Merry Christmas + Kitty Pix!

Meowy Christmas from Newton's Nook Designs! 

Hope you are having a fabulous Holiday & enjoying your time with family and friends!

Today, instead of a card I'm sharing some kitty pictures instead!

First up is this years photos - a cute pic of Newton in his santa hat ;)

And thought I'd go back and show you pictures from Newton's first christmas! 

He was about 4 months old here and so adorable -- look at that little tail! 

And here are a couple from the following year when we added Hobbes to our little family:

We are going to be spending some time over the next week with our own families so we will be taking a break from the blog  and there will not be any more posts until the new year!  But don't worry - we will be back in January with lots of amazing inspiration, our fabulous new design team and some new stamps in a few weeks! 

Merry Christmas to all of you from Jen, Jeff, Newton and Hobbes

Newton's Nook Designs - Open House Recap!

On Friday we had an open house party to celebrate our business with our local friends! I thought it would be fun to share some pix from that night. Unfortunately the first couple hours of the party I misplaced my camera so I only got photos of those who stayed later. Oops - Sorry early birds! 

Newton doesn't know what to think of the banner featuring his logo... a good place to sit, perhaps?

Setting up -- Jeff puts up our banner! So cute! 

We had our sets laid out with all the card samples I've made!

We had wine and cheese and of course, thank-you favors for the guests!

Newton is awaiting the guests at the make-and-take area!

Our youngest Stamper,  Jacob, and his mom Nicky working together!

Jacob had a lot of fun being creative with the stamps! Notice Hobbes is in the background, surveying the situation!

Here's a close-up of his project! So cute!

    

And proof that men can have fun stamping too. Here is Matt, proud of his card!

Kelly and I showing off the yummy goldfish thank-you treats!

Friends Nicky and AnneMarie saying "cheese" 

  

And we managed to get a photo snapped of Jeff and I too, with our big kitty, Newton! 

I want to thank everyone who came to celebrate this new endeavor with us. It was so nice to have your support and we really appreciate all the well wishes!!

Dryer Sheet Tutorial with Newton

So this weekend I was doing some laundry and as I changed loads and pulled out the dryer sheet I thought to myself "I haven't made a dryer sheet card in awhile.... hmmm that would be really cute on the Kitty stamp,wouldn't it? I should do a tutorial!"  I know I'm not the only crazy one who thinks about stamping while doing houshold chores, right? So here it is! Our first tutorial. 

Step One: Stamp image.  This will work with any image. Of course, we'd love it if you used one of our images from the Newton's Antics stamp set.  (you can buy it  here) I picked the sleepy kitty image. 

Step Two: color image. It doesn't matter what you use to color it. You could use markers if you'd like. I decided to use my Inktense colored pencils. At this point in my card-making process I had a special guest at my craft table - naughty Newton!  It was hard to color with him sitting on my project.... but he's so cute and since he's the kitty our stamp was based on I couldn't really tell him to go away!!

 Here's what my image looks like all colored in. I used a blender pen to blend the Inktense pencil colors:

Step Three: Smear glue stick over image. This is easy- and it reminds you of art class in grade school, right? Just cover that whole image with glue.... but don't eat any! 

Step Four: smoosh dryer sheet over glued area. Yes, "smoosh" is a technical term!  You could do this to the edges of your paper but I'm going to cut him out so I just covered the kitty. Note: this needs to be a USED dryer sheet. A new one is too stiff.

Step Five: cut out your image. At this point you could use a trimmer and cut a square but I wanted to just have the kitty image be fuzzy so I cut right up to the edges of the stamped image:

Step Six: Step back and admire your kitty! Yep - the fuzzy stamped one and the fuzzy real one! Newton has been there this whole time. He was getting bored with the card making and decided to take a nap.

That's all there is to it! You're done! Now you can take the cute fuzzy image and add it to a card. Here is what I made with mine ... and yes, Newton napped until I was done with the whole card!!

For the card I used the words "happy birthday to" from the stamp set Winged Wishes and added the "mew" from Newtons Antics! What a fun birthday card!

Here's a close-up: Can you see how soft and sweet it is? 

So... let me know what you think!  Do you like the tutorials? Would you like to see more? It was fun to make and so funny that Newton had to come and help!

Cat's are like potato chips... you can't have just one!

Although our company is name after our orange kitty, Newton, we didn't want to leave our our other furry friend, Hobbes. Named after Hobbes from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, this guy is definitely full of trouble!  It's hard to tell in the photo but he's polydactyl - that means he has 6 toes! This is a trait that happens sometimes with cats - and was a favorite of Ernest Hemingway - check out the definition on wiki here.

Newton & Hobbes are definitely best friends. They love to snuggle together - or get in trouble together. Here's a few pix of them together. 

 Check out this photo where they're staring out the window at something in the yard - probably a chipmunk -- You can see Newton's stubby tail! When he was a kitten he was in a brush fire on a farm (before we adopted him) and he lost part of his tail!

OK -  that's all on the furry friends for now - Next post I'll be sharing my creative space... Then just another week until we start our grand opening party on July 1!

Don't forget to "like" us on Facebook and enter to win the $25 gift card here.