~ Friends of Unity November Blog Hop ~

Hello! It's one of my favorite times of the month... it's time for another Friends of Unity blog hop!! This month Dawn had a fabulous suggestion for November cue ~ Strength... in particular the Strength of women. We kept the cue simple but I have to say this one was a challenge. 

Unity Stamp Company has over 100 Angie Girls to work with and several of them have empowering words and even different variations of the word Strength... but I still struggled. What finally 'clicked' for me was thinking of the Strong women in my life. I've had many strong, inspirational women to look up to and so many of them were the strongest women I'm proud to have known that have inspired me to be the woman I am becoming. Some are no longer with us, but they have left an impression of Strength that will be with me for the rest of my life. So enough of my chit chatter...  let's have a look at the cards I created.

Along with keeping our cue simple, I decided to keep my cards simple and let the image and sentiment be the focus. Last month I made two cards using the same Hoppy Fall  set but using Copic markers to color one and ZIG watercolor pens for the other. So, I thought... let's see how coloring on kraft with Prismacolor pencils looks compared to Copic markers.

 For my first card I stamped Stronger than Anyone ~ Jessica Girl and the sentiment with Amalgam black ink and then colored in the image. I absolutely love the sentiment in this kit! Every time I read it, I instantly think of one person and I think I'm going to send this to her to let her know that I think she's an amazing, strong woman that I am honored to know! 

I added some patterned paper from Carta Bella... called Christmas {yup, Christmas paper and it's not even a Christmas card! Ha!} I loved the black plaid to compliment the red plaid on her shirt. I die cut the edge of the patterned paper with a scalloped edge die from My Favorite Things. I adhered that to the kraft card stock. I die cut the piece with a stitched rectangle die and then I mat the kraft piece on black card stock and wrapped it a few times with white baker's twine tying a small bow. I popped up the panel onto a kraft card base and there you have card number one.

Here's a close up of the coloring on her jeans and purse. When I'm coloring with Prismacolor pencils, once I've blended the colors using a colorless blender pencil, I sometimes like to use my Prismacolor Scholar eraser to clean up the lines of the ink where the pencil has gone over the black lines. With this card though, I also rubbed the eraser on the jeans to give it a bit of worn texture. I really love the way that it roughed up the jeans a bit. I also used the silver Prismacolor pencil to add some touches on this image... her watch face, jean's button, and some accents on her purse. I love the bit of shine that it gives to the card, even though it's subtle.

Now, my second card... I considered stamping and coloring the same image for a more accurate comparison, but... I really wanted to ink up Dream Girl. I'm embarrassed to admit that Dream Girl was a stamp that I purchased for my first order with Unity Stamp Company {along with my absolute favorite ~ Dream of Being} and this is the very first time I've inked her up! It's been almost 3 years!! Can you believe that?! Shameful!! Well, anywho... I inked up Dream Girl using Memento tuxedo black ink. {I could have used the Amalgam black ink again, I just grabbed the Memento... really no rhyme or reason.} Dream Girl reminds me of my beautiful niece and so I just had to try to color her hair similar to my niece's hair. This turned out lighter, which was hard to gauge until it actually dried because while the Copic alcohol ink was wet on the kraft it was darker. I used E09, E15, E97, R89 for the hair and E0000, E000, E00, E01, E04, E51 for the face, neck, and shoulder. Just like the first card, I added a strip of patterned paper and then die cut the piece with a stitched rectangle die. I mat it on a coordinating piece of card stock and wrapped it with a natural twine. I then popped the whole panel up on the kraft card base.

Here's a close up of the Copic coloring on Dream Girl. I really love how she turned out!

As far as a comparison, I think these turned out really nice, but the medium is definitely different. The texture with the Prismacolor pencils is very different from the softness of the blended Copic markers. I love them both really... couldn't choose a favorite, but it sure was fun to play and compare them. I sure hope you enjoyed my cards today!

There are a few giveaways this month so be sure to check out each of the blog posts and comment! We absolutely love all of your comments!

Now I think it's time to get hopping!

Crystal <--- you're here

up next ---> Kim

Bobbie Sue

Eileen

Wynne

Robyn

Dawn

Joyce

Jeanie

Thank you friends for checking out my blog post! 

See ya next time.

Inky Hugs!

~ Crystal