All Is Calm | Friends Of Unity Blog Hop

Hey there crafty friends! I’m so excited to announce that I get to join the Friends of Unity this month in their monthly blog hop. This is a special hop because they are celebrating two years of hopping this month, exciting right? What’s even more exciting is that Unity Stamp Co. have donated two amazing prize packs as giveaways for this hop. Please celebrate two years with us by hopping along and leaving some crafty love in the comment section of everyone’s blog for your chance to win some fantastic prizes. Don’t forget to follow all of us so I don’t miss upcoming creative inspiration.

This months theme is All Is Calm. I find nothing more calming than a nice hot cup of coffee on a snowy day so I chose to make a card that shows just that.

All stamps used in this beautiful card are from a Unity Kit Of The Month from December 2014 called Warmth Of Winter.

All images were colored using Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pens. When I tell you these things are amazing I really mean it. They are a wet medium which means they don’t dry immediately so it give you just enough time to blend your colors. You really should see how magical they work when used as watercolor (post coming soon). The best part is they are permanent once they dry which means you can use with colors like red and black first and once dry use a color like yellow and there will be no cross contamination. Oh, did I mention they are lightfast. What does lightfast mean you ask? When a medium is lightfast that means you can put it out for all to see and it will take many, many years to fade. When a medium is lightfast it can truly be called artists quality. Did you know many of the mediums us Papercrafters use that even though they are called artists quality they really are not. Maybe I should do a post on different mediums and their true artists quality, what do you all thing, yes or no?

Before I colored all these amazing images I cut the main panel out with a Honey Bee Stamps stitched scallop rectangle die and cut the sentiment out with a stitched banner die.

Can you see all those amazing sparkles on the card? I think it added the perfect touch for a warm wintery snowy card. After I cut out snowflakes using my Tim Holtz snowflake dies, I colored them along with the scallop edge a nice light blue. A lot of crafters use Wink of Stella to add their shimmer to their cards, that stuff is pricey and I use mine very sparingly. My go to for adding shimmer is Winsor Newton Iridescent Medium, that stuff is amazing and will last for a very long time. All you have to do is take a damp paint brush, (I use a water brush) pick up a little bit of the iridescent median and add it to the areas you want to shine.

I really love how the wood slice image came out. My 13 year old daughter asked me if it was real wood, lol silly girl. All I did was punch the stamped image out with a circle punch and then punched 3 more circles from heavy weight cardstock. I glued all the pieces together and then colored the edges with the same wood color used on the image. I chose to layer the paper for this element of the card because I popped the main image and some snowflakes off with fun foam and did not want my wood slice popped up the same amount. I love the variation of dimension that all the elements create.
The very first element added to my card is the embossed snowflake background. I created this element with a Darice snowflake embossing folder and Neenah cardstock solar white 110 lb cardstock. That was the first time I used my heavy weight cardstock to emboss, it worked so beautifully.

That last element added to my card is the Polka Dot Orchard tiny wood coffee tag with white twine added to my sentiments banner. You know what’s cool about this embellishment? I created it myself using my laser engraver.

Oh, I forgot about one thing, all the sequins added to the card. They were a gift from my crafty bestie Robyn, thanks girlfriend. They are the tiny ones from Pretty Pink Posh, I love them so much that I need more colors.
Well, that’s it for today’s post, I hope I have inspired you in some way to get crafty.

I am at last one and this months hop, if you came upon me first make sure to start with Crystal and hop through the rest of the ladies wonderful creations.

~ Hop Line Up ~

Thanks for stopping by

Happy Crafting!