Stampendous + Staedtler = WOW!

COLORING -  It’s such a basic joy! I remember so fondly sitting down with my mom at the dining room table and coloring in a coloring book. Her page was always so neat and beautiful, and I loved learning from her how to shade and make those flat pictures of cartoon characters come to life.  Her’s are still better than mine, but I still love coloring. And Fran Seiford, Stampendous Owner and Chief Artistic Officer, is always so careful when designing stamps to make sure that we’re creating beautiful images for people who love to color.

One such group of images is our new Hot Air Balloon Trio, this stamp provides you with so many opportunities to create magically colored cards and scrapbook pages. Here’s a terrific page by Design Team Member Stephanie Lee

Hot Air Balloons by Stephanie Lee

Lots of our Design Team Members and those on the STAEDTLER Design Team have some terrific inspiration for you today! Be sure to visit each one and leave an insightful comment to have a chance to win one of the many prize packages from Stampendous and STAEDTLER being offered this week!

Jamie Martin

Janelle Stollfus

Jennifer Dove

Kellie Mowat

Kim Stewart

April Derrick

FOR THOSE THAT ASKED:

Here’s a link to Monday’s blog post in case you missed the Prize Packages.  Stampendous & STAEDTLER – Color Your World

Here’s a link to STAEDTLER on Facebook - STAEDTLER North America  There seems to be a lot of creativity on their page!

I didn’t find a blog for them – but here’s a link to their website and their North American Design Team

Their products are available in every major retailer of craft supplies (and most minor retailers).

Fun with STAEDTLER – Over A Rainbow of Options

Over the Rainbow by Debi Hammons

We’re celebrating the new Hot Air Balloons in our April Release this week, along with our blog Collaboration with STAEDTLER. Our in-house sample artist, Debi Hammons, colored this gorgeous new image with our trusty Karat Aquarelle pencils. We use them for everything here. Not only are they great for coloring, and watercoloring, just look at the cool effect of highlights you can achieve by just slightly changing pressure on the pencil! Stampendous Owner and Chief Artistic Officer Fran Seiford made a terrific video demonstrating colored pencil techniques with her favorite Aquarelles. It’s been one of our most popular videos ever!

We hope you’re tagging along with us for a whole week of fun with STAEDTLER! Since 1835 this company has catered to artists worldwide to provide the best in art products! They can trace their family making of pencils back to 1662! Wow! Now that’s the kind of history you don’t find everywhere!  Our artists and crafters love using STAEDTLER products and you’ll see why! Be sure to visit all the blogs and leave a comment on EVERY one! That will increase your chances of winning one of the two prize packages from Stampendous and STAEDTLER.

Here’s who is on your hopping path today:

Cyndi Bundy

Suzanne Czosek

Tenia Nelson

Kim Stewart

Kelli Mowat

By the way, so you don’t have to ask, we use VersaFine™ Onyx Black Instant Dry Pigment Ink from Imagine Crafts/Tsukinkeo® on Mohawk Color Copy 98 Bright White Cover for all of our samples.

Stampendous & STAEDTLER – Color Your World

Hot Air Trio by Kristine Reynolds

We want to welcome you to a colorful week of blog collaboration with the folks at STAEDTLER, the place where fine German craftsmanship meets gorgeous artistry. You’re familiar already with tons of STAEDTLER products, their Mars Eraser is legendary, and Fimo Clay is classic. We have been huge fans of their products for years, and their Karat Aquarelle pencils are Fran’s absolute favorite colored pencil.

This week we’re teaming up with their Design Team to create some gorgeously colored projects featuring Stampendous products as well. And we’re continuing our April Release features, focusing this week on our new Hot Air Balloon stamps! A product combination made in heaven! PLUS there are prizes, of course!

Each day we’ll post the list of all participating Design Team Members. You’ll want to leave a comment EVERY DAY on EVERY BLOG because at the end of the week the STAEDTLERDesigners will each give away one package to someone who commented on their blog this week. Their prize package consists of:

Staedtler Prize Package

Oh yeah!! But wait there’s more! Each day the Stampendous Design Team Members will pool their daily comments and choose one random winner for our prize package – our new Hot Air Scapes and Soaring Sentiments Perfectly Clear Stamps plus a Jumbo Handle to use with them:

Stampendous Prize Package

So get ready for some gorgeously colorful projects! Be sure to leave insightful comments that show you really looked at the projects (which means more than just “that’s cute” or “cool”) and PLEASE share on your Facebook Timeline, Twitter Feed, etc… Tag us in your share with a @Stampendous or #Stampendous and there will be an extra big prize package at the end of the week for one lucky hopper!  Come back every day for a new list of linked artists.

Kristine Reynolds

Tobi Crawford

Lisa Somerville

April Derrick

Kelli Mowat

New Elements and Project Life by Asia King

BlogStar Asia King is back again to introduce this week’s focus – the new Elements stamps in our April Catalog. These 5 images focus on a collage of several elements on a particular theme, the ones she’s chosen to use are the Typing Elements and Phone Elements. These are big stamps, meant to be the focus of most of a card.

W093 Typing Elements

W094 Phone Elements

Since Asia is in the UK, it takes a little longer to get our goodies over to her. So she’s also bringing the Elements into our Project Life event we did a couple weeks ago.  Suzanne Czosek also did a Project Life page that didn’t get included in the original event, so we’d love you to go look at it as well.

Hello Stampendous Friends! It’s time for another inspiration with Asia King . Today I am playing with Becky Higgins’ Project Life. My super talented DT Sisters have recently provided lots of inspirational eye candy for you with their Project Life pages – in case you missed it, be sure to check it out here. Project Life is all about celebrating your every day stuff so I decided to scrap about the thing that ‘happens’ to me every day….(except the weekends! lol) – my job. One of the things I love about crafting is that it’s a way of recharging my batteries after a challenging day. Crafting helps me to ‘leave’ my work behind. So you might say that scrapping about my work would defeat the object lol .

That’s why in my page I wanted to focus on the ‘little’ things I enjoy about my work place, like beautiful aubretias trailing down the wall nearby, sipping coffee from my ‘Best Wife in the World’ mug (given to me by my hubby, just to clarify!) or shopping in the new Polish deli shop at lunch time. But most importantly – all the lovely people I work with whose optimism and sense of humour really brighten my days .

Let’s start with the supply list:

Stamps: Cling Typing Elements, Cling Phone Elements, Cling Blossom Spray, Perfectly Clear Smashing Notes, Perfectly Clear Big Top Type, Perfectly Clear Vintage Lowercase, Perfectly Clear Vintage Uppercase.

Essentials: Aged Wine Embossing Enamel, Aged Ivory Embossing Enamel, Stamp N Bond powder, Sunflower Micro Glitter, White Detail Embossing Powder.

Other: Project Life page protector – Design A, coffee spritzed papers, alcohol ink markers, clear embossing ink, Sepia or Coffee Archival ink, Black Memento ink, ColorBox chalk inks, selection of photos.

1. Spritz some coffee over white card and allow to dry.

2. Cut two panels from the coffee card to the size of your journaling pockets.

3. Stamp the Typing Elements and the Phone Elements onto your journaling cards with brown ink.

4. Stamp Blossom Spray along the edges and in corners with black Memento ink.

5. Stamp the word ‘office’  in Google colours onto scrap coffee papers with a selection of alpha stamps and using ColorBox inks. Add to your photo some additional journaling and a ‘Google maps’ pin.

6. Colour the flowers with the alcohol ink markers.

7. Stamp an accent letter from the Vintage Uppercase set with clear embossing ink and sprinkle the image with Stamp N Bond powder. Warm the heat gun for a few seconds then heat the powder just until it melts.

8. Quickly sprinkle the image with the Sunflower Micro Glitter. Press the glitter with your fingers to aid bonding.

9. Fix the letter to your card with small staples.

10. Sprinkle your cards sparingly with Aged Wine and Aged Ivory embossing enamels. Heat the powders from underneath.

11. Stamp various expressions from the Smashing Notes set directly onto your photos using clear embossing ink. Heat emboss with White Detail embossing powder.

As you can see, these Elements stamps are just perfect for everyday life scrapbooking, especially documenting your office/working endeavours. Their vintage look adds a really quirky contrast against their modern ‘equivalents’ .

Thank you for popping in here today and I hope you enjoyed reading about this project. As always, I’d love to know what  you think!

Happy crafting!

Big hugs

Asia

Bon Voyage! A Travel Themed Party

For most of this week, we’ll be focused on the new Floral Stamps that are featured in our April Catalog. But first today we have a very special partnership. Carrie Harris from the blog A Sweet Spot Home has created the most darling Bon Voyage/Travel Themed Party with our stamps, and we just have to feature it!

Bon Voyage Party by Carrie Harris

Carrie’s terrific party layout covers every aspect from dishes to place cards to decor. She’ll be featuring tutorials this week on her clever uses of these designs. With Summer travel season coming up, we’re thinking this beautiful and simple project is just the ticket for sending friends off on those terrific travel adventures. Check out Carrie’s post for links to all the terrific products she used! (click on the picture above to visit her blog).

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

We’re wrapping up our week in Oz with yet more fantastic samples from our talented design team. Remember to come back next week and check out the new in our April Catalog Release!

We want to leave you with some amazing samples of our other Oz stamps

The Road to Oz by Cyndi Bundy

Floating By by Kristine Reynolds

Big Adventures by Stephanie Lee

And a few more posts from our  other talented designers!!

Tobi Crawford

Cyndi Bundy

Lea Kimmel

We Are Soooo Excited!!!

We have so much new goodness for you at www.stampendous.com!!

First, we’re going to OZ!!! So excited to be visiting this magical land! Look for lots of fun with our Design Team using these new images!

Overlooking Oz by Kristine Reynolds

We’re introducing The Lisa Hindsley Collection!! Our fantastic Art Director Lisa Hindsley has started designing stamps for Stampendous, and we couldn’t be more excited!! Look at her fantastic Jazz Cats!

Pajama Cat by Cyndi Bundy

And we’re introducing Digital Downloads! We wanted so many new sentiments for our Oz characters, our new Elements line, our tons of gorgeous new florals… we created downloadable digital files for you to add to your cards! Print them out on cardstock, cut them out, and attach them to cards and scrapbook pages. You can print them right on your project or you can use them with digital layouts and your normal digital scrapbooking solutions! We’ll have lots more info, but they’re available on our website now!!

Lion Reader by Rhea Weigand and Lisa Hindsley

Of course from Fran Seiford there are new Jumbo Flowers with FREE Template, Kiddos for Summer, New Encrusted Jewel Technique Kits, heaps of Mother’s Day flowers, even some great Safari animals and a Fran•táge Motorcycle Elements stamp for Dad.

April 2013 Catalog

Our April Catalog is now available to download as a pdf, print, purchase, or view as a flippy book online! All the April products are available on our website and our retailers around the country are ready to ship your orders placed on our website! YAY!! Stay tuned for lots and lots of inspiration!

Best of all FREE shipping on orders over $50 beginning May 1! So make your wish list today, and get ready to shop and stamp!

Easy Scrapbooking with Project Life and Stampendous Stamps!

Our Design Team has been having fun all week with Becky Higgins, LLC Project Life page protectors. The good folks over there were nice enough to send us some so that we could show you how Stampendous Stamps can really enhance this easy scrapbooking method that’s absolutely on fire right now.

Our newest team member is celebrating Spring planting in Oklahoma with her darling page! Be sure to check out (and welcome to the team!):

Jamie Martin

Also check out a terrific wedding layout from our very own

Lea Kimmel

She used some of our newest Perfectly Clear Stamps to be featured in Michaels Stores on her layout.

And our Design Team Member

Kristine Reynolds

is back today with an adorable page celebrating some really cool chicks in her life! You’ve gotta see this page, it’s toooo cute!

Tomorrow, everyone will be back with more of Project Life together with Stampendous! We’re hoping some of you are getting excited about stamping the Project that is your Life! We’ll have some really cool prize packages with some of our best scrapbooking products and LOTS of Project Life page protectors to get you going. And we’ll keep going as well…who knows what we might scrap in the future…we’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty addicting!

Ombre is the New Black – by Tobi Crawford

Ombre is the new black.

It is.

It’s everywhere: fashion, hair, home decor, and of course: crafts!It’s Blogstar Tobi Crawford here showing you how I’ve interpreted this latest trend.

First off, I have to admit to always being a fan of ombre. I have always organized my supplies in ROY G BIV order AND light-to-dark so I guess you could say that I’m ahead of the trend. hahaha.. But really, this is a trend I feel like I can do!

First off, I decided on a colour (in this case, orange), and I gathered my cardstock and found tones that worked with each other and obviously went light-to-dark.

To “jazz up” the layers a little bit I cut a fringe into the papers AND I added some Aged Gold Embossing Enamel to just the ends. How did I do it? It was easy, I just dragged the Boss Gloss dabber over the fringe and dunked it into the embossing enamel. Heat. Done. And so pretty, right?

The cardstock looked a little plain to me, so I stamped a background pattern onto the layers with VersaMark and the Cling Dream Text background stamp. I’m not usually a just cardstock person, so this helped me let that go a little..

And here is the completed card! I added a little sentiment from Agapanthus Thank You Perfectly Clear Set and tied a pretty gold bow and that was it. I think a pretty ombre background like this doesn’t need much else!   By the way, all these products are available at Michaels Stores! You could be embossing ombre by tonight!

By the way, my inspiration for this card was  Here on Julia Stainton’s Blog!

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!