It's National Scrapbook Day kickoff week!

That's right, I said week! We are going to celebrate all week with challenges from our design team. You will have until Wednesday, May 6th to comeplete and post/email your finished projects. We will choose random winners for each challenge to receive some fabulous prizes. You can participate in one or all of the challenges.

We're kicking off the week with Tammy and Unity Stamps. Here's what Tammy has for you:

Unity Stamp Challenge

Some of you may have noticed that Scrap-Mart has started selling Unity Stamps. I was never a big stamper until I saw them available at Scrap-Mart and decided to give them a try. All I have to say is WOW, these stamps are incredible! I am now a bonafide Unity addict. All Unity Stamps are deeply etched red rubber. They come in both wood mounted rubber stamps (using 1/3 less wood than traditional wood mounts) that can be slid into one of their handles or used by themselves, and unmounted cling foam rubber stamps that can be used with any acrylic block or the Unity Handle. You can see a great video on how these stamps work HERE.

Now onto the first challenge for NSD! Using a Unity Stamp, create a project of your choosing, a layout, card, tag, or altered project. Post your project on your blog or in an online gallery and link it back here. If you don’t have a blog or gallery, email your project to me at tammyc@scrap-mart.com. You can enter as many times as you want to for this challenge, but all projects must be new. Deadline for entries is Wednesday, May 6th. You get one entry per project, 2 page layouts count as one entry. We will choose a winner by random and post on Friday, May 8th. The winner of this challenge will receive some Unity Stamps, and believe me, they are some good ones! I can’t wait to see what everyone creates!

To get us started, Tammy created both a layout and a card. Here's her layout...

She used Unity Beach Days and Sun Rays and she used dimensional adhesive on her stamped images. Tammy's layout was inspired by Chelsea Cook, a design team member for Unity.

On her card, Tammy used Unity's Boom Goes My Heart stamp.

Tammy also used her Spellbinders Rectangle Large Nestabilities and her Cuttlebug Swiss Dots Embossing Folder. That cute ribbon frame is something Tammy got from Patter Cross, another Unity DT member.

I took Tammy up on the challenge and here's my card.

I stamped the Retro Bubble Frame on a piece of white cardstock and colored it with my Copics (R29 Lipstick Red and B24 Sky). Next I layered the white cardstock onto red, blue and a white card base and cut the center out of the image using my exacto knife. Then I stamped my sentiment inside the card so you could read it through the window. Using my Crop-a-dile, I punched out the large holes in teh stamped image leaving the white from inside the card to show through. I found the matching polka dot ribbon in my stash but wanted something more. I didn't have any coordinating red embellishments so I grabbed a clear button and my R29 Copic marker and colored it to match, ran my ribbon through it and viola! I'm sending this card to my aunt who fell and broke an ankle over the weekend. I'm hoping the bright colors will cheer her up a bit.

Okay, now it's your turn! Show us your Unity and remember to link it back to THIS post and/or email it to tammyc@scrap-mart.com. And to sweeten the pot, instead of one winner I'll randomly pick 2 winners! One will receive Unity's Just My Type alphabet and the other will receive Shine On! Have fun and we'll see you back here tomorrow with Challenge #2 from Veronica!

Katie