It’s Time for the 2014 Challenges!

Live Creatively by Suzanne Czosek

Our 2014 Challenges have been posted. The January Challenge – A New Year is active now and you can link your projects from the Typing Elements linky tool within the Challenge Page or in the Sidebar at the right. Challenges run from the first Friday of the month until the last Thursday of the month.

The link at the very top of our blog page will take you to the challenges all year. That’s where you’ll check for upcoming themes, winners, and to visit all the great inspiration and samples we’re posting.

Of course there are prizes! Each month we’ll offer a terrific prize of Stampendous products for the randomly chosen winner of our monthly challenge. Everyone can enter, but only those with a U.S. Mailing address can win (this includes Territories of the U.S.) We’re sorry, international folks, but the high cost of shipping and international customs fees make it just too prohibitive to send our products outside of the US for prizes. We do want to see your art, though!

You can check out the Official Rules  and then show us your best work! We’re so excited!

We have a Winner! – We think…

The Winner from our December Challenge – Clean And Simple Holiday Cards is:

Except that we can’t really figure out who that is. Here’s the card:

December 2013- CAS Christmas Cards Winner

But it’s not posted on a blog or even Flickr as far as we can tell!  Hopefully you’ll recognize your work and email us at submissions@stampendous.com with your name and mailing address!  If we don’t hear from you by next week, we’ll draw another winner.

Thanks for playing everyone!! Super great cards from all the participants this time!

Our January Theme is New Year – so stamp out your resolutions. We’re getting the post up soon, but this way you can get started!

Handmade Gift Challenge – Get your Links In!

Our Handmade Gift Challenge ends this week on the 28th, so remember to get your links in to our linky tool (at the right with F.E. Linus on it)(or on the challenge page HERE).

Your projects don’t have to be Holiday themed, just something you would give someone as a handmade gift. We’ve got a few more great ideas for you today!

Know anyone with a new baby? How about an adorable Baby’s First Christmas picture frame like this one by Kristine Reynolds:

Baby’s First Christmas Frame by Kristine Reynolds

How about a terrific gift for coworkers or teachers? A couple of Keurig cups fit just perfectly in this terrific project by Kristine Reynolds:

Single Cup Gift by Kristine Reynolds

A beautiful reminder of inspiration would be a lovely gift for a dear friend, pastor, or family member. Krissy Fossmeyer shares this plaque on an easel as a terrific gift idea. She posted it on her blog HERE:

Inspired Easel by Krissy Fossmeyer

For the mixed media, art lover in your life, Suzanne Czosek has created this romantic but trendy canvas piece!

Mixed Media Canvas by Suzanne Czosek

For the folks in your life facing a really long winter – this snowman journal by Jennifer Dove can help them get started on that great American novel, or their memoirs!

Snowman Journal by Jennifer Dove

Dozens more ideas are available on the projects tab of our website. The Out of the Box section presents all those terrific things that aren’t a card or scrapbook page. Check it out!! Then enter…only a few days left!

We Always Fall for Friday!

It’s the last day of our week celebrating some of the Fall images drawn by our own Fran Seiford for our July 2013 Catalog. We sure have some terrific ones this year, don’t we?!! We hope you’ll get a chance to play with a few of them, and to play along with our September Challenge – Fall Fun. All you have to do is make a Fall themed projects and then upload a link to it anywhere on the internet by clicking on our F.E. Linus Linky Button in our right sidebar! Super Easy! And you could win some Fall Fun for yourself!  Next week we’ll have some cards looking at the Fall Fun our Kiddos are having!

Today we’ve got great samples on these designers’ blogs:

Cyndi Bundy

Kristine Reynolds

And a look at a terrific sample we received for our catalog from Rhea Weigand

Steampunk Carriage by Rhea Weigand

This wonderful shadowbox frame with our Steampunk Coach on the front is full of gears and Encrusted Jewel Technique goodness! Cinderella must have gone to the ball when the pumpkins were ripe, so we vote for Fall!  We bet she Steampunked it just like this! Come back next week and see our Kiddos! They are rocking Fall this year!

Autumn Leaves are Falling

We’re still celebrating Fall here at Stampendous and still hoping it’s going to cool down! No signs of that yet. So we’re consoling ourselves this month with thoughts of crisp Autumn breezes and festively crunching, colorful leaves underfoot. Of course in Southern California we don’t really get either of those things. But we can dream! This terrific card by Suzanne Czosek gets us dreaming of Fall!! It features our Leaf Background and Kind Friendship sentiment stamps.

We sure hope you’re thinking Fall Fun and planning to enter our September Challenge! We’d really like to see a lot more entries on our Challenge page. If you are able to share it with your friends, or know of a somewhere we should be sharing it, please feel free to contact us!  Our challenge embraces anything you love about Fall. Back to School, Falling Leaves, Thanksgiving, Harvest..perhaps even the airing of the Winter wardrobe. Next month will be Halloween, but if you’re getting a head start, even that is fine!

Today we have three team members here with Autumn Inspiration to get you going. They’re using our beautiful new stamps from our July 2013 Catalog. All of them are on our website and waiting at your local retail store to ship out to you (or have you come get them!). Check out these talented gals:

Cyndi Bundy

Jamie Martin

Tenia Nelson

September Challenge – Fall Fun

We hope you’re enjoying our blog hop with our friends at Maya Road this week! We’ll be having so much fun all week. Be sure you’re commenting on all the blogs for the best chance to win the great prizes available!

But we don’t want you to forget about our monthly challenges! We hope you’re submitting your projects and linking them to our linky tool for your chance to win even more great products. Our September Challenge is Fall Fun! You can check out our Challenge Contest page for lots of  fun inspiration, but our BlogStar Tobi Crawford has a great blog post full of fall fun for you today to get you going.
Hello stampers! It’s Tobi Crawford here with a fun fall project using some products from our friends at DecoArt and Cling Jumbo Leaves.

I chose to use some glassine paper from Ranger because it krinkles so nicely (as you’ll see later).

I was thrilled to get my fingers messy in some Metallic Lustre from DecoArt. I scooped a little bit of each colour onto my craft sheet so I can mix the colours with my fingers.

Here I am applying the Metallic Lustre with my fingers to the glassine paper.

Once I was done applying the paint I stamped the jumbo leaves with black Archival Ink, then fussy-cut them out.

Then, crumple them up!

Unfurl the leaves and then they’re ready to be applied to a project!

I decided to make a couple of tags – they will make great Thanksgiving gifts.

I thought they looked great all haphazard, kind of like falling leaves.

Thanks for joining me! Have a wonderful weekend. Be sure to enter your own Fall Fun Project in our September Challenge for the chance to win!!

American Summer – Fresh Fruits

BlogStar Rhea Weigand is here to introduce our July Monthly Challenge! Want to know who won for June? Check out our Challenge page HERE!

Hello, This is BlogStar Rhea and I would like to encourage you to join this month’s challenge, American Summer!  I’m excited about it, and the design team will be bringing you more inspiration over the next several weeks.  But, for today, in honor of all those amazing summer fruits we all love,  I bring you a tutorial on Apricot Plum.

I chose to do this Stamp as a plum, but you can see the same stamp done as an apricot by visiting  Jennifer Dove’s Blog 

Let’s get started.

Stamp your image with Tuxedo Black Memento™ ink by Tsukineko® onto Copic friendly paper.  I always use Xpress Blending card.

Like flavorful summer fruit, these little plums are packed full of color!  Don’t be afraid to “Color Outside The Box.”  The Plums are colored with V12, V15, V17, RV99, R37, BV08, BG10 and BG72.  Yup, who would have thought all these colors could blend together.  Especially the BG’s into the V’s.  But they did beautifully.  The inspiration for these colors came from a photo I found on the internet.

The card base is 6×6.  Trim patterned paper 1/4″ smaller.  Emboss all edges with Fran•táge Aged Gold Embossing Enamel or Aged Bronze also works well.   Emboss lower right corner with Aged Teal Embossing Enamel.

Trim top patterned paper.  I used a wood grain paper.  Cut middle section out. Use the cut out shape as shutters by cutting in half.  Stamp leaves randomly on all shown pieces.  Emboss with Pirate Gold and Amethyst PEARLustre™ embossing powders.  I did a little airbrushing.  You can also ink the edges if you like or leave blank.

Make the doors by folding a small flap on each side and attaching to frame.  Attach lace, layer image as shown and attach to card base.

Add your wonderful Fran•táge elements and you are done. I added Amethyst and Powder Blue Color Fragments plus Bronze and Silver Crushed Glass Glitters.

Here is a close up 🙂

I sure hope you enjoyed today’s tutorial.  This is one of my all time favorites, and I really enjoyed coloring it.  It was one of those designs where I had no plan….it just happened. I sure hope you’ll try your hand at a American Summer theme and enter to win some terrific products! You can link your creation at any time by clicking on the F.E. Linus Linky Button in our right side bar. Remember that your entry counts double if you use a Stampendous image!

Happy Coloring, Rhea

Mixed media and Jumbo Daisies by Asia King

April flowers

Greetings! Your favourite Foreign Correspondent Asia here :). Guess what? The sun is finally shining and who knows, maybe Spring is finally on its way to the UK? In case Mother Nature is still unsure whether it’s time for Spring, I hope this project will make it absolutely clear – yes, it IS time! LOL.

The project I am sharing today has been inspired by Kate Crane’s all year long challenge of journaled calendars (BTW here you can link up April pages and while you’re at it you might also like to join this fab Journaling challenge at Fashionable Stamping Challenges). Kate is a very inspirational mixed media artist and her signature style is easily recognisable in her colourful and vibrant art journaling.

For quite some time now I’ve been trying to make a journaled calendar to keep track of all important dates and here’s my April page.

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For my page I reused parts from an old calendar I kept. It was so pretty that I just had to find another use for it.

My background was created with acrylic paints, Inktense pencils, Colour Wash, Glimmer Mist and Cosmic Shimmer Mist sprays. I used a brickwork stencil to add gessoed texture and to add some colour highlights.

Those fabulous flowers are Stampendous Jumbo Daisy with a free (how fabulous is that?) template.

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Jumbo flower templates – helpful tips

And I thought it would be helpful to share a quick tutorial on how I use the free templates from the new Stampendous Jumbo flower stamps.

(Click on the photos to enlarge).

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

I hope you enjoyed my April Daisies :). Have a fabulous week!

Big hugs

Asia

Becky Higgins Project Life – Stampendous Style

Ready to HOP??  Until Sunday night you can comment on the blogs of our participating Design Team Members and our blog here. Each comment counts as one entry to win our Project Life/Stampendous prize package! Prize includes 12 assorted Project Life Page Protectors, and BRAND NEW (so new you can’t buy it on our website until Monday) Stampendous Vintage Alphabet Upper Case and Lower Case Perfectly Clear Stamp Sets. This prize is a $50 retail value! And we’ll give 3 of them!! Uh Huh!! So get hopping and commenting!

Stampendous NEW Vintage Alphabet Perfectly Clear™Stamps

If you’re still messing about with stickers for Journaling Titles… well, you’ve got to have this alphabet. A stamped alphabet means never running out of a letter again! You saw them yesterday on Kristine’s layout. Here they are on a layout prepared for us by BlogStar Rhea Weigand:

Squirrel!

This layout also features Stampendous Smashing Notes Perfectly Clear Stamp set.

Now leave a comment below then HOP on over to these other blogs and leave a comment there as well. We’ll be back Monday with the names of the winners!

Janelle Stollfus

Kristine Fossmeyer

Leadonna Kimmel

Kristine Reynolds

Cyndi Bundy

Tobi Crawford

Jamie Martin

Finally – Remember that our April Challenge is still going strong!! Use Micro Glitter on one of your creations and link it to the F.E. Linus link  button in our right side bar! You’ll be entered to win some of our newest Micro Glitter colors! You can read all the details by clicking on the Challenge link at the very, tippy top of the page or HERE!

We’d also love to see what you can do with Project Life (or similar page protectors) and Stampendous Stamps and Essentials! Send your links to submissions@stampendous.com and we’ll do a follow up post linking to everyone who participated!

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!