Meet Jennifer Dove – Copic Genius!

Yep…we mean it! Attending Jennifer Dove’s Copic Marker Retreat is sort of like going to a military boot camp where vast amounts of coloring knowledge are squeezed into your brain, but fun! You come home both exhausted and completely energized.

A member of the Stampendous Design Team since almost the beginning, Jennifer Dove has long wowed us with her amazing coloring skill and artistic style. Her projects are always favorites with the entire Design Team and all of us at Stampendous. She’s been published many times, and now her Copic coloring skills can be yours. Her famous class is now offered online, and it includes some fun Stampendous images for you to use when practicing!

You can read more about the class on Jennifer’s Blog Post.  Here are some of the cards and techniques you’ll learn in her class!

Monochromatic coloring featuring Stampendous Snow Bird

Gorgeous Watercolor effect featuring Stampendous Hydrangea Bunch.

And  a couple of favorites she’s done for our projects:

Stampendous Sir Toad

Stampendous Nestled Bird

If you sign up for Jennifer’s class, be sure to send us a photo of your work. You can always submit projects to our Flickr group or email them to us at submissions@stampendous.com! Happy Coloring.

Tobi Crawford – Happy Couple

Hi there. It’s Tobi Crawford here again with a Blogstar post starring these fab products available at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores and here:

• Happy Couple
• Sending Wishes

To make the focal image really stand out I pulled out my Copic airbrush system and a circle die cut and added a special touch..

First, die cut the image. Keep the die on the image and grab your airbrushing tool. (If you don’t have an airbrush, or don’t want to use it, use distress inks and a foam applicator. I do that all the time and it works just as well!) Use a light color and concentrate on the outer edge of the shape.

Remove the die cut and you have a beautiful rim around the edge. It’s kind of like matting your image, but easier!

One last tip. If you have a smaller area for your sentiment than you anticipated, why not snip (carefully) the stamp apart?

Initially I was going to stamp the sentiment as shown above, but it was just a bit too wide. So now I have all of these other options with this ONE sentiment stamp!

(Stampendous Note: Tobi’s stamp was one of our Cling Mounted stamps, so she didn’t have any trouble snipping it. Jo Ann Fabric and Crafts carries this stamp in the Wood Mounted version. If you’d like the Cling Version visit our website HERE

Jan Garber – Sharing Christmas in July

BlogStar Jan Garber comes to us today with a fantastic sample featuring our brand new Cling Holly Basket stamp.

I love this new holiday stamp Cling Holly Basket from Stampendous!

Talk about capturing the feel of Christmas!

Holly Basket by Jan Garber

The detail in the little berries and leaves is amazing!

I colored the image with Copics, and cut it and the red frame out with “Spellbinders Labels Nine”,
popped it up on some fun patterned paper, and applied the whole mat to some glitter cardstock from AGES ago!
To tie it all together, I used a stripe from the same pattern collection, and extended it across the card, along with a sprinkling of the Red Tinsel Embossing Powder, Stardust Embossing Powder, and Silver Crushed Glass Glitter, and applied heat Fran•táge style!

The punched snowflakes were a last minute addition, one of which I dipped into the gorgeous silver crushed glass! You should see it sparkle and shimmer!

This is my new favorite simple-to-color, go-to, holiday card image!

Check out Jan’s blog for more great ideas from this versatile artist!

Introducing Tobi Crawford

We’re so excited to welcome our new BlogStars to the team!  We’ll bring you posts directly from their lips (well fingers) several times a week! With no further ado…here’s Tobi Crawford:
Hi there! It’s Tobi Crawford here with a cute little card featuring one of my favorite kiddos: Balloon Kiddo!

Isn’t he sweet? As you can tell, I matched the colors (Copic markers) to the patterned papers and embellishments (My Mind’s Eye – Follow Your Heart; Be Amazing) and for me, that’s the only way to do it. How many times have you sat there and tried to find the *perfect* patterned paper for an already colored image… It just doesn’t work!

So once I finished coloring I got to work on the card. I suppose I could have left the patterned paper as is but I thought it would look cool if I hand-cut a part of the honeycomb paper out and popped it up on a neutral background. I found a great chipboard embellishment (including the sentiment, thank you!) and stuck that on top of the papers. The top left corner was bare so I threaded a couple of buttons and stuck them in the empty area – it gave the design a little more balance.

Wouldn’t this be a great card for a nephew, son, or grandson?! I just adore this image… Thank you for joining me, and in case you’re curious, here are the copic markers I used: