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 Staedtler Designers 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

Would you like a spot of Tea?

Our Royal Tea Time stamps are so fun to color, fill with glitter, emboss, etc. They just add an elegant, Fran•táge touch to your party invitations, cards for Mum, and general friendship greetings. When combined with our Digital Downloads Royal Tea Time 1 and Royal Tea Time 2 you can make stunning invites and clever greetings with these great images. Best of all, with FREE Shipping on U.S. retail orders over $50 you can get the whole set and sip in style!

Keep Calm by Cyndi Bundy

Tea Time by Stephanie Lee

Our clever Design Team is at it again with more fantastic examples of this terrific bunch of images!

Janelle Stollfus

Lea Kimmel

Kristine Reynolds

Chalkboard Teapots with Tobi Crawford

This week’s focus on new stamps from our April Release is our fun Teapot series! Fran has just outdone herself designing regal, elaborate, fun, Fran•táge images fit for inviting the Queen to tea!  Plus, we’ve created Digital Downloads of fantastic phrases, invitations, and all time favorite, classic Stampendous images so you can have tea parties all summer long!  Royal Tea Time 1  and   Royal Tea Time 2  Here, BlogStar Tobi Crawford demonstrates a fun technique to get that trendy chalkboard look with our new teapots. At the bottom you’ll see links to other Teapot images our Design Team have posted on their blogs! Take a look:

Hi there! It’s Blogstar Tobi Crawford here with a quick tutorial on the ever-so-popular

“Chalkboard Technique!”

It’s inspired by the beautiful chalkboard art we now see all over the media, print, and of course Pinterest. What you may not know is that you don’t need stamps that are specifically made for the chalkboard look, and you may not know that it’s super easy!!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Supplies: black cardstock, VersaMark pad, Detail White Embossing Powder, white pigment or hybrid ink, and a stamp. Today I’m using Cling King Teapot and Cling Kettle On. (Not shown: white Sharpie)

1. Step one – stamp teapot with VersaMark and cover with embossing powder. Heat until shiny. Once the embossing powder has cooled doodle a white frame around the teapot with a white Sharpie.

2. Using your finger, smudge some white ink around the image to give the black cardstock that “chalky” look.

3. Cut out the chalkboard you’ve created.

4. Find some fabulous coordinating papers and create a card!

That was easy, right? I just LOVE this chalkboard trend and every time I play around with a new image I wonder if it would look good done with this technique – and this teapot (and sentiment) look fab!  Now check out what other Design Team members have done with these Teapots:

Jamie Martin

(an earlier sneak peek post)

Jamie Martin (new post)

Kristine Reynolds

Artist Elements by Rhea Weigand

Quick Stampendous Note: If you’re going to put “everything but the kitchen sink” on a gorgeous canvas like BlogStar Rhea Weigand has done in this post, you should do it while our website is offering FREE Shipping on retail orders $50 or more shipped to a U.S. Mailing Address!!

Hello, this is Rhea sharing one of my favorite new releases from Stampendous.  I chose to design Artist Elements  on a 5×5 canvas.  This little canvas has everything on it but the kitchen sink.   Layers of tinted Fast Finish, Layers of card stock and bunches of aged embossing powders as well as, Fran•táge elements!!!

Yes, it includes one of my favorite things, tinting Fast Finish Decoupage.  Fast Finish is a thin and fast drying decoupage by Beacon.  Tinting it is easy.  In a small container pour a little Fast Finish.  Put a few drops of dye in.  The more ink the darker the decoupage.

For this project we are going to use.  Dusty Concord, Peeled Paint, Fired Brick and Faded Jeans.

Apply clear Fast Finish to the canvas and the back side of the paper to apply to canvas.

Only use the tinted Fast Finish on the top of the paper.  Tear paper and do a quilted sections covering the canvas.

Stamp the image with Memento Ink

Dry brush color on the image with these Distress colors.  I like to use chalking applicators from JoAnn’s 

Before we start embossing.  Need to cut apart the Make Art from the rest of the image.  Both this sentiment and brushes will need to be layered with matching card stock and attached to the canvas as shown.

Because we are working on a canvas using Boss Gloss and applying with a brush will work best.  Start by doing the edges with Aged Gold

With Aged Marine, Wine, Scarlet, Ochre, Hunter emboss little puddles leading up to and on the tips of the brushes.

Finally add all of the wonderful elements.  Apply Aleene’s Paper Glaze and spread with finger or tip of bottle.  Sprinkle  white mica first.  Here are the elements used:

• Canary color fragments
• Purple color fragments
• Hunter color fragments
• Marine blue color fragments
• Royal blue crushed glass
• Green crushed glass glitter
• White mica fragments

Elements – NEW for April 2013

Our newest Fran•táge images for Spring 2013 are our wonderful new Elements images.  These are terrific collages of various images on one theme. And our Design Team really had a great time with these! Our Phone Elements can create anything from a terrific card to say “miss you! call me!” to a stylish phone message center! This would make a terrific Mother’s Day image as well for those of you with moms who love their phones!

Phone Elements by Kristine Reynolds

Phone Elements by Cyndi Bundy

Phone Elements by Suzanne Czosek

Check out the cool Elements projects our Design Team Members have posted so far this week:

Kristine Reynolds

Lea Kimmel

Jamie Martin

Kristine Reynolds(2)

Cyndi Bundy

Check back tomorrow for more fabulousness with our new Elements! AND – Be sure to check out our May Challenge – we’d love to see you participate! The prizes are amazing!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We’re Celebrating Flowers this Week!

Our April Catalog is just bursting with new blossoms of so many varieties for your Mother’s Day, Birthday, Get Well, Sympathy, and All Occasion stamping! Get ready to scrapbook your Spring Garden, or just enjoy a bouquet of gorgeous blooms. Our Design Team LOVES to stamp and color flowers, so you’ll see lots of terrific samples on their blogs this week! You can get yourself a whole garden full with our FREE Shipping offer! Add some of our new Digital Downloads, too! There’s a terrific set of sentiments perfect for all our new floral stamps – Flowery Phrases Digital Download

Among our new flowers are three brand new Jumbo Cling Flowers. We’re very excited to be able to continue to offer these with the FREE templates so that you can mask off the flower or it’s surroundings for all sorts of terrific effects. Here our own National Sales Manager  (and Decorative Painting guru) Tammie Wilson has created a fantastic wooden frame featuring the new Jumbo Bird of Paradise!

Jumbo Bird of Paradise Frame by Tammie Wilson

Jumbo Calla Lily Pail by Janelle Stollfuss

Jumbo Cling Rubber Peruvian Lily Scrapbook Page by Suzanne Czosek

BlogStar Tobi Crawford has created a fantastic tutorial today demonstrating a great use of the free template in each Jumbo Cling Rubber Flower set.  Check it out here:

Tobi Crawford

Then take a gander at these other great floral projects using new flowers from our April Catalog Release (be sure to leave some sweet comments on their blogs!)

Arty Carty 1

Arty Carty 2

Jennifer Dove

Kristine Reynolds

A bit of Housekeeping -

Did we mention FREE shipping? Enjoy FREE shipping on our website at www.stampendous.com on retail orders over $50 shipping to U.S. addresses until July 31! We can’t wait to see what you make with our products!! (be sure to share on our Facebook Page, Flickr Group, or email us at submissions@stampendous.com)

Winners – we’re still waiting for some winners of the Project Life event to contact us with mailing info. Hint: if you don’t want your prize, we know Barb Macaskill wants it!  Email your mailing info to submissions@stampendous.com so we can get your prizes on their way!

Remember tonight is the deadline to link to your Micro Glitter projects for our April Challenge. May’s Challenge is Fabulous Florals and starts Friday!

Fabulous Florals Galore!

Our new April Catalog is chock full of gorgeous flowers for you to use for any occasion! Birthday? – Flowers are great! Get Well? – Of course you’ll send flowers. Mom? – Yup! Flowers are her fave! Anniversary? – Of course! Flowers just say it all for every occasion! And our Design Team did an amazing job on the flowers in this catalog, too! (Plus, yeah, there’s FREE shipping on orders over $50 on our website! Get a whole garden full while you can!)

Jumbo Peruvian Lily by Cyndi Bundy

Spring Bouquet by Jennifer Dove

Fuschia by Kristine Reynolds

Snapdragons by Suzanne Czosek

The potential for gorgeous flowers is just unlimited! Our botanical fruit images are fantastic for any occasion as well. Check out the things our terrific Design Team have posted so far this week!

Jennifer Dove

Rhea Weigand

Kristine Reynolds

Cyndi Bundy

Can you say FREE SHIPPING??!!

We’re so excited to announce FREE SHIPPING on retail orders over $50 on our website through July 31!  (U.S. orders only)

Your orders will still be filled by local retailers or our warehouse, same as always, but now you can go crazy, because shipping will be FREE!

April 2013 Catalog

Make your shopping list from our newest April Catalog images,

Stampendous Micro Glitter

our January Catalog Essentials,

Surfer Kiddo by Kristine Reynolds

collect all the Kiddos you’ve been wanting,

Jumbo Bird of Paradise by Cyndi Bundy

or snag our limited edition Jumbo Cling Rubber Flowers while they’re still in stock!

Stuftainers™ Thick

Looking for an amazing storage solution? Check out our Stuftainers™ and save big on these items that normally have higher shipping charges!

You don’t need a promo code, your free shipping will be credited as soon as your retail, U.S. order hits $50!

Visit www.stampendous.com today and start your shopping list! You can use our Wish List at the top of the home page to keep track of things you’d like to have! Items can be added to your cart from your wish list or moved to your wish list from the cart!

April Flowers bring….

Our April catalog is just chock full of gorgeous florals for spring, and our Design Team just loves to color flowers! But then we’ve always said, get yourself some good flowers and some great greetings, and you can make cards for any occasion.

First up today, then incomparable Suzanne Czosek made this fantastic card for our April Catalog using our Vase Bouquet, Seed Background, and Soaring Sentiments :

Bouquet Vase by Suzanne Czosek

This Vase with its spring bouquet proved to be one of the favorite items to color!  Here it is by Jennifer Dove:

Vase Bouquet by Jennifer Dove

and Kristine Reynolds made a fantastic project with it as well!

Vase Bouquet by Kristine Reynolds

You can see there are a lot of ways to go with this terrific stamp. Several of our Design Team will be  posting terrific florals all week this week. Fabulous Florals is also our May Challenge, so grab your flowers and wow us with your creations. Remember, if your flower images are Stampendous your entry will count twice. You can begin submitting your challenge projects on Friday.

Meanwhile, check out the additional, terrific flower creations on these team members’ blogs and leave them some love!

Suzanne Czosek

Jennifer Dove

Jamie Martin

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).