"Make every day the best day!" -- Mixed Media Canvas for Growing in Unity

Hello again, friends!  Today is my favorite project in this week's "Growing in Unity" series with Unity Stamps.  I created this 4x6 mixed media canvas to really showcase this great quote from the "It's All Worth It" kit by Melody Ross, and used other stamps from the set to create added depth and texture. I made the tree by rolling and crinkling strips of kraft paper.

Materials: Unity Stamps, We R rub-ons, Scenic Route and Sassafrass Lass scraps

Here are a few more details from the canvas:

A little "you + me" carving in the tree

I'm not sure how well you can tell in the picture, but I used the pretty floral corner stamp first in brown.  Then I stamped just one of the big flowers with red paint, and went back in with a black pen to accent it when it was dry.  Such a nice pop of color!

This little birdie is a Stampin Up punch, distressed with acrylic inks.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win some Unity stamps of your own!

"Look on the Bright Side" - a simple, versatile card

For my second day of "Growing in Unity" posts, I thought I'd share the very first card I ever made with Unity Stamps.  I fell in love with this cute little lamp as well as the sentiment that went with it -- a little bit vintage, but with a clean modern feel.  As soon as I bought them (at a crop at Archivers), I had to rip open the package and make a simple card with the scraps I had on hand.  One of the great things about these stamps is that they lend themselves really well to a simple style that would work for men or women -- nice to have this kind of thing on hand!

Materials -- Stamps by Unity Stamp Company, paper by Scribble Scrabble, scallop border punch by Stampin Up.


Thanks for stopping by -- make sure you leave a comment to be entered to win a sweet Unity Stamp set at the end of the week!

Queen Bee with Unity Stamps!

Hey, y'all! I'm just tickled to be the "Growing in Unity" girl over on the Unity Stamp Company blog this week. Make sure you leave a comment on this post, because I'll be giving away a fantastic Unity set to a random commenter at the end of the week!

I also wanted to show you a birthday card I made with the "It's All Worth It" set by Melody Ross.  

My fabulous sister's birthday was this month, and I wanted to create a card that showed she is the queen bee!

Materials: Unity Stamps, 7Gypsies paper, Clearsnap chalk ink, tiny "4You" stamp from Stampin Up, Jewels set with the iRock tool by Imaginisce, body colored with shimmer chalks from Pebbles, Inc.

Inside it said "Happy Bee-Day!"  Get it?  I know, I'm hilariously clever...

I love that these images have so much personality, but they're still so versatile.  On Wednesday I'll be showing you another special project that uses stamps from the same set in a totally different way.

Thanks for stopping by!  I'll be posting new projects featuring Unity Stamps each day this week.  Unity Stamps are AMAZING -- you get incredible image quality, thanks to the deep-etched rubber, but most are available with cling mount so you can use any acrylic block to stamp with. And the ART! Oh, they have such beautiful, really meaningful art, much of it co-branded with the most popular scrapbook paper lines.  If you're a fan of the cool vintage look, these are the stamps for you!

I'll be giving away a great Unity Stamp set at the end of the week to one lucky commenter, so leave a comment for a chance to win!

The World's Ugliest Dresser

When Eliza was officially potty trained enough that I felt confident getting rid of the changing table, I went in search of an awesome dresser to make over.  Now, I have a serious love affair with yard sales, and I envisioned finding the perfect vintage dresser, something with great lines or fun details that just needed sprucing up.  But I was striking out in a major way, in spite of the insane multitude of yard sales that sunny Saturday morning.

Then I pulled up to a yard sale and saw this:

Cue horror movie music now...

I thought, 'That has got to be the world's ugliest dresser.'  I had to check it out.  It was a rock solid dresser in very nice condition, but man was it ugly!  No details, no pretty girly lines, just laminate, not anything that I had envisioned.  But the owner did say he'd let me have it for $10.  I told him I'd pass and went along my merry way.  Further searching yielded no results, however, and I could not get the Ugly Dresser off my mind.  It was like a challenge, calling out for me to try to turn it into something beautiful.  Plus I'm really cheap, and the thought of getting such a nice quality (you know, for laminate) piece for so cheap, which I then wouldn't feel too bad if I totally ruined, was just too enticing to resist.

So I brought it home and started mulling over ways to make it awesome.  I had a few different ideas, but nothing really clicked until I thought "STRIPES!"  (It was actually surprising that wasn't my first idea, since I have a major obsession with stripes right now.)  A few coats of paint and some hardware later, here is the new dresser!

This project took a little time, but was not complicated.  Here is how I did it:

1.  Clean all surfaces really well.  Give them a light sanding (just to rough up the laminate surface a little bit).  Wipe down to remove dust from sanding.


2.  Apply a coat of Zinsser 1-2-3 Bullseye Primer.  *This is the key for painting laminate furniture!*  This primer is made specifically to coat slick surfaces like laminate and give the paint something to hold on to.  It is seriously awesome stuff.  An important thing to remember, though, is to not overload your brush or roller -- the primer is really thick and sticky but dries fast, so if you get globs of it on your piece it will be hard to smooth them out.  Let dry for a minimum of 1 hour.

Don't mind that little nightstand -- I just decided to paint that as long as I had my supplies out.

3.  Paint base color.  Mine is Behr Bleached Linen, because I had nearly an entire can leftover from doing my kitchen.

4.  This is the only tricky part.  Decide how many stripes you want, and divide the width of your drawer by that many.  I wanted 13 stripes (7 pink, 6 white).  Try not to bang your head on the driveway in frustration as you try to figure out how to equally divide 31 1/8" by 13.  Well, that's not difficult -- the answer is 2.394230.  But they don't make a mark for that on most rulers.  I probably marked and remarked the stripes on the first drawer 10 times trying to get it worked out.  I finally figured out that if I made the two pink outside stripes 1/8" wider, the rest could all be the same.  Unfortunately, unless you're some kind of crazy math-or-measuring genius, it's probably a matter of trial and error.  Once I finally did figure it out, it was very simple and fast to do the rest of the drawers (it took me the better part of an hour to figure it out, but only about 15 minutes to mark and tape).  I used a pencil to mark where the stripes should be at the top and bottom of each drawer, then rolled painter's tape for each stripe.

5.  Put all drawers back into the dresser to see if they actually line up.  Do a little happy dance when they do. Then be glad it's 6 in the morning and none of your neighbors are out to see you.  Wonder if it's so cute with the green stripes that maybe you should just leave it that way...

Just a note -- when I went to paint the stripes, I ended up putting another piece of tape in between each set so that the white stripes were completely covered.  It saved my sanity because I didn't have to worry about pink paint getting onto the white stripes.

6.  Using your base coat paint, paint over the edges of the tape.  This will seal the edges of your tape, making sure that you won't get any bleed when you do your stripe color.

7.  Paint your stripes!

8.  Remove tape.  Do a HUGE happy dance (complete with fist pump and "Whoohoo!") when you see how awesome your stripes look.  Then realize that it is now the afternoon and several neighbors are out in their yards, but hey -- they already knew you were weird.

9.  Add hardware.  I forgot to take a picture of this step, but it was very simple.  I made myself a cardstock template the exact size of the pink stripe, then found the center of it by folding it in half both ways (super scientific, I know).  I laid that template on the pink stripe, then drilled a hole through the center.  Repeat for all drawers, then screw in hardware.  Easy peasy.

Voila!  The World's Ugliest Dresser turned super fabulous on the cheap.  My cost for this was:
Dresser: $10
Paint and brush: $10 (Thanks to a Groupon for Kwal paint), with TONS of paint leftover for other projects.
Hardware: $12 (I got these at Hobby Lobby -- they have knobs 50% off very frequently)

So don't pass up a good deal just because it looks ugly -- a little creativity and elbow grease can transform anything!

To see the rest of the room, check out this post.

I'll be linking up to these great parties!

Eliza's Big Girl Room

Goodbye, sweet baby nursery...

This summer keeps getting busier and busier, but for some reason I have recently been overcome by an unquenchable desire to re-do Eliza's room.  Do any of you suffer from the same problem -- no matter how much is on the to-do list, if you get an idea in your head you can't let it go until it's done?

I've actually been wanting to do something cute and girly since she was born and I've done bits and pieces of it over the past couple of years, but something about getting her potty training and her approaching 3rd birthday made it imperative to give her the room she never knew she always wanted...  (Click to enlarge pictures.)

Hello, big girl room!

It began with that banner over the window, which I made for her first birthday party using the Girl Friday collection from Cosmo Cricket.  I knew that would be my color inspiration for the whole room -- turquoise and pink with little hints of green.  I completely splurged (for me) on the bedding, and had such buyer's remorse after about it after that I was determined to do the rest of her room on as small a budget as possible.  I'm going to show you the whole room today, and then over the next couple of posts I'll show you the blow by blow of a few of my favorite elements.

I think the most eye catching element is the tree mural:

I wanted something to break up and lighten up all that turquoise.  My first thought was big wide vertical stripes, because I'm kinda obsessed with stripes at the moment.  But since I had already done stripes on the dresser (and didn't want the room to look like a circus tent), I opted for a large-as-life tree.  I wanted something graphic but still organic -- what do you think?  I'll post details on my tree-painting saga in another post. (You can check out that post here.)

My favorite little bit about the tree is this little "carving" I put in:

And also the pretty pink bird cage and birdie (which you may recognize from my blog header -- yeah, it's pretty much my favorite graphic I've ever created.  And it's available in my etsy shop if you're interested!)

The other big eye-catcher in the room is this dresser:

Which I bought at a yard sale for $10 when it was officially The World's Ugliest Dresser.  A little paint and voila -- fabulousness!  I will be doing a complete tutorial with pictures for this one in my very next post.  You have to come back just to see how ugly this puppy started out.  The round mirror was another ugly yard sale find, made much happier with a few coats of white spray paint.  The cute pink flowery thing on top is a felt flower ball, for which you can check out a great tutorial here.

Other happy details:

Some friends of ours kindly gave us the pretty girly bed, which was in good shape except for the brass knobs, which were pretty beat up.  I painted them with the same pink from the dress re-do.  My husband thought I was insane, but I LOVE the little bit of whimsy they add:

And every girl needs some big puffy flowers over her bed, right?

And here's a close-up of the banner, which I blogged about in greater detail here:

Eliza may not have ever told me she wanted a new room, but she love love loves it.  Her favorite part is the birdie on the wall, and she really loves the hanging poof balls.  Plus, there is plenty of room for dancing:

And jumping on the bed:

A big girl room for a suddenly so big girl!  (If you know any way to stop her getting big so fast, please let me know!)

A few notes:  The color on the wall is Behr Eucalyptus Leaf, mixed at 3/4 strength by the nice man at Kwal.  If you'd like to get a better look at the cute little table and chairs, I blogged about them here.

Notecard Gift Set -- ScrapbookPal.com

Hello again!  Have you ever met a crafting product that just made your heart happy?  I did this month.  It's called Scor-Tape.  It's not pretty, the way most things that I fall in love with in the papercrafting world are, but it is just about the most useful stuff I have ever used.  It comes in several widths -- what I used is 1/4" -- and it is a seriously strong adhesive that sticks to anything.  Plus it comes on an enormous roll for a ridiculously reasonable price.  I LOVE IT!!! (Okay, I'm sorry for shouting.  I just get really excited when I'm in love...)



So I thought for my project to highlight it, I would tackle two of the adhesive-using projects that have given me the biggest fits over the years -- boxes and accordion flowers.  With both, I have tried several other adhesives with mixed (mostly aggravating) results.  I had taken to hot gluing, which worked pretty well, but was a little messy and bumpy and then there's all that waiting for the glue gun to heat up... At any rate, this Scor-Tape is my new best friend.  Both the box and the accordion flower came together beautiful and feel as solid as a rock.  I also used the Scor-Tape to adhere the lace and it worked beautifully.

I'm also still in love with the Viva Decor Pearl Pens I highlighted earlier in the month, so I used the Gold and Cream colors to highlight details on the box and on the stamped image on the accordion flower.  I also used them to created that big pearl in the center of the flower.  The tip of the pen is so fine that you can create accents from teeny-tiny to huge and bling-y.  Love that!


To go inside the box, I created 6 very simple notecards with coordinating paper from the same Basic Grey line that I used for the box.  To create this I cut regular 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 cards, then added a 1 3/4"x5 1/2" strip of patterned paper and another strip punched with a Martha Stewarts border punch.  But just to add a little touch of special, I accentuated the border punch strip by adding a line of pearl drops with the Cream Viva Decor Pen. Just right!

As for the accordion flower, I had promised the lovely Ann that I would do a tutorial highlighting especially how to use the adhesive, and I really tried, but the video was out of focus and it crashed my computer when I tried to put it together.  So I came up with a list of instructions and tips to help.


1.  I used the Tim Holtz accordion flower die to create the one pictured above, but you can create your own by cutting a strip of paper (I like about 1 1/2"x12") and scoring it every 1/4" or so.  Then fold it like an accordion.

2.  Take your accordion strip and bend it so that the first and last flat surfaces of the accordion overlap.  Apply Scor-Tape to the last flat surface and adhere the two together.

3.  Punch or cut a small circle (about 1") to be the base of your flower.  Apply two strips of Scor-Tape to it in  a "+" shape.

4.  Press the center down so that the side you want to be the bottom is facing up.  This will save you a lot of grief, because you'll be able to just grab your pre-adhesived base circle and attach it rather than trying to lift your flower and get it to the base.

5.  Press your base firmly into the center of the accordion flower.  Decorate the center as desired.

And just a note -- if you are using the Tim Holtz die, it doesn't really score the fold lines -- it perforates them. Which is all fine and good, because it folds really easily, but it also tears if you're not careful with it.  (I've had the same problem with made-from-scratch versions where I was a little too eager with the scoring tool.)  If that happens, don't panic.  Just lay your accordion strip out flat and lay the two pieces together as if they hadn't ripped, then secure with a small piece of scotch tape.  No one will be able to tell. :)

Thanks again for stopping by!

Materials used:  Adhesive -- Scor-Tape; Pearl Accents -- Viva Decor Pearl Pens; Patterned Paper -- Basic Grey; Border Punch -- Martha Stewart; Stamps and Scallop Circle Punch -- Stampin Up; Distressing -- Colorbox Chalk Ink in Chestnut Roan; Lace -- Fancy Pants; Magnetic snap to keep box closed -- Basic Grey

What I've been squeezing in...

Hey, y'all!  I know my posts have been few and far between lately.  I've been working away on some fun projects that are not quite done yet, and mostly I've been trying to get our house organized.

Organization is SO not my strong point.  In fact, it's probably my weakest point.  So I am very proud of what I've accomplished so far and I wanted to show you my food storage closet:

All organized by type of food, and it even has labels.  Labels, people!  I'm so proud of myself.  I wish I had taken a before picture, but just imagine this closet with spaghetti sauce behind the paper towels and so many bags of fishy crackers on the floor that you couldn't even get in.  Oh, and also with flimsy shelves that were so overloaded they were seriously in danger of collapsing at any second.  My awesome hubby came up with these great braces and I'm no longer in fear of my life going in there.  He's actually the one who has inspired me to get to work on the house -- he's already checked off nearly everything on his summer to-do list!

I have also been working on our garage, where I have a terrible habit of opening the door from the mud room and just throwing stuff in.  Somehow it did not magically disappear, but waited patiently, gathering cat hair, until I came to clean it out.  There are labels out there, too.  Go me!  I do feel very accomplished, but man, it's seriously cutting into my craft time!

Now I'm putting all the organization on hold and getting ready for our vacation to California!  Dan's grandpa's 80th b-day, Disneyland, the beach -- it's going to be awesome.  I'll have several great things to show you after we get back!