one using the same paper as the background.  It is hard to tell, but the dark green rind and border are a shimmery cardstock.

See what great projects the design team came up with for this challenge and link your own project using the Cricut in the next two weeks at Bitten by the Bug 2.

We are in the heat of the summer and Bitten by the Bug 2 has a challenge to show your Summer Fun.  Here is the layout I came up with.

I don’t do a lot of scrapbook layouts and I have never scrapped something this quickly, since this was just a week and a half ago.  We have a cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and spent a week there with our daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Our son couldn’t come due to COVID restrictions and others couldn’t come for the same reasons.  While we didn’t have nearly the number of family and friends this year, it allowed my granddaughter and I to have some special time together.  We have a black lab and the lake is like heaven to him along with kids.  Elena would run and jump off the dock and our dog would be right behind her.  She also has a black lab who would do the same thing and sometimes both dogs would jump in.  I captured these pictures from a video I took and it represents the center of our summers.  I tend to do simple layouts and let the pictures take center stage.   A cut from Campin’ Critters with the Jump in the Lake was perfect for the title in the corner and splashes from Noah’s ABC Animals added a nice flourish.  The circle is basic shapes and I let the Cricut do the writing using Market Street Fonts (Eloise).

Join in the Summer Fun and link your own project using your Cricut on the Bitten by the Bug 2 challenge. Get lots of inspiration from all the wonderful projects done by the design team.  – Denise

Our challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2 is Cute Critters and here is my project (actually two of them).

A closeup of the materials.

I am not a cutesy kind of crafter, but I do have a soft spot for the bears in the Cricut cartridge called Teddy Bear Parade.  They all have this expression that makes you want to hug them and there are a ton of different outfits for all kinds of occasions.  I decided that I wanted to do a shaped card and so I searched through the images and picked these two because the hats made a nice top to hinge together.  To make the card base, I sized the bear to be 5 inches tall and duplicated it.  I then removed the fishing pole (and pitchfork from the farmer).  Welding the copy made a perfect shape.  I then duplicated that and flipped it vertically.  I lined the two shapes up head to head and overlapped those heads enough to make sure I would have enough to make a decent size fold and used the centering tool to make sure they matched.  The welding tool was once again used to make one shape.  Adding a scoring line was done using the line from basic shapes and turning it 90 degrees.  If you put it with the welded shape and use the alignment tool (the horizontal center) it places it perfectly to fold the card at the top of the head.  You could also do that manually.  The original image was cut using some fun materials and lines up perfectly on the base shape. I used a faux suede material for the bears and a Tim Holtz textile paper for the overalls.  These were fun to do and I will probably try others.

Make sure to use your Cricut and link your own Cute Critter creation on Bitten by the Bug 2.

A new challenge starts today at Bitten By the Bug 2 called In the Stars.

I searched Design Space for stars, then went to my second favorite place SVGcuts.com to search for stars.  This box card      came up as part of the kit called Happy 4th.  Since I needed to make a card for a friend who celebrated their 90th birthday on July 2, I decided I could modify the card into a birthday card.  I took the first insert and using a square shape, sliced off the top which said “4th” on a banner with a star.  I searched Design Space and found a birthday sentiment that was curved in Create a Critter.  I used a banner from Close to My Heart “Artiste” and a star shape from the basic shapes.  After sizing all of them to fit, I made a copy of the sentiment and then arranged the original, the base, the banner and the star together and welded them.  I replaced the dot on the “i” with a star.  Since it was her 90th, I also hid the star contour on the front flap and replaced it with a 90.  Everything else remained as the original design.  The paper was from Authentique and called Anchored.  It makes for a fun birthday card.  Don’t be afraid to alter some of the fun designs you find to make them your own.  Join in the fun with your own project with star shapes on your Circut and link it to the challenge on Bitten By the Bug 2.  – Denise