~ Friends of Unity July Blog Hop ~

Hey there crafty peeps and fellow Unity addicts!!

Today is the day for the Friends of Unity July Blog Hop and I am excited to see all the creations my friends have come up with! Our cue this month is Vintage and let me tell you... vintage cards can be scary! If you've ever tried one, you might understand. 

It's really not my usual style... though I do enjoy to see them. Especially, when our very own friend, Joyce Verdon, makes one of her gorgeous vintage style cards... I'm so excited to have Joyce back and I can't wait to see what she has created to share with us all!! So let's get to it! 

My first card is a Vintage Christmas card... I know some of you may not be ready for Christmas, but I'm trying to make a serious effort to get ahead on my Christmas cards and I thought this cue would be perfect! I started by stamping the Yuletide {border backgrounds} stamp on white card stock with Gina K's Black Amalgam ink. I heat set it with my heat tool and colored the berries... oh my... so many berries! I went over each of those berries... 9 times I'm thinking with the copic markers. I was going a bit cross eyed, I swear!! Anywho, after the berries were done, I finished the rest of the pretty background. And it was really bright and beautiful... not vintage, at all! 

Copic's used for this card: R000, R14, R27, R89, G24, G94, G99

So... I pulled out the Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink and got to work blending. I also used a touch of Antique Linen Distress Oxide ink... I think the edges got a little dark and the Antique Linen lightened it up a little bit. I fussy cut the middle of the background because I wanted my sentiment to be a separate layer to add dimension to the card. I die cut the background with a large stitched rectangle die and then I started on the sentiment layer. 

I stamped the sentiment from the Vintage Christmas Kit on white card stock using Fired Brick Distress Oxide ink and heat embossed a fine clear embossing powder. I then stamped the Worn Music background stamp using Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink and also heat embossed it using the same clear ep. The white background was not going to work so I blended the Antique Linen Distress Oxide ink over the piece. I trimmed it down and adhered it to a 4-1/8 x 5-3/8" piece of Cherry Cobbler card stock. I then popped up the Yuletide background using foam squares... lots and lots of foam squares. I probably should have used the foam tape... :)

I wrapped the panel several times with jute twine and added the cute Christmas charm (Tim Holtz) and red jingle bell (SU!). I tied off a bow and adhered the charm to the card using Multi Medium Matte so it would stay stationary. {I'm just noticing that my second twine tail has flown the coop! LOL... totally missed that, but I assure you there is one!} I adhered the panel to a Mossy Meadow card base and called this one done!!! What do you think? I'm really liking it!

On to card two... now, I was totally stuck on this card until I saw the lovely Lisa Arana's YouTube video Vintage & Easy Farm Animal Card Design and bam!! Inspiration!! Thank you so much, Lisa!!

I had already chosen the stamps I wanted to use for this one... Grandma's Needlepoint kit by Susan Weckesser. Such an adorable kit.... I love the little girl, but honestly it was the stitching stamps that got me on this one... love love love!!! So to start my card, I went searching through my many patterned papers and decided to use the beautiful Romance Novel papers by Prima.

I stamped the little girl, the stitching and the sentiment with Gina K's Black Amalgam ink and then I die cut each of the papers using the Blueprints 5 dies by My Favorite Things (sadly, it's retired... but you could achieve the same look by trimming down the papers and using a corner rounder on each corner). I chose another paper for my very bottom layer from Love Nicole called Distressed Neutrals that worked really well with the other papers. Score!! Using my corner rounder punch I punched the bottom two corners on the Distressed Neutrals layer and then I did the same with the bottom corners on my Vintage Cream card base. All I needed to do now was adhere the layers. I used Tombow Mono Multi liquid glue to adhere all of the layers except the last one... 

...my focal image was popped up on the card with foam squares. Yup, lots and lots of foam squares. But before I placed it on the card, I wrapped the card with Very Vanilla Taffeta ribbon and tied a pretty bow.... awww, I just love how this turned out! What do you think? I sure hope you let me know in the comments.

Now, before we get to hopping... a little business. Drum roll please...

the two winners of my 25 stamp grab bag giveaway are... 

... Arianna Barbara and Dorothy Green!!! Woohoo!!!

Ladies, please email me at crystalominkler@gmail.com to claim your prize. 

Prize must be claimed within two weeks.

Thanks to you all so much for your continued support of our little hop... and for all of your lovely comments! I really, truly do appreciate each and every one of your sweet comments. A few of my friends are having giveaways on their blog so be sure to hop and comment on each of our blogs!!

Let's get to hopping... 

Crystal <--- you're here

up next ---> Kim

Eileen

Dawn

Joyce

Jeanie

Robyn

Thanks so much for checking out my blog post!

See ya next time.

Inky Hugs,

Crystal