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!
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 …
The fun, iridescent purple flowers dressing up Kobi are from the Siberian Iris flowers.
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.
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
4 comments
Kobi looks cute all of them ! Wonderful cards 🙂
Just wonderful cards Kelly, they are adorable. A great tip on rotating the stamps to vary the look.
BTW, have you ever done the draw for the Ellen Hutson gc? I have been checking for weeks and couldn’t see it anywhere. (Not sure if I it was posted in another place on your blog or their’s but either way I never saw it??? Just curious.)
Hi Teresa! Thanks so much for your comment! The draw was going to be from EH, so let me check with them!
OMG!! The family of bears is genius!!! Great work!!