Growing in Unity Blog Hop

Good morning and happy Sunday. Hope you have been enjoying your weekend.

Today I am participating in the Growing in Unity Blog Hop.  
Two lucky people will win a Unity prize pack.
So be sure to hop a long and leave a comment on every post.
Winners will be announced next week on the Unity Stamp Company blog.

I am the last stop on today's hop.  
I have listed links to the other blogs below if you missed anyone.

1. Jennifer Mitten 
2. Jeanie Marie Hays 
3. Denise Sayers 
4. Sue Nagata 
5. Aimee Phillips 
6.Helen Smit 
7.Jo Avery 
8. Teresa Godines 

Each year I participate in a couple of card drives.  

For the holidays there is The Caring Hearts card drive.  

This drive collects cards that will be delivered to Sr. Centers around the world.  

The second one is for Valentines day.
The Cards from the Heart card drive is hosted by Winter Simms.
 All of these cards go to Children's hospitals around the US.  
Winter and her family has had some struggles this last year so I hope s
he will continue with this project in 2019.  

She usually post mid December with the rules and timeline.  

For my first card I chose to use the My Person (Fox) stamp. 

He is super sweet and the sentiment that came with the set is perfect for a Valentine.  

I just went with a simple layout and colored the image with alcohol markers.  For this drive you can not use glitter.  Sometimes that is a bummer when making Valentine cards but I can make it work.  

My second card I chose the ROLY POLY Winter joy image.

I just love these snow-peeps.   

It is hard to tell in the photo but the jacket has been flocked 

and there is a little splash of glitter here and there.  

Two cards down and many more to go....LOL

Be sure to stop by the Unity page.  They are having an awesome sale.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of the hop

Teresa

Winner Announcement.

Good morning!!!

I'm just dropping in to announce the winners from last weeks Growing in Unity blog post

Before I announce the lucky winners, I want to thank everyone again for all of the encouraging comments.  

Randomly chosen.....

Marcy H.

and

Sharon G.

Please contact me with your mailing information at resatwo(at)sbcglobal(dot)net 

I will pass it along to Unity so they can mail out your package.

Please claim your prize within two (2) weeks

~Teresa~

Growing in Unity 2018 - Day 5

Happy Friday!!

Sadly this means my week with the Unity Stamp Company is coming to an end.

I would like to thank everyone for all of your kind and inspiring comments. 

And 

A big thanks to Unity for this opportunity.

I also enjoyed the answers to some of my questions.   
I discovered that I am not the only obsessed with a certain type of image.   
Thank your for sharing.

I hope you had time to check out the 
Unity web site, their blog and even the Facebook page.

They are wonderful people and the stamps are awesome.
and they have a great sale going on right now. 

I have two cards for my final post today. 

I beleive that I am getting into a rhythm and my mojo is coming back.

The window image I chose is from the A Summer Story Kit of the Month

 Both cards I stamped and colored the image with alcohol inks.  
One with red flowers and the other with purple flowers.

Then using my Misti stamp tool I stamped this sentiment in the window.
One in black and the other in white.
Both are heat embossed.

I'm not sure what set this sentiment came from so I can't leave you a link.

It is such a happy and welcoming sentiment. 
Could be good for birthdays or think of you.

I thought the images were a little flat and wanted to give them a some extra dimension.  

For the red flowers I stamped another image.  

I colored the window box and  flowers just like before.

Then I cut that part of the image and placed it over the 

original with some pop dots to pop it off the image.

For the purple flowers I added a layer of glitter around the edges.

Both sets of flower I used my new..... 

Nuvo enamel dots for the flower centers.

I added a drop to the top of the window and some around the purple flower box.

This is the first time I used the enamel dots and I love them. 

I was actually surprised how much dimension the 

purple flowers had after the touch of glitter and the enamel dots.

Hope you enjoyed my week of projects and found something that inspired you.

Remember there is two prized to be won. 
Leave a comment on each of my 2018 GIU post.
I will select a couple lucky winners and post them on the blog next week.

I know we are all busy so I will let you have through the weekend to comment. 

You don't have to comment every day but it does increase your odds.

If you missed a day I added links below

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Thank you for visiting my blog this week 

Teresa

Growing in Unity 2018 - Day 4

Good Morning

This is my Day 4 Post for the Unity Stamp Company 

What is the most interesting thing you have stamped on?

Blog hopping and Pinterest viewing I saw some 

beautiful stamping on square tiles to use as coasters.

Of course I wanted to try.  

  I was looking for some natural tile pieces but all 

I could find at our big box stores were the standard glazed white tile.  

What I liked about the tile stamping was the monochrome colors with an abstract image.

Since I struck out with the tile I figured I could use that inspiration on a card.

I went with the Moments in Bloom set 

I felt the shape of the card still needed to be square to work with the tile inspiration.

I also decided that I wanted a little smaller card that I could use with a gift.

This card is 4" square.

I chose stamp the ledger background image with gold to add a little contrast.

I then stamped the flower in black over the top of the ledger image.  I also embossed the flower.

I felt it needed a little pop so I added this cool pattern frame.

On my adventure through the hardware store I found vinyl floor samples.

I thought I'd give stamping on these a try.  

The vinyl flooring could be a good coaster too.

I also liked the color of the light wood for my future kitchen remodel.

I used my alcohol ink to stamp the image in black.

t is a little tricky not to move the image during the stamping.

What is cool is that when I did not like the image I just clean 

them up with some rubbing alcohol and stamped again.  

I'm going to seal the stamping with a clear coat 

to prevent the image from coming off.

This was my inspiration piece

I'm not giving up on the tile pieces.

I think they would make fabulous Christmas gifts.

Remember there is two prized to be won. 
Leave a comment on each of my 2018 GIU post.
I will select a couple lucky winners at the end of the week. 
I will post the lucky winners to the blog next week.
You don't have to comment every day but it does increase your odds.

If you missed a day I put links below

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Thank you for dropping in today

Teresa

Growing in Unity 2018 - Day 3

Happy Hump day.  

This is my day 3 post for the Unity Stamp Company.

As always the fun week is just flying by.

I loved reading all of your comments about where you live and the temperature.

It sounds like we are all HOT. 

Today I would like to find out what kind of stamp image can you not resist?

Let me know in your comments.

For me.... Flowers.

I love flowers.  I photograph them every where I go.

My hubby rolls his eyes sometime...LOL

I think it run in the family, because when I was looking through some old photos

I found a lot of flower pictures that my father had taken.

Unity has some wonderful floral images and I could buy every one of them.

My project today is one of my all time favorite images.

It is from the Angiegirl collection.

The set is called Booming-Rebecca Girl.

I've used this image many times.  

I've been trying to get way from the traditions rectangular card.

I get stuck making 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" size cards because you can get two from 

one piece of card stock and it is easy to fine envelopes.  

Recently I've been trying squares.

This one is 5" x 5"

I might suggest buying the envelopes first.  

That way you know what size to start with.  

I think my envelopes are 5-1/4" square.

I've been working on my skills of mixing patterns
and felt very confident that these patterns would all work well together.

I stamped the image on watercolor paper and used watercolors to color the image.

I again broke out the word dies to add the sentiment.
I'm really starting to love these dies.

Remember there is two prized to be won.
Leave a comment on each of my 2018 GIU post.
I will select a couple lucky winners at the end of the week.
I will post the lucky peeps to the blog next week.
You don't have to comment every day but it does increase your odds.

If you missed a day I put links below

Day 1

Day 2

Thank you for dropping by

Have a beautiful Wednesday

Teresa

Growing in Unity 2018 - Day 2

Hello there!!   Welcome back.

Today is day 2 of my week with Unity Stamp Company

As you saw in my bio, 

I'm a California girl.... lived here all of my life.   

Mostly in NorCal but I did live is SoCal for a few years   

The big news here is all of the fires burning across the state.

 It is so sad to see such devastation.   

There is so much smoke that we have not seen the sky for days.

And it's been hot outside.  Ugh.

Not the California weather in the movies.

So....Tell me what the what the weather is in your area.  

Enough of the small talk.... you came here to get some inspiration, right?

During the month of July all of the blogs were doing the Christmas in July theme

I really love seeing all of the holiday projects and inspiration. 

I try to participate in some of the Christmas card drives so it is nice to get a jump on the season. 

And it makes it feel a little cooler in my head.  

For today's project I made a Holiday card.

First I created my own background paper.

I stamped a white piece of paper with a book words image in brown ink

and then used some of  the distress oxides I've been collecting to create the green/blue color.

I then used a star stencil and sprayed some water on the oxides to leave a faint image of the star.

I did dry the paper with my heat tool  

I really love this stenciling technique.

I find sometime when I have a creative block it is best to just try out some techniques.

You never know what you will get.  

And sometime the failures become good paper to use with your die cuts.  

For the image I chose the pine branch from 

Graciellie Design and Unity Stamps.

This set is called Winter Blessings.

The set includes some beautiful sentiments too

I stamped and embossed the branch in  a raspberry color.  

I then die cut the word "Joy" using purple glitter paper.

Inside I stamped the sentiment 

"Wishing you a blessed winter, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year."

This is one of the sentiments from the stamp set.

Now remember there is two prized to be won.  

Leave a comment on each of my 2018 GIU post and I will select a couple lucky winners 

at the end of the week.  I will post them to the blog next week.

You don't have to comment every day but it does increase your odds.

If you missed day one click

here

Thank you for stopping in and I hope you have a great Tuesday.  

Teresa

Growing in Unity 2018 - Day 1

Good Morning!  

I am so happy to be back as one of the GIU gals for the Unity Stamp Co this week.   

It is a wonderful milestone for me.  

It has given me a soft shove back into what I love doing.... creating stuff.  

If you noticed I have not posted to my blog in more than a year.   

This last year was filled with wonderful happy events and some heartbreak.  

The biggest event for my family is that my son was a Sr in high school last year.   

With all of the Sr activities it left no time for me to craft. He graduated in June and turned 18 in July.

  Shorty after graduation we were off for a wonderful family vacation.   

My heartbreak came shortly after my last post when my father died in a freak accident.   

Between my family obligations and work, crafting just had to take a back seat.

Two weeks ago an opening came up to be a GIU gal.  

After staring at the post for a few minutes I raised my hand and volunteered.   

I thought this would be a great way to get back to the thing I love.   

I've been a little stressed trying to create some wonderful projects for you this week.  

When you don't craft for a while it takes a bit to get your mojo back.  But I made it work.

I started off easy.  

I do enjoy a good CAS Card

Even though I have not been crafting, I still have been viewing all of the wonderful projects out there.

I saw this technique using mini ink pads to create a background.  

A couple of the techniques was to use a family of 

colors and blend across the top third of the card stock.  

Since I don't have very many mini stamp from one family 

I chose to use some fun bright colors together.   

I chose to use my distress mini's and made an impression of each color.

I then chose the butterfly image from the A Summer Story kit of the month.  

I stamp it in black and then embossed the image using clear powder.   

This fabulous sentiment is from the Phyllis Harris collection Happiness is...

The inside will be filled with a beautiful birthday greeting.  

I though I would share with you some of the first attempts.

I embossed the butterfly in gold and silver on these samples.

I believe they will be made into a card of their own soon.  

But I like the black best.

That is it for me today. 

Now for the fun part.  

I get to give to give away some Unity to two lucky people.

We all love some free stuff..... right???

All you have to do is.....

Leave a comment on my blog this week.  

The more day's you comment the more chances you have to win.

At the end of the week I will randomly pick

two people to win a gab bag from Unity.  

Winners will be announced next week. 

Thank you for dropping in.

Teresa