Blog Spotting

Five Ways to Use Kobi the Birthday Bear with Kelly

August 1, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Birthday Cards, Cards, Guest Designer, Hello Cards, Winter Holidays

Hi Folks! I’m Kelly from Notable Nest. I was excited to meet Katia at Creativation this year, as I think she has one of the hottest new lines of stamps in our industry! It’s always exciting to see new companies come on to the scene, and even moreso when they have such fun and fresh products.

One of the stamp sets I was dying to play with is the Kobi the Birthday Bear set. My personal goal this year is to make more birthday cards for all the littles in my life (nieces, nephews, cousins’ kids, friends’ kids), and this set is perfect for that. I was happy to find there are many other options available, so I decided to collect them together for a “5 Ways” post. Let’s take a look!

5 WAYS TO USE KOBI THE BIRTHDAY BEAR

1. Use all the Accessories

I have to admit, sometimes I get a little lazy and just focus on the main image of a set, but I really do love the look of a card that includes all the secondary images and accessories. If you keep the coordinating dies attached, and line up all the related stamps on your MISTI, you can stamp them and cut them all at once. Really not much more time required. For this card, I think I’m only missing the tiny bee stamp and a slice of cake, but everything else is included.

The panel from Dotted Patterns Set – 1 is just the right size to fit Kobi and all of his birthday accessories. The dotted details on the edges give it a nice depth. I cut a second panel from green patterned paper, cut it in half, and layered that on top of the main white panel to give Kobi a place to sit.

I’m also madly in love with the Tropical Forest Fusion sequin mix! I use a lot of greens, so the color is perfect for me, but I also appreciate all the different shades of green and sizes of sequins that are included. For a bag of green sequins, you certainly get your money’s worth here!

2. Turn Kobi into a Polar Bear

Kobi doesn’t always have to be a cute, cuddly brown teddy bear. Just let him be a white polar bear. Not only do you save yourself some coloring effort, but now you have the perfect focal point for your Christmas cards!

The bow from Dotted Patterns Set – 1 looks right at home on this Christmas card when cut from red foil, and is the right size to make Kobi more festive. The sentiments are from the Happy set, which is a great compliment to the Kobi set, as you can see how the secondary words are all the same size and font.

3. Make a Partner for Kobi in Reverse

I wanted to make an anniversary card, but was stumped on how to do this with a single bear. Stamping another bear was a possibility, but I really wanted them facing each other and interacting, like a couple would be on their anniversary. I remembered my old reverse-a-stamp block, which is just a solid piece of rubber that you stamp on, and then stamp again on your piece of paper. Voila…a reversed image! Since it’s a second generation stamp the lines are often lighter and broken, so I just run over the stamped image with a felt pen. For the die I just stamped on the back side of the die.

In addition to the Kobi and Happy sets, I used the Brush Stroke Stripes to quickly create the yellow background. The Majestic Fusion sequin mix is great to use when I want a little something additional, but don’t want to introduce another color.

4. Just Use a Portion of Kobi

As cute as Kobi is, a good way to mix things up is to only use a portion of the image. Here, I’ve just stamped his head on a circle die from Dotted Patterns Set – 1. I made a couple snips along the “DON’T WORRY BE” stamp so I could curve it around the circle, and did the same with the “happy” stamp.

The panel is also worth mentioning …

I made it by lining up the gift card die from Dotted Patterns Set – 1 along a curve and cutting it twice. Who knew, it makes the cutest little scalloped panel?!?

The fun, iridescent purple flowers dressing up Kobi are from the Siberian Iris flowers.

5. Stamp a Whole Family of Kobis

Finally, why not make a lot of Kobis by stamping and masking? We have 4 people in our family, so anytime I make multiples of a critter I usually make 4 of them to represent everyone in our family. I think it makes more sense for the recipient to see 4 bears when they read the sentiment “you make US happy.”

Here’s a quick tip when making multiples from one stamp … make sure to rotate the image slightly in different directions each time you stamp it so they look more like different bears. For the panel on the bottom I forgot to do this for the 3 bears on the right, and you can really tell they are the exact same image repeated. For the top panel I rotated the stamp each time so they look a little more varied.

Even though I wasn’t thrilled with the bottom panel, I didn’t want to waste it, so I colored it in quickly and made a simple card from it. On the top card I stamped “happy” several times on the card base before adhering the panel of bears.

Well folks, that wraps up our post showing five different ways to use the utterly charming Kobi the Birthday Bear. And, as you can see, he’s clearly not limited to just birthday cards. In this post we’ve covered birthday, holidays, anniversary, encouragement, and a general thank you. I hope you’ve gotten some ideas on how to create several cards with different looks from this one set.

Thanks very much to Katia for inviting me today! I had a lot of fun!

-Kelly

Watercolor Flowers with Guest Designer Anni

July 16, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Cards, Floral Cards, Guest Designer, Thank You Cards

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I am so happy to be back for my second post as a guest designer for Studio Katia!

This time I played with beautiful flower stamps. I used the sets Thank You So Much Clear Stamp Set and You’re Ranunculus Clear Stamp!

For my first card I started by die cutting the biggest rectangle from the Dotted Patterns Set 1 from Bristol smooth cardstock. I stamped the flower three times with Versamark ink. To layer them up I used masks I created by fussy cutting the flowers from post it notes. As I wanted to do some water colouring I embossed the flowers in white. For the colouring I used my favorite water colour medium: ZIG Clean Colour Real brush pens. They are so easy to blend – even colours that are not from the same colour family.

For the sentiment I die cut Thank You from the Mini Thank You set a few times and stacked them up to create some dimension. To finish up the card I added some sequins.

The creating process of the second card is quite similar. This time I used a smaller shape from the Dotted Patterns Set – 1 Creative Dies and stamped only a part of theYou’re Ranunculus Clear Stamp stamp. This is a good way to get more out of your stamp: You can get a different look just by stamping not the whole stamp.

The sentiment is from the same set. I stamped and heat embossed it on a stripe of grey cardstock and cut it into a fishtail banner.

I hope you liked my card and want to send a BIG Thank You to Katia for being such a kind and generous prson and, of course, for creating such awesome products.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty Sunday!

Anni

Foxes with Anni!

July 2, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Cards, Guest Designer, Hello Cards, Thank You Cards

Hey stampers, Anni here!

So happy and honored to be a guest designer for Studio Katia this month.
I had so much fun playing with these super cute stamps. For my cards today I used the set called Foxes. I am a big fan of foxes and it is very hard, well, let’s say impossible, to resist fox stamps. And this set is especially awesome.
I started by stamping all images in this set on white cardstock with alcohol marker friendly ink. I didn’t use all the images in the end but I like to colour all the images to have a few to choose from. For the colouring I decided to go with Copics because I love the bright colours.

I have something shocking to tell you: I am a fan of fussy cutting. With the coordinating dies it seems I could never get them in the right place and never end up with an even border around the images. I don’t know why but I found the ones from Studio Katia much easier to use and you may notice that I got a satisfying result.

For my first card I used a die from the set Dotted Pattern Set 1 and for the sentiment the hello die from the You’re Ranunculus Coordinating die set. For a little bit of interest I stamped and heat embossed some mushrooms on my cardbase.

I assembled the card and added some sequins for the finishing touch.

My second card is a real clean and simple one.

I just added a Mini Thank You die cut to my sleeping fox. I think such a cute image can stand on its own.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great week.

Anni

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Floral Thanks with Kristina

June 29, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Blog Spotting, Cards, CAS, Floral Cards

Happy Thursday everyone, Kristina here with another floral card for today featuring the Stitched Creative Window and Duo Talk Clear Stamp set.
First I diecut the frame out with the Creative Window Creative Die several times from white paper and once from a silver glitter paper. Then I die cut the background panel with a largest Creative Rectangle die.

SK SUPPLIES:
Duo Talk Clear Stamp Set
Stitched Creative Window
Creative Rectangles Creative Dies
Nuvo Aqua Shimmer

On my panel I’ve traced all the windows with a pencil to mark spots for my flowers. In the windows I’ve stamped the flowers from the set of Painted Flowers from Altenew were stained with black water-resistant ink. I used Zig Clean Color Real Brush and Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Pen instead of water. These pens are perfect for that.

It’s hard to see the shine in the photo, but the flowers are very glittery. In the center I’ve stamped the Thanks sentiment. After that, I’ve glued all the white frames and glued the last layer glitter and pasted on the panel with the florals. After that, I cut down a rectangular panel of white Woodgrain paper from SSS using the largest Stitched Rectangle Die by SSS. To finish the card I’ve adhered it all together on a white cardbase panel.

Thank You all for stopping by and have a great day!

Kristina

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May Release Preview – Day 4 with Erica

May 25, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Announcements, Birthday Cards, Blog Spotting, Cards, New Release, News, Other, Shaker Cards, Sneak Peek

Hello and welcome to our May Release week Preview. This release includes 5 new clear stamp sets, 2 new stand along die sets and introducing new coordinating die sets. Yay!

Erica here! It’s Day 4 of the Studio Katia preview week! Today I’m going to show you the Brush Stroke Stripes stamp set, which is part of the new release and will be available to purchase in just a few days, May 27th! Whoop whoop!

I decided to make patterned paper for backgrounds for my cards for this post. The MISTI as well as the MISTI Creative Corners came in super helpful to line up the stamps and make sure the distances between the lines were the same. I didn’t really have a plan per say about anything but just started stamping and trying colour combinations. Ombre is a favourite of mine and I ended up doing one in yellow going to orange and pinks, as well as one yellow to orange and back to yellow. Once I was on a roll, I also made a pink-purple-ish patterned panel as well as a yellow and green tartan look. AND a rainbow one. I know, I know.. mad as a hatter, me!

For my first card I cut a piece out from one of the yellow panels I made, out using the rectangle die from the Dotted Patterns Set1 and the colours made me feel very happy and joyful so I decided to stamp the word ‘Happy’ from the Happy stamp set right across the panel. I used black ink and heat embossed it in clear embossing powder to make it pop. No card is complete without sequins so I added a sprinkling of them on both sides of the Happy as well as add a few crystals too. Because #bling, right??

Moving on to the pink/purple panel, I grabbed the whole set of Dotted Ovals and die cut them just off the side of it so they weren’t right in the centre. As a nice contrast, I used a lovely textured purple card stock which shows through as I removed the biggest of the circles. At this point I decided to make shaker card so I also cut the three inner rings out in double sided sticky foam (I’m addicted to this stuff!) and discarded the middle one as that’s where I thought I’d put the sequins. The smallest piece got the stripy part glued on and then to make sure all the bits were lined up I used the the ovals to place them in the right spot. I glued down the middle oval and then added a mix of sequins using a sprinkling each of Luminous Lavender, Siberian Iris and also some Icy Clear Seed Beads around it before glueing some acetate to the third biggest oval and sticking that down on the card. On a small banner I stamped ‘Happy Birthday’ using the single word stamps from the Happy set.

For my third card, I used the pink-to-yellow-ombre panel and started by cutting out an A2 dotted panel by using the Darling Ribbon & Dotted Frames. Then I stamped lots of paint brushes using a stamp set from WPlus 9 which I coloured in using Copic markers (for the handles) and then I matched the paint brushes up to the colour stripes and used the ink pads to get the colour exact. I glued them down and added glossy accents to the brush part to make them look wet. For the sentiment I used one from the stamp set, ‘You Color My World’, which I also coloured in used Copics. Because I felt it needed a little something, I added some white enamel accents before adding the sentiment piece to the card using foam tape.

I had some left of the panel so I cut the remainder of the strip into a straight piece and then rounded off the top with one of the ‘label shapers’ (for the lack of a better word) from the Dotted Patterns Set1 and also punched a hole with the small circle die from the same set. Fuchsia coloured ribbon and gold thread made a big hassle at the top and that was it!

One last little thing I made was a gift tag out of the yellow/green ‘tartan’ look patterned paper I made. This one was super simple (once the stamping was done) as it was a quick die cut job and add a ribbon (both a die cut one and an actual one) and done!

Ok, that’s it from me for today but don’t forget to check in tomorrow for more release teasers and then yet again on the 27th as we are having a a HUUUUUGE release day blog hop with lots of prizes and fabulous projects!

Happy crafting from Erica

You can find me on Instagram here and on Facebook here if you want to see more of my work.

I hope you have enjoyed this look at Brush Stroke Stripes! And now, it’s GIVEAWAY time! Leave a comment below, to win this stamp set, by May 26th, and we will randomly pick one winner for this set!

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for another great preview.
Thank You!

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A Blog Named Hero Collaboration

March 31, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Blog Spotting, Cards, Other

Good morning!

As this is the last day of March, I wanted to share the wonderful works of A Blog Named Hero design team. The challenge was Bling It Up.

Thank You All for stopping by, if you missed our projects click HERE to see all the cards.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Katia

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Together We Bloom with Yana

March 21, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Blog Spotting, Cards, Floral Cards, New Release, Other

Hello friends, this year at Creativation I’ve met so many wonderful people. I was fortunate enough to meet talented Yana Smakula. I’m in love with this card and matching envelope. Simply stunning.

Here’s another photo.

You can read the entire post HERE.

Thanks all for stopping by. Have a wonderful day!

Katia

Thank You Card by Kathy

March 17, 2017 / CATEGORIES - Blog Spotting, Cards, Floral Cards, New Release, Thank You Cards

Hello friends, it’s day 17 of the #thedailymarker30day and I’m so thrilled to see Kathy’s no line coloring technique used on beautiful flower from Thank You So Much Stamp Set.

Click HERE to read the entire post. Make sure to stop by Kathy’s Blog and learn more about the The Daily Marker #thedailymarker30day and for your chance to win some great prices.

Thank You!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Katia

Welcome to the Family Card

November 29, 2016 / CATEGORIES - Blog Spotting, New Release

Hi Everyone, just wanted quickly to share a lovely card by Coralynn.

Please Join Us for Instagram Hop that will take place on December 4th and December 5th. Giveaway on every stop and One Grand Prize!

Here’s Coralynn’s Foxy Card!

I’m very excited and honoured to be joining Studio Katia for their November Release which is now in the shop. Here is just one of the cards that I’ve created with this amazing release.

I wanted to create a shaker card because there are so many pretty sequins I wanted to show them off. I started by cutting out an A2 sized card panel and used a same sized rectangle die to clean up the edges. I then took the elongated octagon dies and cut out a frame, which I set aside for another project. I added a piece of acetate to the back of the panel and then added the middle octagon to the front so it would have something to adhere to. I then added foam tape to the back to create my shaker.

I stamped the sentiment with Hero Arts black die ink. I then stamped the adorable fox and two hearts with Versamark ink and heat embossed it with orange embossing powder and the fussy cut them out.

I added the shaker part to the card base and made sure it opened the right way (yes, that has happened more times then I care to admit). I added the fox and hearts to the card as well as a few of the same sequins that are inside the shaker.