Faith, Hope & Crafts

Happy Friday! I hope you all had a good week :) I have been LOVING this cool weather we have been having in upstate NY this past week. I am not and I repeat not a warm weather kinda girl. This is my kind of weather dewy mornings and cool breezy nights. I just LOVE it! Autumn/Fall whatever you call it is my favourite season ever.  So I wanted to get some of my autumnal stamps out and have a wee play around. I don't know if you have been out shopping, the stores are filled with all kinds of pumpkin decor at the moment. I love seeing all the different ways you can decorate with pumpkins. I have even seen some blue and green ones this year and they are so pretty. So I dug out some stamps and made a clean and simple card. I used my beloved distress inks and blended them straight on to the stamp then added a few rhinestones it was super easy! Thanks so much for visiting today have a great weekend. Mandi xox Stamps - Unity Stamp Company, Thinking of You , Imagine It &am

Happy Friday Friends!! I hope you all had a good week this week. I made this dragonfly tag and it comes with a wee story behind it. My inspiration came from a real life dragonfly.  I have been feeling kinda blah this week. No real reason I have just been feeling a bit run down and not myself. I have not been feeling too crafty at all either which is really unlike me. So this all started when I decided to take a dip in the pool. It was not even that warm and the water was cold but I wanted to go in anyway. I was enjoying the water and looking up at the sky daydreaming. Then I looked down saw a little dragonfly in the pool. I thought it was dead at first. Then I looked again and saw it struggling in the water. It was drowning! So I scooped it up in my hand and got it out of the water. I tried to get it on to the side of the pool to dry off, but it would not leave my hand. Just when I got it on the concrete it climbed back on to my hand.  Now I have never really paid much att

Hello Friends I hope you are all having  good Monday! I was playing about with some of my older wood mounted stamps today and created this card. Can you tell I am a wee bit homesick? I was also doing a lot of reading regarding the independence vote that is happening soon in Scotland soon. This is where all of my inspiration came from.  I love this thistle stamp I don't use it nearly enough. Thanks so much for stopping by today Mandi xox Supplies Funstamps - Thistle Distress Inks - Concord Grape, Mowed Lawn & Salty Ocean Tartan Ribbon Challenges Simon Says Stamp Monday - Anything Goes

Hello Friends I hope you have all had a great week. I have been super busy this week and not had much time to blog. I have been working on this girl for a few days and just got around to finishing her today. I love this stamp designed by Angie Blom. It is called  Beautiful Soul . I wanted to pair her together with a quote that I love. "Sometimes memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks."  It is so true!!  So many times I have found myself thinking of someone, and before I know it I have tears streaming down my face. It is so amazing that one little memory can stir up so many emotions. We all have our own little treasure chest of memories. I used my watercolours and alcohol markers on this project. Then stenciled the hearts and heat embossed them with silver glitter embossing power. I printed the sentiment and glued it in place. I used a little gray gem for her tear I was going for that running mascara tear drop look. I am a crie

Hello  Friends I hope you are all having a lovely weekend so far!  I am here to announce the winners from my blog this week. The winner of the Itty Bitty's is Janis!! Please email Keli at kelli @ unitystampco .com with your choice of 2 Itty bitty stamps tell her you won them on my blog. The winner of my little prize bundle is Karen Ladd please email me your mailing address at mandimance@hotmail.com Thanks so much for visiting with me last week. Mandi xox

 Hello Friends Welcome to my final day as GIU girl. I must say that I have loved every minute of it and I have enjoyed putting all of my projects together for you to see. So I wanted to end my week with some distress tags. I love getting messy with my distress inks and using the embossing resist technique. I chose this lovely flower stamp set called  Insightful Meadows . The sentiments are from another stamp set called  The Simple Things . These were so easy to make I stamped all of the flowers and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. Then I took 3 different colours for each tag and swiped them on to my craft sheet. I spritzed some water and let the tag pick up the inks. I dried them 3 or 4 times in between until I had built up the colours I wanted.  I then stamped out the sentiments on to vellum and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. I attached the vellum with glue and glued it at the back of the tags. I finishe

   Hello Friends  Can you believe it is Thursday already? Where did the week go? I wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you for all of your sweet comments. Also a big welcome to my new followers :) I am honored that your are choosing to follow me in blog land. Now on to my cards :) If you did not know already I love butterflies. They are so pretty and delicate. I love this big bold butterfly stamp from Donna Downey. I made two different cards with it using white embossing powder. The top one I used with vellum and fussy cut my butterfly out. The second card I stamped directly on to kraft card and kept it pretty simple. I really love kraft and white together it looks so clean and pretty. I added some turquoise rhinestones to finish off the cards. I can't believe tomorrow is my last day of GIU the week has gone so fast. Thanks so much for stopping by I will see you all tomorrow. Mandi xox Stamps -  Bold Butterfly ,  Feather Flight &  God's Timing

Hello Friends Welcome to day 3 of GIU. Wow is it flying by fast! I hope you are enjoying my creations. I have really enjoyed making them. I went for some home decor for today's project some butterfly branches.   I wanted to make my butterfly branches using my favourite Unity butterfly stamp called A Friend Loveth . If you look through my blog I have used this stamp many many times it is my favourite butterfly stamp. I just love it the butterflies are just a perfect size and shape for so many projects. I asked my husband to go out to the garden and bring me in a small branch. Where we live backs out on to a little wooded area so there are lots of branches laying around.  He walked in the door a few minutes later with half a tree ha!  So I broke off a few branches and sent him back outside with the rest :) Making this is pretty easy all I did was take an empty bottle and pour some white paint inside and let it run o

Hello Friends Welcome to my day 2 of GIU. This wee girl is where my love of Unity all began. I saw her on a random post on Facebook and I absolutely loved with her. I had never seen stamps this adorable. I found the Unity page then discovered they were stamps designed by Phyllis Harris and she had a whole collection of them.  Phyllis captures the essence of childhood perfectly in her designs they are so amazing. I had only planned on buying one stamp set. Yes just one!! But when it arrived it was so nicely packaged and it stamped beautifully.  So from that moment on I was hooked. I went from 1 stamp to 3 baskets full in less than a year! This stamp will always hold a special place in my heart, It is called Your Wings Exist . I used my watercolour paints on my projects. I am no expert by any means at painting but I find them much easier to work with than alcohol markers. I am not great at colouring and the paints give a much softer finish. I find I can be too heavy handed

Hello Friends Welcome to my first day of my first ever GIU week yay!! I am super excited to be showing you my creations this week with the wonderful Unity stamps :)  I only found out last week I would be the GIU girl this week. I had to switch out my Dec date as I will be in Scotland another yay :) I have two cards for you today with this new stamp set from Unity. I absolutely LOVE dandelions. So when I saw this set I just had to have it. It is called Wish With Your Heart and it is on sale right now for $12 a bargain. I think today is the last day of the sale so if you like it go and grab it quick!! So for my first card I wanted to do another black and white card. I also wanted to use my black distress ink which I bought months ago and have never used. It is called Black Soot and funnily enough it gets everywhere just like the real black soot. I love getting messy with my distress inks and kind of expect a bit of a mess. But the black mixed with water gets EVE

Hello Friends I made this quick card today for Friends With Flair . I used one of my favourite stamp sets called A Friend Loveth. I just love those butterflies this is my go to butterfly stamp and I never tire of it. I kept this card pretty simple. I just used an embossing folder to create the background. I stamped the sentiment straight on to the card. Then stamped my butterflies, cut them out and glued them to the card. Super easy :) Thanks so much for stopping by have a great weekend Mandi xox Challenges Simon Says Stamp Wed