Unity MLS Hip Hop Blog Hop!!!

Hello and thanks for hopping with Unity today. I'm beyond excited to be a part of this hop!!!

We are so pleased to share our new Co-Branded stamps with My Little Shoebox. Make sure you leave a comment on each blog to win one of the fabulous prizes from Unity Stamp Company and My Little Shoebox. Winners will be chosen at random from the participating blogs.

Now if you have been hopping along, you should have hopped here from the FABULOUS Eryn's blog. If not, you gotta check out the whole hop and start at the My Little Shoebox Blog.

For my little creation today, I decided to do some fussy cutting with this super sweet owl and sentiment from the Feelin' Owl-y stamp set. I paired it up with the background stamp Crunch Time (this one is super sweet). All those little leaves are hand colored using Faber Castell Aquarelles and Big Brush pens.

And here is the finished project. Using Prima Papers, The Robins Nest Papers and all that Unity goodness!!!

These My Little Shoebox stamps are super sweet and I've loved working with them. Thank you so much for leaving your comments today, We all appreciate hearing what you have to say.

Now it is time to hop to the next blog, a personal favorite of mine Jen Erickson.  Click the button below to take you right to her amazing and often funny blog!!!

Fearless Friends in Art Guest Blogger Series- Jen Matott!!!

Hello everyone and welcome to another fantastic Fearless Friends guest blogger post.This week, I'm over the moon excited to share with all of you, a woman who completely rocks the Art Journal among so many other things. I have the blessing of working with Jen Matott on the Wow Embossing Powders design team and talk about opening my eyes to being free with your art. Once you read the post, you will completely understand why I say that. So without further adieu, Let's welcome Jen Matott and her amazing talents.

I am so honored to be asked to guest post on Erika's blog! She is a super person and artist and I love her humor and style! Thanks girl! I want to share with you some of my pages from an exciting project that I got involved with last year. The Sketchbook Project is a traveling exhibit of sketchbooks designed around a theme. Art House Co-op is an independent Brooklyn-based company that organizes global, collaborative art projects.

What started out in 2006 as a small artist community has now grown to over 60,000 artists online. Their website can be found here "The Sketchbook Project". If you haven't heard of it, you should check out their website and see what other projects they have that artists can participate and collaborate in with other artists.

It's a wonderful mix of artists from graphic designers, illustrators, mixed media artists, painters, amateurs, students, and just lovely hobby artists. I found it when I was looking for something for my high school art students to participate in that went beyond a basic sketchbook assignment. It was a random search that led me to their page. I participated last year with a computer generated theme, "Maps". It was a theme that generated lots of meaning and symbolism for me. I had saved maps for years.... atlases, book maps, local maps, etc... So, the material was there for me to use.

I had just joined Faber-Castell's Design Memory Craft team so a lot of my pages used their product! I had a blast creating it! The only glitch is that you have to give it up... permanently. You send it back to them and it gets housed in the Brooklyn Art Library with all the other sketchbooks for people to view and check out on the tour. I plan to stop in there to see it in person in March when I travel there for a conference.

Here are a few photos from 2011 book:

Those are just a sampling of the pages from the first book in 2011. I did make color copies of my pages so that I had a copy for myself. I also made extra color copies to use in other artworks for collage... thinking ahead.

Fast forward to 2012... I signed up again and paid my $25 for the journal that you get that was made specifically for the project so that everyone has a consistent size and shape. You can alter the cover and pages within. It just has to stay the same size overall. I picked a theme from their list this year of "Writing on the Wall". It spoke to me of images and words, of text, of quotes, of graffiti!!! I KNEW how I would approach this one and I enjoyed every moment of creating it. I used Faber-Castell product, art mediums, stamps, sprays, and collage. It was awesome! I felt free and got it done in 3 days! The other one took me months.

The pages are thick with mediums such as texture paste, gel mediums, gesso, and matte medium. I glued pages together to make thicker bases in which to add the mediums.
Here are a few of the pages where you can see the texture paste built up and stamped into.

Those are just a few places in the book that I used texture. I got so carried away with stamping into the paste that I had to quite literally scrap the paste off and start again. BUT it was therapeutic and fun at the same time! I built them up and added color afterwards.

The final book was a conglomeration of symbolism, text, stamped images, color and texture. I am a huge hoarder when it comes to materials that might find their way into my art. I have a huge bin full of bits and pieces of stuff. My husband calls it junk but I call it collage fodder!

Here are a few more pages in which I use stencils and color.

And finally, here is my cover:

I enjoyed every stage of the journey with this project and it was sad to send it all off to be housed somewhere else, but I love the idea that others will be able to page through it and see my work. I love that it will be part of a traveling exhibit. How cool is that? One of thousands perhaps, but my book is there! I plan to do it all over again next year! Will you join me? I hope that you do

Thank you for letting me share my art with you and I hope you will visit me on my blog for more photos and technique.

Life is a Song, SING IT!!!

I love great quotes and would adore having a few of them framed and hanging on my walls. This got me thinking and my mojo kicked up a gear. I'm here today to share with you a card I created using the Spooky Iron Shelf and Potion Bottle Mini dies from the Scrapping Cottage.


I wanted to show you today how easy it is to use some of the holiday dies for different occasions. For the Shelf; I embossed it with a wrought iron embossing powder to give it an antique feel.The Potion bottle is colored with a bit of Faber Castell Metallic Pitt Pens. I paired the dies up with some beautiful Websters Pages papers and a stamp from Unity Stamps. To give the bottle a porcelain look, I covered it with Helmar Acid Free Glue.And that beautiful cardstock is the Mountain Rose Glimmer paper from Paper Temptress

This is piece that I came up with. And to think, I used Halloween dies. Whodda Thunk!!!

Hope you enjoy.

Try using holiday dies for other occasions. The possibilities are truly endless. Thanks so much for stopping by today. I hope you all have a fantastic week.

Until next time
Toodles

December Flurries

Oh how I'm beyond excited to be back on the Paper Temptress Design Team. Ever since I received my first order of Patricia's paper heaven goodness, I've been hooked!!! With all that sparkle, texture and color, how could I not be!!!???!!!

Hello everyone, I'm here today with my first project as a returning Design Team member for Paper Temptress. With the holiday season starting, there are cards to be made and today I created a card using a few of my absolute FAVORITE papers from Paper Temptress. For the card base, I've used this fantastic Violet Mica Metallic paper. The weight on this stuff is perfect for all the layering I do. It'll hold up for certain!!! I also used Canvas Silver Lustre Text weight and the stunning Vintage Silver Lustre. See the Aqua colored paper? That is the Silver Lustre painted with Faber Castell Gelatos. This is my first time using the Gelatos and I'm already hooked!!!

I embossed the Vintage Silver Lustre paper then applied Distress ink in Broken China, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire, finishing it off with a sprinkle of Antiquities Frosted Crystal embossing powder. I also colored the 25(cut out of some Pink Paislee Daily Junque goodness) with a Faber Castell Blue Metallic Pitt Artist pen. You can really see the sparkle that these wonderful papers have in the next photos.

I used a bunch of my favorite adhesive on the card. First some Premium Craft Glue for the paper to paper, some 450 Quick dry for the Velvet ricrac and a dollop of Liquid Scrap Dots for that very pretty FabScraps star.

Holy Doodles, does that Violet Mica Metallic have a wonderful gold glitter to it. Can you see to pretty texture the Vintage Silver Lustre has? And that amazing color the Gelatos create?

Now you can for sure hehe. It is so wonderful to be back on Patricia's team and I hope that you are all going to love the projects that I share. Make sure you leave me a comment today, for I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time