Inspiration Week: Introducing Summer Picnic & Comfy Creatures

Hello there!  Today is all about ideas featuring our Comfy Creatures and Summer Picnic sets!  I hope you will take a look at all the fun ideas and sign up for today's giveaway.  

I found myself turning to Comfy Creatures over and over again while working on my cards for this release.  It has so many versatile images that compliment our other sets for fun scene building options.  While I sadly forgot to use them together for my cards this week, the new Comfy Creatures set was designed to mix and match with our previously released Sending My Love stamp set for endless combinations.  I also added two tails to the new set which can be added to either side of the body which work great for the cat and monkey faces.

Up first is a fun scene using the Summer Picnic stamps and the grassy border stamp from Sunny Sentiments.  I might have gone a little overboard with all the images I layered on this card, but it was hard to stop with all the cute choices available in this set! 

My second card features the boy body in swim trunks and the hula girl body from Comfy Creatures.  I decided to turn them into monkeys using the two different faces provided in the set and stamping their tails so that they could intertwine with each other.  

I cut my card base using the Stitched Heart Dies and masked off my beach and waves using Post-it Tape and our new Wavy Border dies featured on Monday (inked up from top to bottom in Tumbled Glass, Tea Dye and Salty Ocean distress inks).  After the ink was dry I heat embossed my greeting using the "aloha" sentiment from the new Island Getaway stamps.

Up next is another card featuring the different critters from Comfy Creatures.  I inked up each rectangle in my grid design using Twisted Citron, Mermaid Lagoon, Mustard Seed and Peacock Feathers distress ink.  I then stamped a subtle print in the background of each using some of the smaller images from the set (borrowing the leaf from Island Getaway).  When the distress ink was completely dry I heat embossed my sentiment in white.  

These critters were designed to be able to stamp together in a single layer, but I accidentally made a coloring mistake on my little monkey's head so I ended up stamping a second head and layering over the top with foam tap.  I love the dimension it gives him.  To bad he didn't fall in the center to make things look a little more balanced.  ;)

My next card uses the tree from Summer Picnic (LOVE the versatility of that tree), the monkey and sentiment from Comfy Creatures, the grass from our Sunny Sentiment dies and our Fishtail Banner dies.  

I was inspired to color my grass using a technique similar to the one shared by Nina Trapani in her tutorial HERE.  I included two different bananas in the comfy creatures set: one by itself and one for the creature to hold.  I used the extra banana in the set to stamp a random pattern in my background to reinforce the sentiment.

My next card is a simple take on the Summer Picnic set.  I paired the fun little ant images with the trail from the Backyard Bugs stamps.  I then cut a simple frame from patterned paper on my paper trimmer and stitched it to the perimeter of my card.

My last card uses the squirrel and tree (cut in half) from Summer Picnic, the birthday sentiment from Comfy Creatures, the banner and "let's celebrate" sentiment from Stars and Stripes and the grass border from Sunny Sentiments for a fun birthday card.  I think this would be super fun done up with a Fourth of July take too!  ;)

And here's another look at the new products featured on today's cards...

 

 

Would you like to win some of these fun new products?  Today we are giving away the Summer Picnic and Comfy Creatures stamps to one lucky winner using the Rafflecopter below.  If you're just joining us, make sure to check out our giveaways earlier in the week.  We will also be back tomorrow with one last prize featuring our graduation set.  

Winners will be announced here on the blog on Sunday, April 3rd.  :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway
I hope I've helped jump start your creative juices.  I can't wait to see what fun projects you create with all these set.  Just a reminder that all our new products will be available for sale first thing tomorrow morning in our online store.  ;)