Take Two, Growing in Unity & Hippity Hop {Monday}

Take Two week is finally here! I’m so excited because this event has been almost two months in the making. As I was finishing up my guest designer position with Unity Stamp Company in January, I told Lisa Arana that I wish I could design cards the way she does and she said the same thing about my cards! Then I suggested that we swapped design styles for a week but Lisa thought it would be easier to work in our own styles using the same stamps. LOL So Take Two was born and we are super excited to share our two takes with you all week long!

I bet you’re waiting to hear all about the prizes? I won’t delay. Thanks to the generosity of Angela Magnuson and Unity Stamp Company, there will be a total of six Unity prizes to six lucky winners when the week is over!!! Here’s how it’s going to work. Lisa and I will be featuring five different Unity sets all week long and each set will be revealed on that particular day. Five lucky commenters will win one of the five sets that we have selected to showcase. The sixth set is the one I’m giving away as the Growing in Unity Gal this week. Lisa is also giving away two of her fabulous watermarks which I love. I’ve bought several for myself and as gifts for blogland friends! Two winners will select one watermark each. I will be showcasing different watermarks all week long so you can see how amazing they look!!

This means you have a total of ten chances to win one of eight amazing prizes this week if you comment every day on both my blog and Lisa’s blog! This weekend, Lisa will randomly select three commenters from her blog for three of those sets and I will randomly select three commenters from my blog for the other three sets, including the Growing in Unity prize. Lisa and I will also randomly select one commenter from each of our blogs to win one of her watermarks. Eligible entries will close on Friday, March 25th at 11:59 p.m. PST (2:59 a.m. EST) and all winners will be announced on Sunday night. How does that sound? Now, let’s get this party started!!!

For those of you who are new to my blog, I was the Guest Designer for Unity Stamp Company in December 2010 and January 2011. I love everything about Unity and their stamps are extremely inspirational to me! Since I had already planned Take Two with Lisa, I thought I should be the Growing in Unity Gal, too. My collection of Unity is always growing. LOL

My husband and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary yesterday and this was the card I made him. We met two weeks before he moved to Italy for work and about three months later, I was in Italy visiting him and having our first date together! We visited many places in Italy, Austria and Switzerland on our two-week date. One of those places was Pisa and this is my leaning tower of cupcakes. There’s one cupcake for each year that we’ve been together. As you may have guessed by now, the first featured set for Take Two is Ippity’s Cuppy Cakes!

For this card, I created a mask from each of the two cupcakes in the set and used them to stack the cupcakes starting from the top down. To insert the heart sentiment tag in the cupcake liner, I used an X-acto knife to make a slit. The 'happy anniversary' sentiment is from To the Moon & Back and I used the same direct-to-paper technique shown in this video tutorial.

For Take Two, head on over to Lisa’s blog to see her take on Ippity’s Cuppy Cakes!

For the Hippity Hop, head on over to Christy‘s blog for more Ippity inspiration!

See you tomorrow for Take Two and Growing in Unity, Day Two!!

Sources: Gina K Designs pure luxury kraft, lipstick red & 120lb pure luxury white cardstock; Ippity Cuppy Cakes; Unity January 2011 Kit of the Month - To the Moon & Back; SU Riding Hood Red, Tangerine Tango, Summer Sun, Wild Wasabi, Brilliant Blue, Lavender Lace & Elegant Eggplant inks; Memento Tuxedo Black ink; EK Success large heart punch; Marvy-Uchida 1/8" long-reach hole punch; The Twinery Charcoal baker's twine; X-acto knife; Pop Up Glue Dots; We R Memory Keepers Crop-A-Dile Corner Chomper