Notable Nest

Friday, September 8, 2023

Anita Jeram End of Summer Fun Blog Hop and New Release!

Hello, hello! I'm always desperate for an extension of summer once the kids get ready to head back to school, as it always seems like the summer fun ends way too soon.

Playing with the darling new End of Summer Fun line by Anita Jeram really helped me out this week. All those critters hanging out on the beach made quite a disturbance in my craft room as I was coloring them to life : )

I'd love to share them with you! You may have arrived here from the blog of sweet Jennifer Gross, but if not feel free to start at the beginning with the amazing blog of Amy Young.

This first card is all about having as much fun as possible on the beach! The circles that highlight each scene remind me of what it would look like if you were hanging out in a submarine in the ocean and used your periscope to track the activities on shore. If you're not convinced by the first beach sighting, then there are two other ones gathered on this slimline card, all from one stamp set Beach Life.

I thought this was a nice way to change up the main two images:

Beach Life

Stamping the foursome as two couples filled two of the holes, and then just stamping the head of the burried kitty is enough to get the idea across without having to use the entire image.

Honestly, how adorable is this confident little Miss from Beach Beauty?! The way she's strutting across the beach, not even needing her sunglasses ... watch out boys!

Love the sentiment that comes with this mini set. This would be a great card to send your BFF : )

The Beach Background is a compilation of Anita's beach images all nestled together and ready to make a big impact on your card. I think it's a perfect background for a clean and simple image. Perfect design, and perfectly easy! I didn't feel the need to color any of the sea creatures in (although you certainly could!) Why do we (me?) always feel the need to make it hard on ourselves?!

What about you, are you doing OK with June/July/August passing? I'll be much worse in two years when my youngest goes away to school!!

Prizes!

We're doing two different giveaways! Enter as many times as you'd like until Sept 11th. Winners announced on Sept 13th. Good luck!!

Giveaway 1: All designers will be giving away a stamp set from this release (your choice) to a lucky winner that will be drawn from all the comments left on our blogs or instagram.

Giveaway 2:
We'll be giving away a complete bundle (value $202!!) of this release to one randomly chosen winner that has placed an order using your favorite designer's affiliate link (for example, by clicking on the links on the images in this blog post below).

I am happy to send you to Adam Karle on Instagram who has something beachy to share!

Here is the full list of stops on this hop if you need a reference:

Amy Young
Daniel West
Amy Tsuruta
Kelly Taylor
Jenn Shurkus
Nancy Sheads
Michelle Lupton
Jennifer Kotas
Kassi Hulet
Donna Hitz
Jennifer Gross
Kelly Griglione

Visit these designers on Instagram:

Adam Karle
Joe Sysavath
Laura Inguz

Thanks so much for stopping by!

- Kelly

Supplies Used (affiliate links, thanks so much for your support!):

Beach Background

Beach Beauty

Beach Life

Monday, August 21, 2023

Pinkfresh Studio August 2023 Holiday Stamp, Die, Stencil, and Hot Foil Release

Hello, and welcome to the Pinkfresh winter 2023 release! My husband came in my craft room and said, "woah, you're working on Christmas projects already?" Yes, yes I am, and it's been so much fun! I didn't even need to mentally escape the sweltering heat like my friends in Texas, these holiday products are just so inspiring!

You may have come from the delightful blog of Kathleen, but if not feel free to start at the beginning with Pinkfresh.

First up is the Floral Bauble Stamp Set which of course has a coordinating die and stencil set as well. So beautiful, and for all you floral lovers, it's a great and logical way to design a floral holiday card.

The main floral bauble image comes with a vertical ribbon to hang the ball from, but I thought it would be fun to cut that off and substitute a real ribbon.

Very appropriate to throw a few gems on here.

This set comes with two smaller floral clusters to tuck behind the hanging ribbon, which I've used in conjunction with some smaller foliage as well. I love the lush look of the florals with the ribbon for the holiday.

The next set is perhaps my favorite, the Festive Ticket Stamp Set. The stamp has six small holiday images, and the die cuts them all out at the same time, so efficient!

For this card I stamped the cluster of holiday images 4-5 times to cover the card front, and the coordinating stencils made short work of coloring them all.

To make the sentiment stand out I wrapped some vellum around the card front and then adhered both sentiments on top.

The prior card just used the Festive Ticket Stamp Set, but the coordinating die set allows you to easily add the small images to a really cool die-cut ticket.

These little tickets are PERFECT for gift tags, but if you gather a few of them together they pull double duty for a card as well.

You can add flourishes to the top or bottom of the ticket, add your sentiment directly, and of course add the holiday images.

I liked attaching these tickets on the top section only, so then I can lift them up for extra dimension.

Here's a card with the little images from the Festive Ticket Stamp Set clustered around the sentiment.

The base of the card is decorated with the stamp and coloring stencil from the Winter Berries Frame Stamp Set

As I was photographing the cards, I decided I didn't like the dark windows on the car, so I got out the exacto knife and cut them out.

I think these small images give an eclectic, collected look to the card.

My final card is another mash up between the Festive Ticket Stamp Set and the Winter Berries Frame Stamp Set. I just used the small Christmas tree and mounted it on several layers (star, ticket, panel) for a luxe look.

I accented the Winter Berries Frame Stamp Set background with the 3D Nuvo Crystal Drops in a red and a pink color.

These two sets don't initially seem to go together, but I enjoyed pairing them a few different ways.

Well there you have it, five different cards with three of the new holiday sets from this new Pinkfresh release! Are you ready to dive into holiday crafting?!

GIVEAWAY:

If you're the lucky one, you'll receive a giant box with the FULL RELEASE!

Or there are also ten $25 gift cards to win!

Winners will be picked from the comments on my blog and along the entire

hop, and posted on August 30, 2023 on the Pinkfresh GIVEAWAY PAGE.

You must check that page & claim your prize within 2 weeks. Good luck!

I'm sending you to the spectacular blog of Kelly Taylor, who has wonderful things to share with you!

Here's the complete list if you need to hop somewhere else:

Thanks for stopping by!
Kelly

Supplies Used: (affiliate links, thanks so much for your support!!)

Festive Ticket Stamp Set

Winter Berries Frame Stamp Set

Floral Bauble Stamp Set

Friday, July 28, 2023

NEW Anita Jeram Christmas Release!!

Woah, Colorado Craft Company does NOT do Christmas half-way!! There are a ridiculous amount of adorable new sets designed by Anita Jeram in this release; you might even be tempted to ask Santa ahead of time for the Complete Bundle lol! I can't wait to share the cards I made with just SOME of these sets, all in this post.

You may have arrived from the talented Kassi Hulet's blog, but if not feel free to start at the beginning with Colorado Craft Company's one and only Adrienne Kennedy.

This first card is made with the MIIN set from this release, Bird Perch Mini Stamp Set. Isn't he adorable looking off into the distance, clutching his sprig of holly?!

The sentiment is from another new set but I thought it went well with bunny's friend Mr. Robin perching on his ears.

I put some snowflake diecuts I had on hand behind the mini panel that's popped up, but you could use whatever you have, even different sized white circles for snow balls.

Really a great value if you have a lot of Christmas/winter sets, but still want to get in on the excitement and pick one of these new sets up.

Now on to the full sized sets, this Just Add Snow Stamp Set has two different bunnies in action working on their new winter friend.

So darn cute!! And tbh, these were really quick to color because half of the images are WHITE! I added some shadowing in blue instead of gray, and then chose to made that the theme color of my card, with the sentiment and the dotted background in the same blue.

The tiny bunny jumping up to "help" roll the snow cracks me up! I added white glitter to the back panel for an extra snowy feel. Also love the little "Brrrrr" sentiment, and that it has its own die cut. I'm a sucker for the little details!!

Another adorable set, Mice Lights Stamp Set gives you a glimpse of two little friends who are completely overwhelmed. I used two of the different sentiments from this set. "My Favorite Color is Christmas Lights" is a great one!

The tree is from another set called Peaceful Fox Stamp Set. There's a cute fox sleeping at the bottom of the tree, but I didn't ink him up and just used the tree image here. No star stamp in the set for your tree? No problem! Don’t forget you can always just draw one (bonus if it’s in a similar style to the rest of your images) and cut it out.

Outlet too big for your scene? No problem! Do the opposite and cut it off! In this case you’ll notice I added the outlet back in lol. Initially when it was directly on top of the tree the outlet looked giant in comparison. But after die cutting several layers of chipboard underneath to bring the mice and outlet forward, and adding a piece of vellum underneath the make the background of the tree a little more foggy, I feel there’s enough separation of the outlet from the tree. In fact, the large white space of the outlet plays a visual calming role between the busy Christmas tree needles and the mice/lights.

Don’t forget the little guy. Sometimes I overlook the small stamps in a set and don’t bother with them. The Peaceful Fox Stamp Set set comes with several individual lights that I thought worked well to highlight the important word in the sentiment.

Finally, I've got two similar mini slim line cards with under-the-tree scenes going on.

This card features the Cozy Cat Stamp Set. I took the two sentiments in black and made a little scene - kitty sleeping, and the little mouse about to cause ANYTHING but peace, hahahaha!

Look at all the cute little details - the ornaments on the ground, probably from you-know-who all worn out in the stocking, the Christmas card and envelope someone wrote, the presents/bows/tags, and my favorite the little holly on Miss Kitty's stocking sleeping bag. Oh, also kitty's little paw coming out of the cozy stocking : )

Did you notice the tiny mouse waiting for the right time to come out in the corner?! I really had too much fun with this card! The sentiment on vellum above the mouse is also from this set. There are a few who are hoping Kitty's settled down for a long winter's nap : )

Finally, even the title of this set cracks me up ... Sneaky Mice Stamp Set. What do you think he'll find in there?! tisk, tisk!

Another easy one to color, with lots of solid images. You can add patterns to the wrapping paper if you'd like, like the subtle check on this present.

I used the extra present stamps to build this scene out to fit the wide mini slim line.

Whew! That was quite a fun couple days in my craft room! It's going to be 97 degrees in Chicago today, but I'm officially in the Christmas mood. Any favorites?

Prizes!

We're doing two different giveaways! Enter as many times as you'd like until July 31st. Winners announced on August 2nd. Good luck!!

Giveaway 1: All designers will be giving away a stamp set from this release (your choice) to a lucky winner that will be drawn from all the comments left on our blogs or instagram.

Giveaway 2:
We'll be giving away a complete bundle (value $270!!) of this release to one randomly chosen winner that has placed an order using your favorite designer's affiliate link (for example, by clicking on the links on the images in this blog post below).

I am happy to send you to the delightful Koren Wiskman who has some wonderful things to share with you!

Here is the full list of stops on this hop if you need a reference: