Stencil Sunday

Hi!

 It's Jane here today with another Stencil Sunday at Uniko.

Here's a pic of the three cards I created using the same stencil and stamp sets -  Lattice, English Country Garden Butterflies + its matching die and Birthday Wishes

For my first card I masked off a central portion and then inked through the stencil with distress oxide inks. I removed the mask and stamped the birthday quote sentiment and then added a couple of die cut small butterflies.

My second card uses embossing paste through the stencil plus a home made circle stencil. I then popped the larger die cut butterfly over the top and added a sentiment banner.

My final card uses the negative monoprint of the stencil with brusho powders.  I stamped both the large and small butterflies over the top using a matching pink ink which I spritzed with water to echo the watercoloured look of the background stencilling.

Here's a final look at all three cards and the Uniko supplies I used. 

Links to the shop are at the top of this post.

Do you have a favourite technique from these three cards? I'd love it if you left a comment to let me know.

Thanks so much for looking today. And keep crafting!

Hugs,

Jane

x

A Funky Farewell...

Hey & Happy Weekend!

It's time for another of those posts that I find hard to write and put all my feelings into. It is with sadness that we at Uniko are saying farewell to one of our FABulous Design Team members Sarah Gray from Funky Fossil Designs.

Sarah has been a member of the Uniko DT since March 2015, taking a break in 2017 to return in 2018 as part of the Uniko Stencil Design Team.

For over 4 years I have had the honour and pleasure of having Sarah as part of the Uniko family. It seems longer than 4 years as before Sarah was a member of the DT, she was a regular customer too! Seeing the inspiration and creativity flow when Sarah works her magic with Uniko products is simply amazing.

Some of you may know that Sarah launched her own business in the paper crafting industry in 2018, Funky Fossil Designs. Initially specialising in Stencils, Sarah now offers a range of clear stamps and MDF pieces. You can checkout and purchase all the fabulous goodies HERE.

Running a business is not an easy task, especially when you have a family and another job to juggle, so Sarah has taken the hard decision to step down from the Uniko team to focus and grow her own business.

It wouldn't be right to say farewell to a fellow creative, without making a card...

In honour of Sarah's growing business I have combined a Funky Fossil Stencil - Brick Wall with  the foliage image from Uniko's Just Because clear stamp set.

I've had this design sketched out for ages and simply hadn't found the time to sit down and create it, until now.

It was hard to select just one sentiment to the card, so I decided to use three instead! These sentiments are from Simply Said Blocks and Simply Said Blocks II.

Uniko's Brand Ambassadors Jane and Izzy have joined me today to say farewell. Jane has also created a card combining Uniko and Funky Fossil products...

Jane has used Uniko's Background Blocks Pinstripe with Funky Fossil Folksy Christmas clear stamps. 

And this is how Izzy has combined Funky Fossil with Uniko...

Izzy has used Funky Fossils Circle Burst Stencil combined with Uniko's BIG & BOLD Happy clear stamps & Designer Dies.

Thank you Sarah for all that you have done for Uniko, YOU ROCK! As one friend to another and as a small business owner to another, I wish you ALL the success with your amazing, creative business within the paper crafting industry. 

Hugs

Uniko Challenge #55 Anything Goes + optional twist Autumn

Hey!

Welcome to the September/October 2019 Uniko Challenge.

We have that all time favourite theme of Anything Goes for this new challenge, but if you'd like to challenge yourself a bit more then go with our twist of Autumn.

We're really delighted to have Myra as our Guest Designer for this challenge. I think this must be a first for Uniko a Guest Designer who is only 8 years old! She is following in her mum, Anushree's footsteps and sharing her blog to showcase her wonderful talent.

Such a gorgeous card and an assured future in crafting for sure!

I'm not sure if the Uniko DT started out this early, but they certainly have some awesome cards to share with you today.

Bev

Carol

Izzy 

Julie

Linda

Are you ready to play?

Well, just in case you need some more incentive to play along with the challenge here are the details of the prizes.

  

THE PRIZES

• Main Winner Chosen By the DT - £25 eGift Certificate
• Random Twist Winner - £5 In Stock Clear Stamp Set of Winners Choosing
• Random Uniko Stamps Winner - £5 In Stock Clear Stamp Set of Winners Choosing
• Top 3 Chosen By DT - 150 Loyalty Reward Points
• 
  

You've got plenty of time to play along with this challenge. 

The deadline for submission is midnight (GMT) on Friday 25th October 2019.

Hugs,

DT Inspiration - Playing with Background Builders Stars & Triangles

Hello there, it's Sarah P here and massive apologies as I seem to have been AWOL for the whole of summer BUT at last I'm here with another DT Inspiration post.

Whenever I've not been crafting in a while I struggle to focus; not knowing where to start ... do you have that issue?

My preferred option for getting back into it is to pick up a couple of stamp sets and ink colours that I love and jump right in. That's what I've done with these!!!

I hope you like them!

My GO TO stamp sets were the Background Builders Triangulate, Background Builders Seeing Stars, the latest Sentiments Outlined set, released in July plus another of my favourite sentiment sets; Birthday Wishes.

Up first with my stars trio, just basic stamping with a masked area, on these first 2 to insert the sentiment, and to finish a couple of enamel dots ...

Then having created the stars one in the colour combo above, using promarkers I decided I'd carry the colour scheme through with my triangles!

I do hope you like my cards and I'd love to know how you get back into a creative frame of mind following a break.

Thanks for calling by and catch you again soon.

DT Inspiration - layered combinations with Stencil and Stamp

Time is running and and we almost reached the center of September!

Has Friday 13th in your cultural estimation a negative character? Do you believe in superstitions, bad omens or auguries?
I don't! - So today is a perfect day for me to present you my new DT-Inspiration Post!

I made two different cards for different occasions with the same combination of Stencil and Stamp Sets: the popular Mandalas of Uniko. Yes, there are two different products with Mandalas in the Uniko range of products available:

• the Mehndi Mandala Stencil and 
• the Marvellous Mehndi Stamp Set

They have almost the same outer shape, but the details are a bit different and even more important: they have different sizes! Great preconditions to give this idea a try, right?

The sentiments are both part of the Wonderful Day Stamp Set.

 *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

For the first card I added Oxide Inks with my blending brushes over the Mandala stencil.
I used a bright yellow and orange colour scheme - squeezed lemonade, mustard seed, dried marigold, carved pumpkin and ripe persimmon. The blending brushes make it so easy to get a nice and smooth colour gradient without hard edges!
I started with the light yellow and then got darker with every new layer of colour in the order of the listing above.

Detail of the yellow layered Mandala

After I had cleaned the stencil, I replaced it on my paper, added the stamp (the stencil helped me to get the stamp in the perfect place!) and put all together in my stamping tool, closed the lid and the stamp was on its place!
To fix the paper, you can add temporary adhesive before you put it into the tool or you can fix it carefully with the magnets while you remove the stencil. Try out what works best for you!

Then I simply stamped the smaller Mandala and then also the sentiment in black Ink.
To put some special accents on this simple one layer card I added half-pearls in two sizes (2 mm and 4 mm).

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

For the second card I used almost the same supplies - just changed the colours into another colour family: blue - tumbled glass and salty ocean.

Again I started to add the colours with the blending brushes, beginning with the lighter tone, tumbled glass, all over the stencil and then darkening the center with salty ocean.
I rotated the combination of stencil and stamp this time a bit. The 'petals' of the stamp are placed now in between the 'petals' of the stencil.

The rest was easy going! I layered the paper on top of two slightly bigger blue papers to get a nice two-coloured frame (yes, it's a heavy card now!). Then I added the heat embossed sentiment with thin 3D pads and embellished the Mandala with some nice rhinestones. There are some round 4 mm gems in an opalescent clear-blue colour and also some tiny little drop-shaped gems in clear and in blue.

Detail of the blue layered Mandala

* ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

To see the full list of all used supplies, please hop directly to my blog.

* ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Which combination of stencil and stamp do you prefer? The yellow on top-combination or the more masculine blue offset-combination?

I looked through my Uniko stash and found some more combinations of stamps and stencils to give this technique-mix another try.
Would be great to read in the comments which combinations you found and tried!


Have a great and creative day!
Greetings from Wiebke

August Non - Release Blog Hop WINNERS!

Hey!

Oh my... where on earth did Summer go...?!

The last few weeks of Summer went a little crazy. Along with keeping The Beans entertained I was also prepping their 5th Birthday and they also had their first day of school the day after! 

Anyway, I am FINALLY catching up on everything and here today to announce the winners of the August Design Team Non - Release Blog Hop which took place HERE.

Last month my awesome DT revisited BIG & BOLD Wish and the more recent addition to the Designer Dies BIG & BOLD Wish. I seemed to have lost some creative mojo (I think it has escaped to a warmer climate - LOL!) and I am re-sharing this rainbow make from when I released the dies...

If you want to find out more about this card you can see the original post HERE. So, how about some winners, as I am *SO* late announcing I have randomly selected two lucky comments from those left along the hop.

And the winners are...

tina z.

24 AOÛT 2019 À 23 H 55 MIN

so beautiful, I love all the stars.

And...

Helen18 August 2019 at 12:53

What a fun way to use these great stamps and dies, Julie! Love the brightly coloured candles and the use of so many of the sentiments on the 3rd panel! Thanks so much for sharing and inspiring!

Congratulations Ladies! 

Please send an email to bev@uniko.co.uk along with your postal address and I will pop your prizes in the mail to you. 

Thank you so much to everyone who joined in on the fun and took the time to comment along the hop.

Hugs

DT inspiration - Getting inspired with challenges

Bonjour !

Izzy here. I hope you are all well after this summer break. Here, a new school year has just started last Monday and so the weekly routine too !

Anyway, I had some time to play in my craft room and today I wanted to share with you the cards I made with the English Country Garden : Butterflies set and its matching dies.

Last month I showed you how I get inspired by the things that surrounded me. This time, for my choices of designs and/or colours, I've been inspired by several currently underway challenges. It's a game I love to play with : to combine several challenges together.

The idea of my first card comes from the Time Out challenge and the word "Rainbow" in their quote...

I stamped all the butterflies in different colours and I cut them with the matching die. Then I place them on my card. Once happy with their placement, I fixed them together with masking tape doing a grid that I placed in my Big Shot with an oval die on top. 

With the masking tape, all the little bits stay attached so I turned them upside down to put adhesive foam behind. Once all covered, I placed them back on the double white card, pressing a little bit to be sure they all adhered well. Then I took off the masking tape and I cut along the edges the parts that go beyond.

The sentiment comes from the Beautiful set.

This results in the second card with the remaining parts of the cutout of the first card...

For this card the sentiment comes from the Simply Said II set.

For my third card I get inspired by the AAA Cards sketch and the colours of the Addicted to CAS challenge...

Once again the butterflies were stamped and cut with the matching die, then I adhered them with glue dots. The sentiment comes from the Flower Power #8 set

My last card is a combo of the Freshly made Sketch and the Colour Throwdown challenges...

For this card, I used the Pure Florals : Peony set to make part of the sketch. I stamped the peony in dark blue over an an iridescent cream card. And this time I used the bigger butterfly of the set.

I stamped it with Versafine blue ink over the same iridescent cream cardstock. The only colours I had in my stash to match the ones of Colour Throwdown were Distress inks. So I tried to use them on this paper as watercolour. And I'm so happy they reacted perfectly with this kind of paper and it even gives a beautiful shimmer to the colours.

You may have a better look on this picture...

For this card, I used a sentiment from the Simply Said Blocks set. 

Et voilà ! That's another way to get inspired for making cards. You will find more details on the inks used on my blog. 

Thanks so much for popping by and have a fabulous day !