Created by Katie Cotton

So yesterday was the Unity Hip Hop. I've become addicted to the Unity Hip Hop! Seriously! Thursdays hit and i dont want to do anything else! haha. Yesterday i was good. I took Jack to school and then went to the dr (no fun news, just that baby could come anytime, and if he didnt come by monday night, i'd be going into the hospital at 5 am on tuesday!), ran some other errands and went home to get some stuff ready for the PO. Then picked jack up from school and took him to a playdate (i wanted him to be seriously sleepy!).

Then during jack's nap i played at the Hip Hop! I completed Unity's wednesday challenge which was a sketch challenge. Here is my card...



I loved the sketch. It was simple, but lent itself to a bit of elegance. And i was in a very fall mood! Maybe because for the first time in MONTHS it wasnt muggy and hot! Of course it was overcast and grey but hey, i'll take it! Ok, onto what i did for the card...

It's a 5.5x5.5 square base. I ran a strip of cardstock (i think it was SU's marigold) thru my cuddlebug and used chalk and distress ink to mark it all up. I used the SU border punch on a scrap of red red (and marked it up a bit with aged mahogony distress inks as well. It's hard to see, but it adds just that bit of extra depth. The image is where i really had fun. I'm still playing with this whole idea (it's similar to what i did on the unity butterfly card only with different inks). This time i used my distress reinkers (yep, gonna have to get more of those!!!) They stay wet much much longer and make the blending process much easier. I'm sure i'd get this effect with the alcohol inks as well but i havent tried it yet. Again i used a glossy coated paper to start and i stamped out my main image (the tree from Growing in Unity) in black versafine and then covered it with black embossing powder. NOTE: i discovered later that the black embossing powder was not really a good idea and you should probably use clear! I then used my reinkers on a plastic plate and a sponge dauber around my image. Distress colors i used were Straw, Marmelade and Mahogony. Since i recently learned that you can EMBOSS with the distress inks (i didnt know they were "sticky" enough) i decided to use UTEE (ultra thick embossing enamel) over the whole image. I'm simply not good with this stuff. I dont really get it. One of these days i'll have used it enough to truly get it. Anyhoo - i covered the entire piece of glossy cardstock with the UTEE and as i embossed it, my black embossing from underneath starts to run a bit. Woops. I might have scrapped that piece and tried again except for the running black made the tree look a little spooky and since i was using all halloween colors - i just rolled with it. So that was my card!

I did manage to work out another splitcoast challenge (that i used unity on!) a little later. But i may just have to save that card to post until tomorrow because somehow, i dont see myself getting to work on much else today other than prep for MY MOM to be here. Thank the Lord! :)