GIU 8/30/2024

It's Friday already.  Do you have any exciting weekend plans?  Here in the US, many people are off work on Monday for Labor Day so it's even a long weekend!

All this week, I've been posting projects featuring Unity Stamp Company projects as I'm the Growing in Unity poster for this week.  Before I started making my projects, I decided to finally use an idea that's been brewing ever since I was first a GIU poster several years ago and that is to reuse the same kits all week. Let me share my reasons:

First of all, I have been a less-than-engaged crafter for the past 2-3 years.  Ever since I moved houses in 2022, I've found it harder to work and focus in my new space. My primary issue is that the lighting isn't quite right for evening crafting; we have on our to-do list to add a ceiling light to the room.   The room is larger than my space in my old home and I think that is a contributing factor, along with the fact that I switched out some furniture which meant nothing was in the same place as it was in the old house and less items are within arm's reach. To combat this, I decided to focus on making less decisions in my crafting so I could be more productive.  Therefore, this week I've only used these two stamp kits and papers or scraps of paper from my desk top.  This was actually a massive time saver as I have just left these kits on my desk all week and haven't been searching for "the perfect" stamp for a project.

https://www.unitystampco.com/its-going-to-be-beautiful-kom-7-17/

https://www.unitystampco.com/blessed-happy-everything-stamp-die-set/ 

My other reason for sticking with two kits all week is to demonstrate that you can make lots of great projects from one Kit of the Month.  The Unity designers do an amazing job at mixing styles in this kit so there's something for everyone.  You can see in the kit I used from 2017 that there are some solid stamps and some that can be colored.  There are a variety of sentiments, in different styles and fonts.  I've made 5 projects this week and I've only used about half of the stamps, so there is a lot more I could do!  

So, if you're looking to up your crafting output, my lesson from this week is to choose a smaller subset of material to work with than your entire collection. You could limit your stamps, or your papers, or your coloring media- whatever would increase your efficiency and remove decision paralysis.  

With all of that said, here's my final card of the week.  I used some more partial stamping (in this case masking) to only stamp selected letters of the "to have a friend like you" sentiment.  Then I used a small circle punch to cut the individual letters and some colored circles, placing them like a friendship bracelet.  The heart stamp from the kit of the month made a simple background.  Have you ever used the individual letters in a stamp to spell a different word? 

If you've missed any posts earlier in the week, be sure to go back and leave comments on them as well as a comment below. Each comment is a chance to win a prize generously provided by Unity Stamp Co!  Thank you for your kind comments all week.

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Proud Operation Write Home Alumni
Cards shipped to OWH in 2014: 21
Cards shipped to OWH in 2013: 829 blank and 301 AnyHero
Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: 1284 blank and 218 AnyHero
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695