GIU Week - Winners

Thank you all, for making my GIU week so much fun! I enjoyed all of your comments and hope I inspired you with ideas, or at least with your Unity shopping list!

Now it's time to announce my two winners (chosen by random number generator):

1. Karen (karey2005) 

2. Kim Klinkovsky.My Kraft Kloset 

If you are one of my lucky winners, please email me your mailing info (miwatlee@msn.com) and I will get that to Kelli so your prize pack can be sent your way. Thanks! 

GIU Week - Day 5

I can't believe my week is finally over, but I've enjoyed sharing my creations with you! I've saved one of my favorite projects for today...


My husband (a true Renaissance man!) has always dreamed about having his own workshop in the garage. At the beginning of the year, he made it happen. Lo and behold, I get to reap the benefits, too! Not only do I get access to his leftover materials, but he says he'd be happy to make me whatever I want! So, one day, I'm going to ask him to make me a custom built swiveling card holder, once I build up my stash of homemade cards again.

So, since he had some extra wood laying around, I decided to make a couple of home decor pieces. For my first project, I used the image (Keep the Change kit by AngMag) and a quart-sized mason jar. I stained the wood (5.5" x 16") with a couple of coats to give it a vintage feel. Once the wood was stained and dried, I heat embossed the image, attached the hose clamp to the mason jar, and hubby screwed the clamp to the board. Voila! A very stylish way to collect loose change! It's now hanging on our laundry room wall.

Since I had another piece of leftover wood (5.5" x 24"), I stained that as well and made another wall décor project. It's reversible, if you will, because I stamped (L.O.V.E. kit by AngMag) one side with paint (left) and heat embossed the other (right). So, depending on my mood, I can choose to display one side or the other. Personally, I prefer the heat-embossed look.

Well, now that my week is over, I will bid you all farewell. I've enjoyed your visits and comments - many thanks for visiting my blog and don't forget to leave a comment for the random drawing to take place soon. Happy crafting!

GIU Week - Day 4

Hello! Originally, I had planned to feature cards using Perfect Pearls today, but people seemed to enjoy Monday's scrapbooking page, so I decided to square things up and make a page for my older daughter, aka "Softball Girl" (vs "Soccer Girl"). Mika plays on a very competitive travel ball team, so she basically lives and breathes softball. It was a huge blow to her when she became injured this past October. Thanks to a sharp-eyed orthopedist, we learned that Mika had torn the Lisfranc ligament in her foot, needed surgery ASAP, and would be out of commission for 12 weeks. This was devastating news, but she worked hard during those 3 months to hit the ground running (literally).

Her trainer, Terrance, carefully strengthened her core and arms since she couldn't do much with her left leg/foot). We also found a device on Amazon that allowed her to be hands-free and non-weight-bearing on one leg (so she could work on her hitting off a tee). What an ingenious invention!

She missed the rest of the fall tournament season but was medically cleared four days before her future college's camp. She kicked butt at her first tournament back (which was also the last one before HS softball began) and says she is about 93% back. Two weeks ago, Mika hit her first over-the-wall home run during HS softball. So, this layout celebrated her grit and perseverance.


Here is the sketch I based the layout on (you can find it here):

I used several Unity stamp kits to complete this layout. The alphabet letters and tag came from Frame This Alpha, the main sentiment is Strong is Your Only Choice (and yes, that manila tag is a gift from Unity), plus several other sentiments (You Can Do it, Bitty Regards, and Struggle is Part of It), the arrows on the x-ray are from Keeping Up with the Tribal Trend. There were two kits, however, that appear to have been discontinued: SHEart Doodles and Splatters & Stars.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I had planned to showcase Perfect Pearls, but I liked this layout better. However, I did want to show my favorite card from that batch...

The image is also from Insightful Meadows while the sentiment is from Donna Downey's Imagine It kit. I used Perfect Pearls in Perfect Pearl.

Thank you for visiting today - see you tomorrow for my last day! Don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win a prize pack from Unity!







GIU Week - Day 3

Welcome back, Unies! I'm on my third day as GIU Gal. Today I'm featuring how Unity stamps can bring ordinary treat boxes to a super cute level. Since my girls are both in high school now, I honestly thought I was done making Valentine treat boxes for twenty years. And then...


My older daughter's sixth period class (varsity softball) decided that they should exchange kiddy valentines before practice. This, unfortunately, was decided TWO days before Valentine's day. So, my daughter and husband stopped by Target on Wednesday night (10 pm), after her batting lesson... and I received a very panicked text that read, "THERE AREN'T ANY VALENTINES WITH CANDY LEFT!!!" I was going to drive around the next morning to a few places until I found some, when I realized, "Hey, wait a second - I used to craft a lot, I can do this and it'd be a lot more fun than driving around to multiple stores!"


And so, I did. I used my favorite treat box die Quickutz Mini Takeout Box (discontinued a long time ago), because I already had Hershey valentine chocolate kisses on hand, and that five would fit comfortably inside. Since I wanted to make the boxes different from each other, I went through my Unity stash and within minutes, found a multitude of heart stamps. Who knew there were so many different styles? Here's a picture for your reference, but here are the links as well: Jars of Love x 3, Modern Chit Chat, Jar Full of Sweetness, Little Me, Bohemian Backgrounds, and Candy Hearts.

Since I didn't have a huge amount of time, I remembered that years ago, Unity had produced a Valentine kit, appropriately called Handmade Valentines. This handy dandy set has a background stamp with twelve different hearts, so I heat embossed two sets, so I could make 12 different boxes from this stamp alone. Conveniently, this stamp kit also had a heart within a circle (which I stamped in red and made into a tag, to accompany the the name tag threaded through the twine handle). The tag was from the Frame This Alpha kit. Hey, who else remembers these beautiful acrylic/wood handles that Unity used to make? I LOVE THEM!!!

Without further ado, here are the finished treat boxes... threading the twine through the holes to make the handles (not forgetting to add the two tags for each), was probably the most time-consuming part.



I was quite pleased with the end result, though, and my daughter was relieved that she had something to distribute to her classmates. Who doesn't love chocolate on Valentine's Day anyway???

Thank you for stopping by the blog today! Hopefully you'll be leaving with more than a craving for chocolate. Yay, it's Wednesday and we're more than halfway through my week - don't forget to leave a comment to be considered for the random drawing at the end!

GIU Week - Day 2

Welcome back to Day 2 of my GIU week!


I have a confession - I'm terrified of coloring because I'm not very good at it. I can't shade or blend well, so if you're one of those people posting their colored creations all the time on Unity's {Show & Tell} FB Page, I am in awe of your coloring! I was going stamp on colored/patterned paper for this card, until I realized I would have a problem with the windows, so I made my basic coloring skills work for this card.


To create these cards, I used four different Unity stamp sets : Wheely Fun and Tumbleweed Houses, as well as two from the Clever Handmade & Unity line, but these appear to have been discontinued...

As you may have guessed, I stamped and colored a lot of small images, before finally adhering them onto a card base. I figured I might as well make two cards at the same time. Having these two sets of vehicles was very useful, because each set faces a different direction, so I could build a two-lane highway on my card (I simply painted a white line with a white Sakura gel pen).

And here are the finished cards!

  

These are the same cards, with different sentiments. You could create all sorts of fun scenes with these stamps, as long as you have the time.


Thank you for visiting and don't forget to leave a comment so you can be considered for the randomly chosen Unity prize pack at the conclusion of my week! Have a wonderful day!

GIU Week - Day 1

Hello, everyone! Welcome to my week as GIU Gal! Please visit my blog each day to view my creation(s) and leave a comment. At the end of my week, I will randomly select two winners to receive a prize pack from Unity. How cool is that???


I first saw Unity stamps on the (now defunct) CropChocolate website and fell in love with tbeir style and versatility. You know things go, though - it's so easy to build your Unity stamp collection faster than you can create! So, I thought if would be fun to use my GIU week showcasing some of the older stamps, as a chance for me to finally take those long-imagined projects off the backburner.


Scrapbooking is my favorite crafting activity, which complements my love of photography. Since I'm often cramped for time, I'm also a big fan of sketches. So when I found this sketch (unfortunately, I can't give credit, because it didn't come with a source on Pinterest), I knew it was perfect for my Unity stamps.

My youngest daughter (age 14) plays soccer competitively. Though she is smaller-than-average, she plays with the spirit of a six-foot tall Amazonian warrior! I purchased the No Regrets stamp kit several years ago, knowing that one of those sentiments was her personal anthem. Obviously, the background anchor was those View Master circles (oh, such fond childhood memories!), which you can find in My Point of View {Smask 8/12} or you can purchase it separately (My View of YOU).

Since her high school colors are black, Vegas gold, and white (they are the Blackhawks), I built the layout around these colors. My style is clean and simple, so it was just a question of layering things to highlight certain elements. Other stamp sets I utilized were: I am Woman (December 2013 Unity Sentiment Kit), Badass Every Day, Enjoy. Explore. Believe., Tribal Trend, and Super Star. I also used three other itty-bitty sets, but they don't appear to be available at Unity any longer.

I can't take credit for the photo, either - some kind soul took a lot of pictures and shared them with the team. lucky me!!! I'll see you tomorrow with another creation - thanks for stopping by!

Re-awakening the blog... with a beautiful sunrise

Hello, everyone! I know it's been a long time since I've been blogging... life took over. Once Unity Stamps discontinued their Friends with Flair on Fridays, I didn't have that weekly motivation to keep up on my documentation of life. The girls both became more competitive with their respective sports teams, we got another dog, the house almost burned down (long story but it involves a faulty propane tank and a brave dog named Bo who saved us all with his barking), and everyone got older.

As luck would have it, my name was randomly chosen to be a Growing in Unity (GIU) Gal, beginning tomorrow. So here I am, exercising my fingers to see if I still remember how to blog. This is a beautiful sunrise that Marika took for me, from the back wall of our yard. Gorgeous, isn't it? It was almost worth the price of having to wake up at 5:30 AM to travel to Irvine for a soccer game.

My goodness, it's been four years! What do the girls look like now...? Here's Mika after her first high school game (2 weeks ago)… she's sixteen, has her driver's license, is captain of her HS softball team, and verbally committed to play collegiate softball at the University of San Diego.

 

Marika used to be tiny, but now (at age 14), she's actually the same height as me. She's still playing soccer, but she moved to a better team and now trains in Irvine, 3 days a week. I thought about going back to work this fall (since both girls are in high school), but I had to stay available for all the driving. Ugh. Well, only 3.5 more years of this and she goes off to college.


This is Blaze, our "new" puppy (he's now 3.5 years old - and yes, Bo is alive and well). One week after we brought him home (hubby's decision, surprise surprise), we had an unfortunate incident with the propane tank flaring up and burning most of our patio cover structure down. The fireman had to come, of course, and laughed when they heard Blaze's name. Hubby no longer barbecues with propane, but he has a cool smoker. Here's Blaze, helping my upcycle the leftover crusts from the uncrustables I make for my husband's lunches. The boys have their own Instagram account, jointly run by Marika and myself.

Time flies!! I hope to begin blogging regularly again, since hubby will hop on here every once in awhile and enjoy revisiting memories. I'm so lucky to have a guy like that, because he doesn't seem to mind if I disappear into my "Fun Room" to get crafty.