Project Stamping Life – Stampendous Scrapbooking

Our Design Team is having some fun with Project Life this week (although at least one has threatened to turn her divided page protectors into cutting die storage!). Today designer

Cyndi Bundy

is playing with her page protectors and producing some darn cute pages of her kids’ shared birthday. She’s featuring our new Birthday Block Background stamp, too!

This sweetie will be available on our website on Monday, along with the rest of our eagerly anticipated April 2013 release. You can already find this fun image in stores near you or at your favorite online retailer!

Spring Fun – Coloring Skin with Copics – Rhea Weigand

Hello, Rhea here today bringing you quick tips on coloring hair and skin with copic markers and an even easier tip on making an ordinary A2 card a little more special.

Today I chose to play with V270 Kiddo Hop.  I thought she would be great to practice hair and face.  We will be using Copic Markers in the following colors

HAIR = YR27 YR21 YR24

SKIN = E50 E51 E53

Start with the darkest color YR27.  Lightly flick your color “away” from your shadows out or your darkest areas out.  For instance, where the pony tales gather out towards the ends.  Or, from the roots out.  Flicking does take practice, practice, practice!  I hold my marker very differently than when normally coloring.  I find holding it straight up and down and barely touching the paper helps.  Also flicking it away from me helps.  Practice on scrap paper and do it over and over until you get the feel.  Practice doing it different ways.  You will find your flicking groove…I promise.  Flicking is a very important technique with Copic coloring.  I use this technique in many different things such as flower details, folds in dresses even general coloring….all the time!!!!  So do practice

Next with the middle color, YR24, extend your darkest color but only a little bit.  Start well within your dark area and flick a little past the end of the dark marker. You want to leave lots of white at this point.  White will be your end highlight color.

Finally, use the lightest color YR 21 to extend color even more…but remember to leave white for your final highlight.  I could go into light source but I will leave that for another day.

Coloring skin is easy to learn on Kiddo’s, Fran has left such delightful areas in them to get really creative.  With E50 color the entire face. This lays a basis for the other markers to blend smoothly.  Ok, so I have to talk a little about light source.  Imagine the sun is coming from the side of the basket of flowers.  So this is going to be the brightest part of her face.

Now that we have established where the sun is coming and where the brightest part of her face will be. We can now add the shadow.  With E53 add or flick from the outside in just a bit as shown.

With E51 blend by flicking or in circles … I prefer to flick.  You will still see a little line.

Finally with E50 do a final blend where the marker lines are gently tapering to the lightest part of the face.   If you want to deepen shadows you can return to beginning of the steps and repeating process.

To make an ordinary A2 card a little more special I love to use the new Spellbinders A2 Bracket Borders.  So easy and you can use them from any angle of the card.  They also work on a 5×5

Thanks for visiting today and I will see you again next Thursday for another tutorial.  Happy Crafting  -Rhea

Check Out These Cool Projects!

Some of our Design Team have posted terrific projects this week featuring our new products!

Take a look at Janelle Stollfus‘ terrific visit to the farm:

Suzanne Czosek has been holding out on us… this terrific birdhouse has been waiting for the world to see it!

Cyndi Bundy has been playing along with our Love is in the Air challenge with some romantic embossing!

Kristine Reynolds has been getting a head start on our March 2013 Challenge – Template Fun with our Jumbo Poppy!

Lea Kimmel is getting sparkly all over with our fantastic Cling Jumbo Butterfly Trio and some Royal Blue Embossing Tinsel!

Ex-team member (and we cry every time we say that) Wendy Price has been playing with our Kiddos Birthday Perfectly Clear Stamps. She felt like coloring…we hope she often feels like coloring!

Design Team Alumni Pam Hornschu (that sounds better, but not much) played with her friends in the UK this week in a little Fantasy using our Medieval Unicorn and our Calligraphy Sampler Background stamps.

Visit them all and leave some love for them! And we’re off into another month and a new challenge!

Cre8time! Make a really fun Kid’s Project.

This year the Craft and Hobby Association (a trade organization) is launching a terrific initiative to encourage folks to rediscover their passion for crafting.

Cre8time is about finding 8 hours a month to be creative. It’s a great project to do with the children in your life, an opportunity to introduce them to a new craft, or one you’ve always loved. Divide the time however you want! One whole Saturday, two hours a week on Monday night, whatever works for your schedule, just promise yourself the time to make something. You can give away or keep the results, you can sell them on a website like etsy.com, artfire.com, or handmade.com, you can teach someone else, or craft quietly and therapeutically alone.

Stampendous has also committed to this project, and we’re providing some terrific craft ideas you can make or make with children. The Cre8time website is full of projects like this one, and more are being added every day. Join us, and get back to crafting!  Our project this week is an adorable game for kids created by our own DT member Kristine Reynolds. You can find the instructions HERE.

Critter Collection Tic Tac Toe by Kristine Reynolds

As we add projects, we’ll share some of them with you here. We hope you’ll find the time to Cre8time and reignite your passion for your craft.

Check out our February Challenge

A quick reminder that you can find our monthly challenges on our Challenge Page (there’s also a link at the VERY tip top of our blog).

Kissing Kiddos by Kristine Reynolds

Our February Challenge – Love is in the Air – celebrating Valentines, Weddings, Anniversaries, and LOVE is in full swing.

And check out our January Winner – Larissa Heskett!

New Inspiration! New Products! New Year!

As promised our Design Team has been sneak peeking our new products this week, all from the amazing mind of Fran Seiford, Stampendous Owner and Designer. Have you been checking out their blogs?

This product is all available on our WHOLESALE website for our customers already. You’ll see them on our our retail site very soon, and in your local scrapbook or stamp store. To locate a store, check out our Dealer Locator!  You can find retailers in countries all around the world there as well as online shops! We’re already shipping!

Here are some great peeks at what we’ve got for you in this realease:

Jennifer Dove

Kristine Reynolds

Melinda Gleissner

Suzanne Czosek

Wendy Price

Cyndi Bundy

Quick Challenge Reminder

Just a quick reminder that our Challenges can now be found on the page way at the tippy top of our blog! You can see the January inspiration and entries for our Sweet Kiddos theme HERE
We hope you’ll play along with us!

More Wintry Greetings for All

Yana Smakula’s beautifully clear tutorials, great photography, and adorable, doable cards have made her such a fantastic BlogStar. We’re so grateful for all of the gorgeous cards she’s shared with us during her term.  We sure hope some of you are following her blog, even though she’s in the Ukraine, Google is happy to translate her blog to English for you! And we sure hope Yana is going to stay on as a fan of Stampendous and continue sharing our fun stamps with her followers! Thanks so much, Yana, for your wonderful cards and projects and your valuable tips that made better stampers out of all of us! You are appreciated!

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Hi everyone! BlogStar Yana Smakula here!  I think this card for a chilly Winter makes such a lovely girlie card!

For this project I used one of my favourite SSC1148 Kiddo Snow Globe stamp set along with sentiment from a Snowy Short Stacks.

Lil Joker by Barb Turpin

At Stampendous we’re really excited about our Vintage Circus images. Our sweet Lil Joker obviously has a secret… and it could be just about anything. Here BlogStar Barb Turpin hazards a guess as to what that might be.  (P.S. Barb, we think that pattern is Harlequin…but we’re with you whatever you want to call it!)

Hi there, Barb here, playing Stampendous BlogStar again…so many fun new products to play with!  Is this just the cutest ‘Lil Joker’?  I started this tag with the embossed jacquard pattern of the Core’dinations cardstock because it reminded me of the little french clown. Then I started thinking, is that what that diamond pattern is called?  Oh well, it’s late and I have to work in the morning…so let’s just go with that!

Stampendous Product:

Lil Joker

Charm Collection

Friendly Phrases

Fran•táge Essentials

Vintage Children Step Card by Annette Witherspoon

Today we welcome BlogStar Annette Witherspoon back again with some of the cutest images from our newest release. We love these vintage/retro children that Fran has so merrily playing on our latest stamps. They are just a treat to color in vibrant, modern colors, or muted, retro shades. You’ll find yourself thinking, “Jump, Jane, jump!” every time you color these darlings.

Hi everyone. Annette here with a step card featuring these adorable new vintage-like images of children riding wagons, scooters and bicycles. In fact, the set is called Children Play.

I decided to break out my Prismacolor pencils to color these images. I felt like the look of colored pencils complemented the vintage images. To give them an even more aged look, I distressed it with yellow and brown tones. The sentiment is new, too, and can be found in the Thoughtful Wishes set. I added some some lace and gems for the final vintage touches.