Young Crafters Unite Blog Hop!!!!

Hi blogland, and welcome to the Young Crafter's Unite Blog Hop!

 

What a great reason to have a blog hop! By now, you should know a few key things.  First, be sure to comment as you go on the blog hop for a chance to win some AMAZING prizes!  =)  Second, the theme of the hop (other than young crafters) was to use our favorite things!

If you are hopping along, you should have made your way here from Deena's Blog.  If you just stumbled upon this post and would like to start from the beginning, please head over to www.youngcraftersunite.com!  The blog hop starts at 12:00 PM CST on July 1st!  =)

So what makes me a young crafter?  Well, I'm only 27 so my age qualifies me as pretty young, but also I definitely have a very fun, whimsical and vibrant style that gives my cards a cutesy and young feeling!  I truly believe that my personality is that of someone that will always be young at heart no matter how old I get, and that I show that style often through my paper crafts!  =)

For this blog hop, I chose to feature two of my three favorite stamping companies.  I also tried to use many of my favorite products to make these two cards.

When I really got back into card making about a year ago, two stamp companies really stood out to me and caught my eye as fitting my style!  The first was DeNami Design!  If you've never checked out their awesome, high quailty, adorable rubber stamps, you should!  DeNami has a fabulous style and is known for their cute and whimsical images, especially animals: 

Here's a card showing off some of my favorite DeNami Design images - their owls!  I just think they are so cute, versatile, and super easy to paper-piece (another thing I love about DeNami stamps)!  And how cute is that sentiment?  I also used some of my other favorite products for this card: VersaMark watermark ink (the best for watermark images AND embossing) and Copic markers.  I cut and colored the tree free-hand!  Here's a close-up of the Copic coloring:

The second stamp company that caught my eye when I started blogging is ALSO super whimsical, fun, full of animal images, and easy to paper piece!  That's right, it's Lawn Fawn!  =)  Lawn Fawn has super high quality photopolymer clear stamps that are fun and easy to use!  Again, I chose animals (and birds too, I do like birds on cards) and did a lot of paper piecing:

One of the things I love most about Lawn Fawn's stamp sets is how well they all work together!  Here I'm using several Lawn Fawn sets: Critters in the Snow, Hats off to You, Bannerific, Sophie's Sentiments (I needed the loose exclamation point), AND Teeny Tiny Backdrops.  I also used Copic markers again here (because they are awesome), and two of my other favorite types of ink: Memento's Tuxedo Black (the best all around for Copic coloring), and Tim Holtz's Distress Inks (here showing in Broken China and Tumbled Glass, these inks are super versatile and amazing for creating a distressed look or many other inking techniques).  Finally, I used a new favorite tool here - my Spica Glitter pen!  If you've never used one of those, they are amazing and worth every penny!  =)

Finally, there are TWO favorite items that I have that I use ALL of the time but that didn't make it on either card, and I wanted to take a second to share those items with you because they both rock!  First are my handmade clay embellishments that I make with my molds from MoldMuse.  These molds are SO easy to use and produce beautiful embellishments:

Second, I love pearls!  I've tried many pearls from many different stamp companies, but my FAVORITE by far, for both quality, price, and convenience, are the pearls from Queen and Co.  I love these pearls because they come in a TON of colors, they are individually adhered (not attached by a row of adhesive), and each package of 60 (which includes 3 sizes) runs between $1 and $1.50!  Here's a picture of mine, which you can see are very loved:

 

OK!  I know that was a long post but in the past few years I've learned a lot and have a lot of favorites and I wanted to pay homage to them all correctly!  =)  It's time to hop along to Jillian's blog!  Thanks for stopping by, happy hopping young crafters!  =)