~ Friends of Unity September Blog Hop ~

Hello! It's time for another Friends of Unity Blog Hop!! Woohoo! I love hopping with my friends!

Before I get any further into my post, we have two new friends hopping with us and I want to officially welcome Kim Klinkovsky and Bobbie Sue McConathy to our hop! Kim has been a sweet supporter of our little hop since we started. She is a fellow lover... AKA... addict of Unity stamps, she has a fabulous blog filled with inspiration - including some really awesome jewelry! And Bobbie Sue has also been a huge supporter of our hop. She just recently started her blog and I was just waiting for an opportunity to invite her to join us. She's a sweet soul and a fabulous cardmaker with so much talent! We are super happy to have both of these wonderful friends join our team!

So please give Kim and Bobbie Sue a huge welcome!

Now let's get back to it... our cue for this month's Friends of Unity blog hop is Wings. We kept the cue simple because it can be used with so many different images... angels, butterflies, birds, dragonflies, etc... that way we had a larger scope of stamps to use which sometimes can make it hard to decide what exactly you want to do. LOL! So instead of just choosing one stamp set to play with, I chose two different sets.

The first set I chose to work with was an easy pick, I bought this Suzi Blu set called Serenity Angel a while back wanting to use it for a card for my niece but the idea, and sadly, the set got pushed aside for other things. So I was really happy to finally get to use this set for this card.

I recently got my hands on some new alcohol inks and I thought it would be fun to work with a rainbow theme. I had already made a background using Wild Plum, Raspberry, Turquoise, and Stream alcohol inks on Yupo white heavystock and I thought it would be perfect for the angel's wings. I stamped the angel on the Yupo and fussy cut the wings out. I stamped her again on white card stock with Amalgam ink and colored her in with Copic markers (listed below). I used my Scan n Cut to cut the angel image out and adhered the wings to the image. I added touches of silver gel pen on the wings and on her outfit. And I also added some clear wink of stella to her hair and the bottom portion of her dress (behind the flowers). I set the angel aside and created my background piece using Poppyfield, Valencia, Sunshine Yellow, and Limeade alcohol inks on Yupo white cardstock. Using the Tim Holtz Rays Stencil, I rubbed some Alcohol Lift Ink over that stencil and rubbed it with a paper towel to get the sun rays on the background. I am loving the new Alcohol Lift Ink!!! So fun to play with! I die cut the piece using the Double Stitch Scalloped Rectangle Frames die from Poppy Stamps. I also die cut a piece of True Black card stock using the same die. I adhered the black and rainbow pieces to a scrap piece of white cardstock because I planned to pop the whole piece up on the Amethyst Allure card base.

{Copic markers used on this card ~ BV000, BV04, BV11, E0000, E00, E21, R000, R17, R20, N5, N7, YR01, YR68, Y06, Y17, Y35, YG03, YG23, B00}

Once I had that part done... I thought the background needed something else. I pulled out my Tim Holtz Mixed Media #2 dies... now at first I thought I would use the die with the flowers, but then I saw the negative pieces of the die sitting on my desk and thought they would be cool on the background and so that's what I did. That was no easy task because there were a lot of small pieces but I placed the die cut wrong side up on a piece of Press n Seal (that stuff in your kitchen to cover your leftovers - it's sticky and perfect for this!) and put all the little pieces on there like I was doing a puzzle. Once I had it filled back in, I added liquid glue to the pieces I wanted on my background and flipped it over and adhered them. Some didn't stick but it was easy to use the die cut as my guide to get the pieces in there. Then I popped up the angel on the card with dimensionals, added a few Peacock Feather jewels from Little Things from Lucy's Cards, and stamped and adhered the sentiment from the set.

Here's a closer look at the angel... I tried to capture some of the glitter in her hair. Not easy to do! But take my word for it... it's there!!

On to my second card... so you remember the black die cut from the first card... well, it was just sitting on my desk next to the left over scallop rainbow piece and they wanted to play too. So... I decided to make a Leftover card! Do you ever do that? It can be a bit of a challenge to use up those leftover pieces but this card came together pretty quickly and I have to say... I Love It!!

I masked off my white card base using microfiber tape. You could use washi or purple tape... even post it notes. Anyhow, I masked it off with about a 1/4" border. I knew I wanted to blend some red and yellow ink behind the die cut so I grabbed my brand new Ripe Persimmon and Mustard Seed Distress Oxide inks... so excited to have these in my collection... and blended them in that bottom right corner. I blended a little and then placed the die cut there to see that I was in the right spot and then I'd blend some more. Once I had that section done, I grabbed the Tumbled Glass and Stormy Sky Distress Oxide inks and blended the rest of the masked off area. Using the Ranger Anti-Static Pouch, I covered the distress oxide background and then stamped the sentiment with VersaMark watermark ink and then heat embossed ultra fine white embossing powder. I pulled off the microfiber tape and adhered my scalloped frame to the black die cut piece and then adhered them to the white card base.

I set that aside and got to work on my dragonfly. Do you recognize those wings?!?! I stamped the dragonfly from the Dreams Take You itty bitty set with Ranger Jet Black Archival ink onto my background that was leftover from the angels wings. I stamped the dragonfly again on white card stock, adhered the fussy cut wings, and fussy cut the whole dragonfly out. I bent the wings up a bit for dimension on the card and adhered just the head and thorax of the dragonfly. And then I spotted the Peacock Feather jewels that were still on my desk and decided this dragonfly needed some bling!! This might just be my favorite Leftover card ever!! 

 One or two of our friends are having giveaways on their blogs for this month's hop so be sure to hop and comment on each of our blogs so you'll be entered into this giveaway. We sure appreciate and love all of your fun comments! 

Now let's get hopping!

Crystal <--- you're here

up next ---> Joyce

Eileen

Robyn

Kim

Dawn

Jeanie

Bobbie Sue

Thanks for stopping by!

See ya next time.

~ Crystal