New Product Highlight: CTMH's Oh Deer! Creative Collection

I have to say I'm a sucker for a classy Christmas look and Oh Deer does not disappoint. This creative collection is chocked full of elegant images, colors and embellishments. Lets start out by looking at the collections featured colors...some of my favorite I might add.

Classic Christmas colors with a bit of pop. When I received the elements to play with this collection I was immediately satisfied and that was before even laying my hands on them. I couldn't stop thinking of all the possibilities. Here are some of the different elements in the Oh Deer! Creative Collection.

 and here are some of the stamp sets that go with this collection.

as you can see by the red outline the Season of Magic set can be used in conjunction with the Cricut Flower Market Cartridge.

I started off with this simple easel card and tried adding the Oh Deer! Complement die-cut foiled deer to the top and then went non-CTMH with a bit of floral holly. What you can't see in the image below is that the Cricut Cut sentiment is raised with a piece of 3-D foam tape to give it dimension.

if you like the easel card you can click HERE to download the simple instructions on how to make one for yourself.

Here are the supplies I used for this card.

Oh Deer Easel Card Supplies:
X7214B - Oh Deer! Paper Pack
X7214D - Oh Deer! Coordinating Cardstock
Z3262 Rustic Home Fundamentals
Z2816 Cranberry Ink Pad
Z2805 Black Ink Pad
Z726 Sponge Daubers
Z2060 3-D Thin Foam Tape
Z3168 Cricut Artfully Sent
M1127 Hand Lettered Christmas Holiday
D1631 Curlicue Frames
Z7214C Oh Deer! Complements

Next I dove into the Workshop Your Way (WYW). I'm positing pictures of what I created although I haven't put pictures into them yet as I'm fully caught up with my Christmas scrapbooking and I think I'll use these pages for this years Christmas pictures.

Here is the downloadable directions for the WYW. Once you view it you can see I changed up the Layout 3 pages a bit and used some PML cards to break up the picture spaces.

CTMH Corporate Artwork

Here are the add on option cards. I recreated these but used a different stamp set then shown here.

Instead I used the M1127 Hand Lettered Christmas Holiday stamp set and A1170 Doodled Designs Flair. I also added Z679 Liquid Glass for the holly berries to give them dimension.

Also with the WYW they have an add on PML insert. This is shown above and you can see details when you download the WYW direction sheets.

There is also a Card Workshop that you can do using the Oh Deer! Creative Collection. HERE is the downloadable directions and the samples of these cards are shown below.

Here are more samples using the Oh Deer! Creative Collection.

Once again thank you for being a Nina's Art Spot reader/follower. I hope you have found all this information helpful in making your purchasing decisions as well as your Creative Christmas that much more FUN!

Operation Smile Spread the Love Blog Hop

Welcome to the Blog Hop and thank you for stopping here at Nina's Art Spot from Evergreen Memories and Art, Michelle Rowley's blog. If you get lost along the way, you’ll find the complete list of participating consultants on Melinda’s Blog.

Every year Close to my Heart comes out with an Operation Smile stamp set. They then donate a portion of the proceeds to Operation Smile, a non-profit organization that provides surgeries to repair cleft lips and palates in children. 

This year the stamp set is called

True Love
Set of 9 stamps
D1711 - $17.95
Cricut Compatible with the Flower Market Cartridge

recommended blocks: 2" x 2" (Y1003), 3" x 3" (Y1006) and the       4" x 5" (Y1012)

$7 of this set is donated to Operation Smile














Here is some more information about Operation Smile. 
Click Here for the video.

Here is a sample using the set:

Supply List

• D1711 True Love
• Z3240 Sea Glass Glitter Paper
• X5789 Sea Glass Cardstock
• X5787 Blossom Cardstock
• Z2810 Blossom Ink Pad
• 1386 Black Cardstock
• Z3248 Wood Slats Embossing Folder
• ShinHan Markers
• Happy Die Cut using a Cricut Cartridge or you could use the Z3258 Happy Thin Cuts

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Thank you for being apart of our Blog Hop. Next stop is Wendy Coffman's Blog, Stamping Rules.

Ready for a CHALLENGE and a National Stamping Month special offer?

Kindness Changes Everything

This year in honor of National Stamping Month (September) we are featuring an exclusive card kit containing everything you need to create a set of twenty-four thoughtful 3" x 3" cards themed around acts of kindness.

The Create Kindness card kit is available for $46.95, which is a 15% discount off the retail value. The item number is CC1145. The kit is available September 1 - 30, 2016 while supplies last.

Come get in on the spirit of the kit and fill the world with a little more kindness. We here at Nina's Art Spot are taking it a step higher and hosting our very own Random Act of Kindness (RAK) Challenge. You can pair the cards from the Create Kindness Kit with thoughtful words and put them to action. 

You may ask what is a RAK or Random Act of Kindness?  A Random Act of Kindness is a non-premeditated, inconsistent action designed to offer kindness towards the outside world. However, for our challenge we won’t be so much Random and non-premeditated.

Download your copy of the challenge today

So here is the September line up. Do what you can when you can and when you do make sure you share out your random acts of kindness at the hashtag #RAKNAS and if you use a card from your Create Kindness kit use hashtag #createkindness as well. Also anyone who places an order on the Etsy store (www.NinasArtSpot.Etsy.com) or on the Close to my Heart store (www.NinasArtSpot.ctmh.com) during the month of September will receive a Nina's Art Spot RAK challenge kit to give you a boost in your RAK endeavors. I will also be handing out locally, RAK Challenge kits just to start off the on the right foot! Now remember this challenge is a challenge in part because no one can know what you've done for them.  See how awesome you will feel after finishing off the month. 

Nina's Art Spot RAK Challenge kit contents:

1 - Complete RAK Challenge Sheet
10 - Take A Smile post ups
1 - RAK cookie recipe
1 - Envelope of flower seeds
1 - Coupon toward your next Nina's Art Spot purchase

Create Kindness card kit contents:

24 – 3" × 3" pre-printed card bases with envelopes
24 – Pre-cut 1 ¾" white circles
8 – Exclusive M-size stamp sets
1 – Archival Black Exclusive Inks™ mini stamp pad
1 – 2" × 2" My Acrylix® block
1 – My Acrylix® mini stamp organizer

TIP: Take this event and turn it into a scrapbooking opportunity! Record your RAK's and scrapbook them. Just another Journaling Prompt Scrapertunity.

I will be sharing out my own RAK adventures on the Instagram account come follow along in all the fun. Nina's Art Spot is on all things Social Media as NinasArtSpot. 

Join today and become an RAKtivist. Plus....Did you know...

Crafted with Love Christmas Countdown Continued

Ok...it's been three weeks since we last conversed about getting organized, getting creating and working our way towards Christmas prepared with what we have planned for heartfelt handmade gifts.

Have you made your list of whom you will gift? I have but knowing how busy these coming months are for me and my family I have decided not to make the usual 30 gift boxes this year and have drastically paired down my list to half of it's original size. I hate being realistic when it comes to creating but I know I want to be 100% involved in my gift making and 100% successful in completing everything I've set out to complete. Every year we give gift boxes to our family and friends full of handmade goodies. Last year I canned 30 jars of spiced peach butter and baked over 25 dozen (yes you read that correctly) cookies. I made 150 handcrafted Christmas cards and created a handmade ornament to top off all the boxes. 

Now the real work begins. Its time to calculate the remaining time left until Christmas (132 days) with how long it will realistically take to finish the decided project(s). For my project I have lots of experience with timing. I will use it as an example on how to calculate the time. I know it usually takes me 2 months to make 150 Christmas cards. So I need to start those in October. I've already decided on the design and what supplies I will need and I plan to place the order September 1st. Over the years of doing these gift boxes I have set aside the tried and true recipes for the baked goods. I need to in the next 2 weeks choose what recipes I will be making this year and make a list of the grocery items I need to prepare. I premix those recipes that the dough can be frozen. Usually I will get that done by mid November. I still need to decide how I will be packing the gift boxes. 

What are the breakdowns for your project? What needs to be accomplished first? How much time do you need to get each breakdown finished? 

TIP: Document your progress and turn it into a scrapbooking opportunity. Just another Journaling Prompt Scrapertunity!

Follow Nina's Art Spot on Instagram and get monthly, weekly then daily countdown reminders to help keep you on track to your Crafted with Love Christmas! 💟

New Product Highlight: Rustic Home Fundamentals

Today I want to highlight the Rustic Home Fundamentals. I was floored by the quality and diversity of these papers. This paper pack comes with 12 sheets of 12" x 12" paper (2 each of 6 designs). Some are in Kraft paper, one on vellum with copper foil accents.

I immediately fell in love with them. For my first attempt at playing with this paper I tackled a 24 card Thank You workshop. 

24 Thank You Card Workshop Created by Karen Pedersen

Download a copy of the workshop for yourself HERE

Now of course I had to spice it up a bit from the original intended workshop. I will of course list the changes I made so you can make your own decisions if you want to recreate these for yourself. I still made 24 cards but instead of using the Hearts Thin Cuts (Z3260, pg 79 of your AI) I used my Cricut.

Here is my Supply list:

• Rustic Home Fundamentals - Z3262, pg 29
• 24 White Daisy Cards & Envelopes - X254, pg 101
• 2 Sheets White Daisy Cardstock - 1385, pg 95
• 1 pk Enchantment Cardstock - X5781, pg 98
• Versamark Ink Pad - Z891, pg 106
• Ranger White SuperFine Embossing Pwd - Z2068, pg106
• Pearl White Embossing pwd - CTMH no longer carries
• Happy Hearts Stamp Set - A1192, 49
• Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge - no longer available

Now the Art Philosophy Cartridge is no longer available for sale but I'm sure there are other cartridges with equally usable hearts for this project. On page 26 of the Art Philosophy book I found one that will cut an outline and do a solid. I chose my large heart to be 3", my medium heart to be 2 1/2" and my small heart to be 1 1/2". Because the cricut cuts out the center on the outline you can spice it up and use the slightly different heart shape as well. 

Here are each of the cards close up from this work shop doing it My Way = Spicy!

I choose not to do any distressing on the card stock pieces. I carried that throughout the entire workshop.

On card #3 I choose not to back the vellum with the Peacock cardstock. I felt it looked too dark. 

In this image of card #4 you can really see the raised design on the kraft paper.

On card #5 I left off the white strip at the bottom. I felt it was too distracting. You can see I choose a different size poppy and saffron hearts for the focus.

On card #7 I tried using some old pearl embossing powder on the stamped hearts I wasn't thrilled with how it looked against the bright of the White Daisy cardstock and White embossing powder. On the 3 of this design I changed out and played with the die cut hearts getting a variety of different "looks" out of each of them. 

On card #8 was the only place where I found a bit of a cutting discrepancy on the workshop instructions. They call for these each to be cut at 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" but doing that as you can see left no room to leave space between each of the square's. I choose to butt them up to each other rather than trim each of the pieces down to 1" x 1 1/4".

I hope you have enjoyed this New Product Highlight! It sure was fun creating and playing with these new products!

Magical ~ Seasonal Expressions II 2016 NEW release

Its so fun to share with you the second of the three NEW Seasonal Expressions II 2016 paper packs.

I present MAGICAL!

Zip Strip side of the papers

Standard side of the papers

The paper pack comes with 12, 12" x 12" background and texture paper with zip strips. That's 2 each of 6 double sided designs. The sixth sheet being the Picture My Life cards that are also 2 sided and come in both horizontal and vertical. The Magical paper pack is item # X7209B. The Magical featured colors are Black, Cranberry, Crystal Blue, Honey, Sapphire, Whisper and White Daisy.

Magical Compliments

The Compliments are 2, 6" x 6" Coordinating Sticker Sheets and Assorted chipboard die-cuts with silver foil. The Magical Compliments are item # X7209C. In this picture its hard to see the foil but the chipboard castle, some of the stars and arrows are all foiled.

Magical are wonderful for scrapbooking those awesome Disney vacations!

Here is a two page layout I did using this fun paper set, compliments and Magical Sequin pack. The Magical sequins come with 144 adhesive backed sequins in four different colors. 36 of each in silver with a black stripe, yellow, silver and sapphire. The Magical sequins are Item# Z3214

Here is a close up of each page. The big camera was made using the Artbooking Cricut cartridge, the black camera Magical B&T paper from the packet and Cranberry Cardstock. In the center of the lens I used one of the Magical Complements stickers. In this photo it is hard to see but I used the Silver Shimmer Trim as accent strips down the dove tailed strips of Magical B&T paper. It gave the layout a bit of pop. The words Big Smiles! is a sticker from the Magical Complements packet.

Here is a fun standard sized card using the Magical Paper pack. This time I used the polka dot B&T paper and the zip strip from that same sheet. I also used the NEW Fairytale Birthday Stamp set Item # B1534 and the white Twine Item # Z3216. The ink colors I used were Black, Whisper and Crystal Blue.

Created by Jenny Johnson

Supply List ~ Inspiration (Card Confidence Book "Originals", pg 43)

1. Z7209B Magical Paper Pack
2. Z3216 White Twine
3. Z3171 Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge
4. Z1979 Black Journaling Pen

Here are more samples using the MAGICAL paper pack!

Made by: Kendra Halverson