Uniko Challenge #59 Winners

Hey!

I'm here today to announce the WINNERS of Challenge #59 Anything Goes, optional twist Bright & Happy

A huge thank you to everyone who played along with this challenge.

All prizes will be Egift Certificates that can be spent once the Uniko store re-opens on 1st July.

First we have our overall WINNER chosen by the Design Team.

#1 Anushree

Congratulations Anushree!

Here's your winner's badge

You have won a £15 eGift Certificate to spend in the Uniko store. Please contact me at bev@uniko.co.uk by 10th July 2020

We would also love to have you join us as our Guest Designer for our next challenge. If you are interested please contact Jane at jane.taylor52@btinternet.com by 3rd July 2020.

 Next up is the random winner who twisted with us....

#91 Darnell

Congratulations Darnell

You have won a £5 Egift Certificate to spend in the Uniko store. Please contact me at bev@uniko.co.uk by the 10th July 2020 to claim your prize.

Here is your winners badge:

Then we have our randomly selected winner who used Uniko products on their creation...

#112 Cat C

Congratulations Cat

You have won an £5 Egift Certificate to spend in the Uniko store. Please contact me at bev@uniko.co.uk by 10th July 2020 to claim your prize.

Here is your winners badge:

Now for our Top 3 chosen by the DT and in entry order:

#17 Lady Joyful

#22 Rosali

#23 Claire

Congratulations to you all & here is your Top 3 badge:

You have all won 150 loyalty reward points.

Please contact me at bev@uniko.co.uk

Congratulations to ALL the winners & EVERYONE who joined in with the challenge!

The next Uniko Challenge starts on Friday 17th July.

Hope to see you come back and join in with the fun :)

Brand Ambassador Inspiration - English Country Garden

Good morning friends, Julie here with a little bit of Uniko summer inspiration.

I needed to make a card for my daughter's birthday, so decided to use the English Country Garden stamps and matching dies to create a floating frame design. I also ended up with an extra card from the left overs, definitely a win win!

So grab yourself a cuppa and settle down to a photo heavy post!

To start I die cut a stack of blanks of both the large and small butterflies before stamping them and colouring with Copics.

I find the best way to batch stamp is to use my MISTI and the waste from the first die cut to create a jig, so that I can place the blanks back in and then stamp away, replacing the blank after each stamping. I saved my jig from a previous project.

Once I had enough butterflies, I arranged them over a panel of copy paper trimmed to 41/2" by 61/2", not worrying if they hung over the edges. 

Using some Press n Seal, I overlaid the butterflies and pressed down especially between gaps. The Press n Seal allows you to lift the project up and then trim away the over hanging elements. 

This is how it looks part way.

This is it fully trimmed.

Without removing the Press n Seal, I cut a rectangle from the center with a die, it will cut through all layers if you take it steady!

Put the center to one side and flip the frame over and carefully remove the white copy paper, adding foam tape to the different elements.

After removing the backing from the tape, place on a 5 x 7 base card and press firmly once in position. Then very carefully remove the Press n Seal. You can stamp a sentiment directly into the center of the card but I chose to add a layered one to add some extra interest and bling. The sentiment is made up of bits from three different sets, You Are, Yes You, Birthday Sentiments and Festive Sentiments and heat embossed with platinum EP. A few holographic gems were added to complete.

Now back to the middle we put to one side. To frame the central panel, I decided to cut a thin frame using a rectangle of matching card and a slightly smaller rectangle die. I found that its easier that way than cutting the center out and trying trim down to size. If you do need to trim then I found replacing the die cut center works well in keeping the frame from distorting too much.

Instead of popping these butterflies up on foam, I simply glued them down flat onto a 5 x 7 card base, adding the frame and a simple sentiment strip from Simply Said. 

Here are the two finished cards together.

I do apologise for the photo heavy post but I hope it has inspired you to have a go yourself, its such an effective technique and you don't need to use butterflies, any die cut images will work.

So that's all from me, keep safe and sane 'til next time.

Hello, Hey, Hi!

Hello!

Oh my, what a strange couple of months it has been! I am so out of the loop with everything as we start to come out of lockdown or hibernation here in the UK. 

The majority of my time these past 2 1/2 months has been spent doing home learning with The Beans, doing the tasks the school set out and then speech practice. Then it has been keeping the home life ticking over, washing, cooking and cleaning. With everyone home 24/7 it has felt like an endless task. Then as bedtime for The Beans rolls around I collapse in a tired heap and no mojo to create :(

BUT.... finally I got the spark back to be creative when my husband finally uttered the words... 'you can open up for orders again on 1st July'. This is what I had been waiting for and it has injected a bit of life back into me! 

Life is still crazy, I am still doing home learning with The Beans as we decided not to send them back to school in this time of uncertainty. BUT I am being a bit better at giving myself some time during the day to do something for myself. 

Like today, I finished the card I started making yesterday....

I thought some cheery flowers would be best to kick start my creativity and I decided to ink up the peony cluster from Hello Lovely. 

I kept things simple and used some Stampin' Up! markers to colour the blooms and leaves. I used just one colour for each of the flowers, but went over areas with the same colour to achieve a darker shade. I did however use two greens for the leaves.

I trimmed through the image and fussy cut around the edge so it would be a border along the edge of my card and I popped it up with foam adhesive for some dimension. The sentiment is one of the mix and match options from the set.

I will be back again in the next few days with more to share, but for now I will just recap...

The website will open for orders Wednesday 1st July 2020. Orders will be posted out once or twice a week. I will confirm what days I will be posting orders once I have done a little research into the less busy times at my local branch. More details coming soon :)

Thank you to my awesome Brand Ambassadors for keeping the inspiration flowing during this time AND thank YOU for hanging in there with Uniko during these uncertain times. Your emails and messages have been much appreciated.

Crafty Hugs 

Bev 

Uniko Challenge Reminder #59 - Anything Goes + optional twist Bright & Happy

Hey!

The Uniko Brand Ambassadors and our Guest Designer are here today to remind you about the May/June 2020 Uniko challenge.

We have a super easy theme of Anything Goes with the optional twist of Bright & Happy

Challenge Guidelines:

* You can use any products/stamps to enter the challenge, but we do LOVE to see you use your Uniko products. Plus, there is an extra chance to win a prize if you do ;)

* Email entries welcome, just email a photo of your card to bev@uniko.co.uk and I will add it to the Uniko Flickr gallery and link up!

* Share the challenge graphic in your post and link back to the challenge if possible ;)

We're super delighted to welcome back Viv as our Guest Designer and she has created another incredibly beautiful card to inspire you to play along.

Viv


The Uniko Brand Ambassadors have also been super busy creating cards to give you ideas and spark your creativity. 

Bev

Carol 

Hannelie

Izzy 

Jane 

Julie

Rahmat

Sarah

Wiebke

Now, if you need more incentive to play along with the challenge here are the details of the prizes.  

THE PRIZES

• Main Winner Chosen By The Brand Ambassadors - £15 eGift Certificate
• Random Twist Winner - £5 eGift Certificate
• Random Uniko Stamps Winner - £5 eGift Certificate
• Top 3 Chosen By The Brand Ambassadors - 150 Loyalty Reward Points

You've got plenty of time to play along with this month's challenge. The deadline for submission is midnight (GMT) on Friday 19th June 2020 (7.00pm EDT).

Hugs,

Brand Ambassador Inspiration - Tropical birthday

Bonjour !

Izzy here. Today I'm going to show you the card that I made inspired by two challenges. The sketch of the CAS(E) this Sketch challenge and the theme of the Seize the birthday challenge. 

To make it I used 3 stamp sets with tropical images. Love how well they go together !

Here is my card.

I started by blending two green shades of Distress inks on a white card stock. Then I stamped the background stamp over.

With colour pencils, I filled in the leaves in order to add even more green shades. I flat adhered the panel on a double white card according the sketch.

On white scraps of paper, I stamped the flower and the leave. I coloured them with colour pencils and I fussy cut them.

I stamped and I white heat embossed a sentiment on a strip of vellum that I glued on the card. And to finish I adhered the leave and the flower with Glue Dots.

That's all for me today. I hope I inspired you. Thanks so much for visiting Uniko ! 

Take care, stay safe at home and have fun crafting !

Brand Ambassador Inspiration - florals your way

Hello friends, I am up with a few floral cars using Uniko goodies today.
I had colored these using the Prisamcolor pencils.

These were stamped the flowers from Originally Organic set in the Lawn Fawn Grey ink and the coloring was done using the pencils.
I stamped a bold thank you sentiment from All Occasions set here.
I dabbed the base with pine needle DI to create some interest and added a white strip over that.

-------------------

This was stamped the Happy Succulents using the grey ink from Lawn fawn and the color pencils color very well over the grey, I managed to achieve the no line coloring look here. The colored front is added to a white base and a few jewels to finish off the card. The sentiments is from the Pure floral - Peony set.
 I did add a white strip at the bottom to create some interest on this card.

     Thank you for stopping by, I really appreciate your kind feedback. Have a great day!

                                                            

Brand Ambassador Inspiration- A Masculine Birthday Card

Good morning folks, Julie here with another Brand Ambassador post.
Today I would like to share this masculine, CAS card with you and the steps I used to create it.

I don't know about you but I'm starting to run out of my favourite cardstock, so I decided that I would use some of my odds and ends that I save from other projects and some larger A4 sheets that have been in the stash for more than 7 years! So I started with a small panel of white card from the scrap box, which I taped under my abstract triangles stencil.

I found it easiest to stick it from the back with masking tape, so needed to add a little talc to stop the sticky tape from catching on my MISTI when stamping. The stencil was then placed in my MISTI and I then stamped the largest of the sentiments from Birthday Wishes set repeatedly through the stencil with black ink. As the ink will sit on the stencil, take are not to smudge the residue when moving your stamp around. 

I carefully removed the tape from one edge of the stencil and placed a panel of scrap paper under it and carefully rubbed away the excess ink with a cloth. The stencil was still attached by one side so it acted like a hinge allowing the stencil to remain in place. After carefully removing the scrap paper, I placed the stencil back over the inked panel and replaced the tape and inked through with Salty Ocean DI. Once dry I carefully removed any excess ink from the stencil before placing the Scattered Polka dot stencil over and securing.

Blueprint Sketch DI was then added through the two stencils to create yet another layer.

The photo above shows what the panel looked like after the polka dot stencil was removed.

Finally, the Abstract triangle stencil was removed to reveal the finished panel.

When using small patterned panels, I find a piece of copy paper cut to size very useful, allowing you to position each of the elements before adding to the final base card. You can roughly plan the final design without ruining your base card.

I trimmed a panel of textured card to create two panels, adding two strips of scrap card inked with Blueprint Sketch and stamping Happy Birthday from Simply Said in black before popping up them over the stenciled panel on the copy paper with fun foam. The base card was made from the same textured white card.

The instructions sound quite complicated but I do encourage you to have a play, use up your scraps like me. 

That's all from me for the mo, so stay safe and well until next time.