Zoo Cards by February Guest Designer Emily Lauritzen

Today we have our first post from our February Guest Designer, Emily Lauritzen! We are excited to have Emily join us this month and can't wait to see what se creates using our products! Scroll down to read about Emily and to check out her first project below!

Hi, everyone! I am so so so excited to be guest designing for the month of January for Newton’s 

Hello and thank you so much for having me as your February guest designer! My name is Emily Lauritzen and you can find me at Scrappy Sweet Creations! I am beyond excited to be here! Newton's Nook has held a special place in my heart since they opened and I'm always thrilled to get my paws on their gorgeous stamps!

I have been a paper crafter for many years. I shifted my focus from scrapbooking to cards when I saw how happy my loved ones got when they received a handmade card. My card style is ever changing but the basis stays the same-use the products I love and create what makes me happy. I love to put together a striking colorful background and add some simple layers to build the card up. You will find plenty of kitties featured on my cards since I have 3 of those little furry rugrats running around my house. They certainly put a smile on both me and my husbands face and our lives wouldn't be complete without them!


Hello hello!  I'm so happy to be guest designing at Newton's Nook Designs this month!  Such a wonderful company that totally speaks to my heart with their adorable designs!

For my first project this month, I chose to use the Wild About Zoo stamp set!  Valentine's Day is just around the corner and this set works beautifully for this theme.

I started my card by drawing a little inspiration from the ever-wonderful Jennifer McGuire, and did a little distress resist background using the totally awesome animal print hearts in this set, Wild About Zoo!  The hearts are stamped at random with versamark onto my white cardstock and then heat set without any embossing powder.  Once they are dry, I used some Aged Mahogany, Barn Door, and Worn Lipstick distress inks to blend on an ombre background.  The dried Versamark resisted the ink and left a really soft subtle design on the cardstock.

For the banner down the middle, I used that same Worn Lipstick ink and applied a super light layer of it with a very slight ombre from top to bottom.  I didn't want that to be too dark and combat with the background, but it also didn't look right being just straight white.  You'll notice the outside edge is still white though since I did mask that off before doing the ink blending.

This super cute zebra was stamped and colored in with some Prismacolor pencils and then fussy cut with a very slight border.  I used my Silhouette to cut out the scripty Love sentiment and did a little ombre ink blending on that as well before layering it onto a white shadow and foam mounting it to my card.

The rest of the sentiment was stamped and clear heat embossed between the zebra and the large love and then I just scatted a bunch of little hearts around the tag.  This helped finish the card off with extra love!

As a bonus, I created a second card!

I changed the theme and color scheme, and did white heat embossing on this background instead of the distress resist.  But overall everything else is the same!

Thank you so much for joining me today!  Have an awesome week and I'll see you again next Monday!

- Emily