Notable Nest: 2023

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Colorado Craft and Anita Jeram - Winter Holiday Release

Hello Friends! Just when you thought you'd seen all the cute and adorable Christmas and holiday stamps, there's a new release that's come to town from Colorado Craft Company featuring the ever popular Anita Jeram AND Kris Lauren artistry!

I'd love to share a few cards made with these goodies. You may have come from Kassi Hulet, but if not feel free to start at the beginning with Adrienne Kennedy.

Come on, how can you NOT love this little guy "helping" with the presents under the tree!? He's from Furry Christmas and is ready to bring some holiday cheer to anyone on your list.

The tree is colored with a chartreuse and aqua watercolor to mix things up a bit. Since I wanted the focus to be on the long present I made it as RED as possible. The coloring of the dog is very similar to the back of the packaging - always a great place to start when you first color up an image.

There are a lot of good sentiments also included in this set, so I used two of them here. I like doubling up like that when it works out.

Another cutie, Christmas Obsessed features a build-your-own-scene set of stamps for you to decorate the twigs the mice came across in the snow. My intention was to stamp this on an A2 sided base and then die cut it smaller to create a few layers. When I was done coloring, I fell in love with the innocent simplicity so much that I decided to just leave it.

To spice it up a bit, I added chunky glitter to the snow mounds in the shadows.

Yep, a good old-fashioned one layer card. No border, no layers, just tons of white. And cute mice decorating their 'hood : )

Final set for me, this is one from Kris Lauren - Merry Christmoose!

The set has two different Christmoose's to choose from - I had to go with the one in the PJ one piece and the Santa slippers, naturally. Since the moose is rather tall and thin, I made him into a panel flap along the top of the card.

If you raise the panel flap you'll see the Christmas Background in its entirety. Super cute and easy to color since there are only a few different images.

Also forgot to mention I borrowed the dangling ornaments from Christmas Obsessed to decorate the moose's antlers, in the spirit of things. Or maybe they are festive earrings?

That's all for me today! I hope you enjoyed taking a look at the three cards.

Prizes!

We're doing two different giveaways! Enter as many times as you'd like until Dec 3rd. Winners announced on Dec 5th. Good luck!!

Giveaway 1: All designers will be giving away a stamp set from this release 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 either the Anita Jeram complete release or the Kris Lauren complete release (your choice) 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).

Now it's time to send you to the blog of Kelly Taylor who will astound you with something amazing (as always)!

Here's a complete list of stops on this hop if you need it:

Blog Hop:

IG:

Thanks so much for stopping by!
- Kelly

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

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Altenew October 2023 Marvelous Monthly Series Release Blog Hop + Giveaway ($300 in Total Prizes!

Hello! I sure enjoyed the latest Marvelous Monthly Release from Altenew - it's got a little holiday, a little birthday, a little floral, and a lot of FUN!

You may have come from the amazing Aga, but if not feel free to start at the beginning with Altenew.

First up we have the beautiful Blushing Magnolias! The size of these blooms are giant, and I love how they fill the card,

The coloring stencils sure help with making light work of these blooms. With how big they are, the next time I'd like to try stenciling a tone-on-tone pattern in there too.

Such a statement flower, and I like how the die makes all the delicate branch cuts.

The Craft Your Life monthly kit Nordic Wonderland has a lot of fun details, that, once again, the coloring stencils really help getting colored.

I like that it's holiday themed with the Christmas tree, but the overall image, and this particular sentiment doesn't scream "Santa Claus Christmas." It's a nice alternative to things we may have created before.

This set also comes with a folksy fox. I didn't think much about what colors to use on the details but like how he turned out. You could totally get a different look each time you grab markers to color!

I added a black gem for his nose.

Love the bold sentiment that comes with the set.

Coordinated, but defiantly a different look from the same set.

Next up is the Snowy Delight Bundle which features a tree-filled background, and several snowmen interspersed. The great thing about this is that there is no guessing on how to balance out the scene - the coloring stencil perfectly places each tree and snowman for you!

For the trees I shaded a darker color for the bottom to give it some depth. The snowmen coverings just have two different shades of the same color to keep things simple.

To fill the space even more, I chose several sentiments and set them up on my misti so I could stamp multiples.

As you can tell in the background, it was quick to stamp multiples of this card design. Once I had it all set up, I think each card took a few minutes! I didn't want to put the stamps away, knowing I probably should have made a few more : )

You're certainly not limited to the layout on the stencils though! This card has a very different feel, but uses the same supplies. The background is made by coloring the trees, and then moving the stencil around the card and coloring some more trees until the background is filled.

I used the side of a label die for the snowy hill. Then arranged the snowmen around.

I like the "from our family to yours" sentiment that's included in this set, as you can include however many snowmen are actually in your family.

Same coloring, two different looks!

The final set Cut the Cake is a mini one, but certainly not mini on personality!

I chose to make my cake a rainbow cake, naturally. It went fairly quickly to stamp each layer in a light color and then top with a darker shadow.

The "cake" sentiment is so cute and sassy cut in gold.

Here's another take on the same set, and even the same slice of cake!

I used a mini-slimline card base, and repeatedly stamped the "you take the" sentiment on the background in varying generations. At the bottom I finished the sentiment with the "cake" die.

This is such a useful mini set, especially for teens and/or masculine cards. Because who doesn't love a layered cake?!

You've made it! Sure hope you found something you liked - there was a lot packed in this release!

Giveaway Prizes

$300 in total prizes! To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $100 gift certificate to 1 lucky winner and a $50 gift certificate to 4 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 10/24/2023 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 5 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 10/26/2023.

I'm happy to send you to the next stop on this hop, the one-and-only Jaycee!!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Kelly

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

Monday, October 2, 2023

Anita Jeram New Halloween Release - Too Cute to Spook!

It's a Halloween spectacular at Colorado Craft Company this week - the new Anita Jeram Halloween sets have just dropped and I promise you will have trouble deciding which ones to invite into your craft space! They are all

You may have come from the blog of Kassi Hulet, but if not feel free to start at the beginning with Adrienne Kennedy 3C.

The "ghosts" from The Bark Side don't quite realize they have paws and/or tail showing lol. They are nice and easy to fussy cut though, so that's what I did to pop them off a Halloween-inked background.

I used three of the different sentiments here - good to have options!

The postage stamp format was a good way to get several ghosts on the card at once. I colored the postage stamp border gray so the white ghosts will pop more. To fill the spaces I used one of the tiny bat stamps from another set - it's a little detail but I think it adds a lot.

After creating this background with the haunted house from Happy Haunting, I thought something white would pop nicely. Hmm ... yep, the Bark Side ghosts fit the bill perfectly! I plucked a ghost off the prior card to see what it looked like before making another ghost, but these ghosts are so easy to make since there's hardly any coloring on them that I didn't really need to do that.

I thought I was smart in stamping this spooky scene on gray paper and then coloring in the sections with gray copic markers, but then I turned the packaging over and saw that's basically how Anita used this image (PSA for using the back of the stamp set packaging to get coloring ideas for the Anita Jeram stamps - they always show the main images colored in!)

I appreciate how you can achieve a nicely detailed background without a ton of coloring work on this one.

My next card HAS a ton of coloring work ...

Instead of stamping a few of the different Halloween characters inside frames on the slimline like I did with the End of Summer Fun release, I just stamped them directly on the card base. Nothing like throwing caution to the wind, amiright?!

I do like how it turned out with so many different critters, who all obviously coordinate together. We've got the three critters on top representing Halloween Party, The string of lights and pumpkins from Pumpkin Patch, and the cat witches from Happy Catoween.

It's like a needlepoint sampler, but on a card. This is a great way to break in a new set too - try to use as many of the images as possible on the card.

These last two cards use the stamps from the two sets who have large scaled critters - big enough to be the main image. This one is from Wizard Treats.

These two treaters venture out on their own with the lantern to guide them under a sky full of stars, as their parents sob quietly in the background because they are finally old enough to trick-or-treat without them (or so I hear).

I do enjoy the large size of these images. You only get one main image, but the fact that it's big enough to cover the entire card base makes it a winner.

Added together a few sentiments and popped the sweet pair of treaters.

My final card has no black or charcoal spaces. It's a very light and cheerful Halloween card. Fish skeleton guy has two different candy baskets he can hold. This card features the trick-or-treaters from Trick or Treating Cats.

I do enjoy having the fallen leaves on this image - I wouldn't have thought to stamp those like this but I sure love how it turned out!

I wanted to get both sentiments on this card, but it was going to be a bit crowded. So I stamped the bottom sentiment on vellum instead. This will let you play with the positioning a bit more, and it also comes in handy if you need to overlap the design.

Prizes!

We're doing two different giveaways! Enter as many times as you'd like until Oct 5th. Winners announced on Oct 6th. 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).

Now it's time to send you to the delightful blog of Kelly Taylor who has something boo-tastic to share with you!

Here's the complete list of blogs and instagram pages in our hop if you need it:

Kelly Taylor
Nancy Sheads

Joe Sysavath