~ Friends of Unity May Blog Hop ~

Hello! It's one of my most favorite times of the month... the first Saturday of the month means it's time to do a blog hop with my Unity loving friends!! Woohoo! Our theme this month is Motherly Love... sadly this is my first Mother's Day without my Mum. 

But rather than dwell on the sadness, I just wanted to make a pretty card that I think she would have loved. She loved roses. We talked about them a lot on our last visit together. We'd sit out on the back patio and enjoy the garden and chat. 

A sweet memory I'm glad I have and it helped to inspire my card.

I knew that I had to use the gorgeous flowers in the Mama's & Grandma's sentiment kit. I started 

by die cutting some Canson XL watercolor paper using the Stitched Arch STAX die. I colored the image using ZIG clean color real brush markers directly on the red rubber stamp. I spritzed the stamp very lightly and then stamped the image. I decided it was a little too light so I stamped the image again which was super easy since I was using my new Tim Holtz Travel Stamp Platform! Loving this smaller version of the platform! Well, the flowers were still too light... so I decided to just add some more color with the markers. I scribbled some of the color on an acrylic block and picked it up with my water pen... cleaning the block in between colors. I added more and more color until I was happy with the results. I started to get worried that the paper would get ruined, but it held up pretty well. I added just a bit of blue around the flowers and set the image to the side to dry.

Now to add my layers... I am loving the Spring Market papers from Carta Bella! Oh my goodness... so many pretty papers in this paper pack!! I thought the roses on this particular paper was perfect for this card. I cut it down to 2-1/2" x 5-1/2". I cut a strip of the pink paper and die cut it with a stitched border scallop die. I adhered those two pieces together and then adhered them to a cardfront piece of Natural card stock by My Favorite Things. I die cut the black print paper using a stitched banner die and then adhered it to the cardfront. I wrapped the card front with twine a few times and tied a bow to the side. 

I adhered the cardfront to a white card base using mono multipurpose liquid glue. I popped up the roses panel using dimensionals. I then stamped the sentiment, also from the same sentiment kit, using versamark ink and heat embossed some ultra fine white embossing powder. I trimmed the sentiment down and then popped it up on the card. My final touch for this card was a little bit of clear wink of stella on the roses. You can kind of see that in this last picture.

Well, that's my card for this month's hop. I hope you like it... I'm sure my Mum would have loved it!

Now, let's go hop along to see what all my friends made - shall we?!

Eileen Mathys

Crystal O. Minkler <--- you're here

up next ---> Robyn Jordan

Wynne Grob 

Jeanie Hays

Dawn Fields

Thanks for stopping by!

See ya next time.

~ Crystal