I am so thrilled to begin this amazing week celebrating 4 years of inspiration from Newton’s Nook Designs.  What it takes to make the leap of faith to start your own company always amazes me but wow am I glad Newton’s Nook Designs is a part of this amazing industry!  I might be a little biased but any time art can bring such smiles and joy, it is a wonderful thing and something to celebrate.  And celebrate is what we are doing this week!  My post today is longer than normal because we are revealing an incredible set of products.  Two (yep TWO) stamp sets, four (oh yeah…FOUR) stencils and a new border dies set.  And that is only today’s reveal.  Hang on my friends!  This is going to be fun!

I’m going to start you off with a fun stamp set called Winston’s Lake House.  Using Distress Ink in Broken China, I played with the “smoosh” technique for watercoloring.  I applied ink to an acetate sheet and then spritzed it with water.  Then I laid the acetate down onto Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper to get the cool water effect.  I love how it turned out!!  The way the color pools was perfect to created the dimension I wanted for the lake.  After letting it dry, I used the new Sea Borders Dies (combined with a Stitched Rectangles Die) to created the waves for our little friends.  All I had to do was offset the border die to get this look.  Fun, right??  I did the same thing with Peeled Paint ink for the ground and used the Land Borders Dies instead.  Yep…all the dies coordinate perfectly.  Then I stamped the images in Versafine Onyx Black and colored with more Distress Ink.  That little cottage is one I want to visit for sure!  And not sure what it is about the little dragonfly but I just could not resist adding it on.  The corrugated paper seemed like the perfect background for this scene to show off all the details in these new images and dies.So now on to the second stamp set called Lake Advice.  I had a ton of ideas on how to use this with the Winston set but I thought maybe it was better just to focus on this sentiment.  It is really a great one!  I stamped it onto vellum using Early Espresso ink (SU) and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to make it really stand out.  Then I took a piece of the Wood Textures DSP from SU (already a fabulous wooden look) and cut it up to make it look like planks on a palette.  I used a darker color of the same DSP for the base.

And now we get to talk about these stencils.  You should have seen the response when the DT heard about them.  And then again when we saw them!!!  Oh, they are fun and so perfect for the release.  Want to see them???  Of course you do!  I will be showing you more with them as the week goes on too.  And then check out what you could win this week!

Would you like to win a $20 store credit to Newton’s Nook Designs?
ONE lucky comment will be chosen from each reveal day to win!

Here’s how to win:

Comment on the NND blog and Design Team blogs (see list below)! The winner will be chosen at random from the collective reveal posts. Make sure to check out each of their blogs and comment for your chance to win. You will not know which blog has been chosen so the more you comment on the better your chances are of winning!  You have until Thursday July 13th at 9pm CST to comment  — winners will be announced on the blog post on Friday, July 14th.

I am so happy that you stopped in today.  Tomorrow will be Day 2 of this great celebration and I know you will be thrilled to see what comes next.  I hope you have a great day!
Stamps: Winston’s Lake House (Newton’s Nook Designs), Lake Advice (Newton’s Nook Designs); Ink:  Versafine Onyx Black, Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Broken China, Peeled Paint, Scattered Straw, Candied Apple, Vintage Photo, Ground Espress0), Early Espresso; Paper:  Strathmore Bristol Smooth, Corrugated Paper (SU, retired), Vellum (SU), Wood Textures DSP (SU); Accessories:  Big Shot, Winston’s Lake House Dies (Newton’s Nook Designs), Stitched Rectangles Dies (SSS), Misti Stamp Tool, Ribbon (SU, retired), Gold Button (SU, retired), Linen Thread (SU)