Growing in Unity - Day 1

I am so excited about this week as it's my turn to host 'Growing in Unity' week. For those who aren't familiar with the stamp company Unity, they offer fabulous red rubber stamps for card makers and scrapbookers alike. You may buy their FAB stamps in singles, small groups, or even by a kit of the month club. Their stamps come mounted and unmounted (I'm the unmounted type myself) and ready to use. I've just gotten into them in the past year (maybe a little longer) and I love the broad range of style they have. I'm also going to host a little blog candy thanks to the wonderful owner, Angela: one single stamp from Unity of my choice. I'll let you know what it is later this week. You will need to leave a comment to be put in the drawing. Your name will go in the number of days you leave a comment (i.e. you just leave love on Tuesday then your name goes in one but if you leave love Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday they your name goes in three times). The winner will be name next Thursday at the Hip Hop Thread over at Splitcoast Stampers (SCS).

Now for my kick-off card. For this tone on tone card I used two Unity stamps: All Santa's Reindeer and Vicious Circle. I love how I can punch out the center part of the circle stamp and use it as a frame. It worked wonderfully on the transparency too. I embossed the Vicious Circle with white embossing poweder on transparency, used a circle nestie to cut out the center, and only taped the top part down to the Shimmery White c/s I embossed the reindeer on. This way the reindeer could be framed but it still gave the card a bit of something extra to enjoy. I embossed the renideer with Iridescent Ice embossing powder since I was going on the tone on tone effect but still need it to show. I also water-colored it with light greys and vanilla to add a little depth (although it got lost in the pictures I think - sorry about that). The bottom was punched with Martha Stewarts snowflake border punch while the transparncey was punch with the corner rounder. I think made a little flap with the cardbase so that the image pieces could be attached to the card. To make the flap look like it should be there I used the same snowflake punch to help add the the frame. I also used some shimmery sheer white ribbon to go across the top to finish it off. This card looks so much better in person than in the photos and I am really sorry about that.

Be sure you come back tomorrow to see what I have in store for Day 2.

Challenges I used:

A Spoonful of Sugar - non-traditional Christmas card

Instyle Stamps - winter that uses 3 punches (I used the corner rounder, snowflake border, and the circle nestie)

Creative Card Crew - theme/Christmas

My Time to Craft - Winter Pals (the reindeer is a pal of Santa's)