You’ve been waiting… here it is! Stampendous is proud and excited to announce and introduce our four newest BlogStars! As always the choice was incredibly difficult with our Art Director begging to expand to 5 members… that final choice was a super tough one!  I want to thank all of you who made the effort of preparing your submissions for us. All of you sent us fantastic things! I hope that when you see the submissions of these four artists you’ll see why we chose them.

If you weren’t chosen this time, PLEASE keep submitting! We can only pick four stampers, but we get to pick four new ones every 3 months! And please continue commenting on our blog posts, Twitter feeds, and Facebook page. Keep posting your Stampendous creations on our Flickr Photostream as well. Participation in our online community is a big factor in our choices (although things like design flair, coloring skill, photography and personal blog are also huge for us).  So… drumroll, please…

Janelle Stollfus

Welcome, Janelle! Janelle has a super fun blog at Rain Puddles Design.  I really love her description of her house as containing “puddles of creativity”! Boy, that sounds familiar!! I am absolutely CASEing that nice way of putting it. I am assuming her puddles aren’t waist deep like mine are, but I still like the sound of it. We were blown away by Janelle’s coloring on our Cling Jumbo Hydrangea below. WOW! It looks like a photograph! Her flair for color and her design style are so Stampendous! She also sent us super photographs, well-lit, in focus, plain backgrounds. We can’t wait to see what she does next!

Jennifer Ingle

Now, I ask you, can you look at that picture and not have to work with this girl??? Wow. Jennifer’s sense of design is just like her picture: clean, fun, and just fantastic. Her blog appeals to the “punny” in us here at Stampendous, you can find her at Just Jingle… get it? Just J Ingle… we love it!! We adored her obsession with glitter, and at the risk of sounding like there’s a theme here, Jennifer’s picture of her crafting space in this blog post just looked too familiar not to include her! We liked her clean, sparse cards that looked like something you’d pay $7 for in a posh stationery store, but we loved this example using our Deco Lady. Jennifer “gets” Fran•táge without going overboard. Welcome, Jennifer!!

Jennie Lin Black

Jennie Lin’s smile is just infectious, don’t you think? And obviously hereditary, too! I met Jennie Lin in the Copic Designer Certification class I took. She’s a patient and skilled instructor, and she uses lots of Stampendous stamps in her classes. Her blog at JennieBStampin is a masterpiece of coloring expertise. We’re so glad she likes working with our images! Jennie’s submission was also a masterpiece. She used ONLY Stampendous images, she showed us a variety of styles from simple layered cards to constructed interactive cards to the paper tole hydrangeas below. We loved that she showed us what she can do. All the samples were clean, neat, and beautifully photographed with evenly cut layers, very clear and thorough instructions including measurements, and nicely presented in an email that contained headings and all the info we requested. Impressive! We know we’ll see fantastic, dependable, on-time results from this talented designer.

Stephanie Lee

Stephanie blogs from ArtyCarty, and we know you’ve seen her name on our our Facebook page, Blog Comments, and everywhere else. Steph is one of our most active online fans, and we can’t tell you how much that helps us! Every online connection made improves search engine results and leads to more hits on our website. That means more business for us and the retail stores that carry our products! Stephanie shares our passion for Pinterest where anything cool you find on the web can be saved and found again later. She also embraces, as do we, the fantastic synergy growing in the craft world of today where scrapbook paper becomes cards and stamps become home decor and glitter goes on everything. (Ok…that’s our philosophy. Steph didn’t glitter anything, but she will when we’re done with her!) The samples she submitted are all so beautifully colored, and her eye for design, pattern, and color are fantastic. We think she’ll have a ball with Fran•táge. Her version of our Garden Beauty stamp was so nicely shaded with a consistent “light source”, then presented with  such nice touches like the pieced die cutting, the sweet picket fence, and the homey buttons. A lovely card anyone would be thrilled and privileged to receive! Welcome aboard, Steph!

There you have it!

These four women will keep you entertained for the next three months through the upcoming holidays with their art and their talent. No pressure! 🙂

If you weren’t chosen this time, we’re so sorry. It was, as I said, very close! Please apply again next time we announce BlogStar auditions!

Watch these girls with us in the coming months. You’ll notice that coloring is important to so many of our images. Our finalists have all developed skills in identifying the light source in an image and adding shading in a way that sets their cards apart from others. We don’t need you to be an expert with expensive markers, we don’t care what medium you use, but the coloring you see here is what boosted these gals ahead of the pack. Combined with fun, friendly personal blogs; clean, clutter-free photography; online participation; and interesting, innovative uses of Stampendous products, their coloring skill inched them ahead of their competition. We are so excited and can’t wait to see what they’ve got in store for you!