What a journey…

Nov 21, 2011

Way back in 2005 never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would end up where I am today. I have been blessed with guidance, encouragement, deter­mi­na­tion, a lit­tle bit of tal­ent and end­less sup­port from fam­ily and friends. I am lucky and I know and appre­ci­ate it greatly. I try my best to give back and help those try­ing to break into this indus­try and feel a bit of my suc­cess is pos­i­tive Karma com­ing back my way.

So the next bit of fun that has come my way is work­ing with these three won­der­ful ladies… Ronda Palaz­zari, Kris­tii Lockart and Karin Aguirre. They are mem­bers of my “Anti­quated Col­lec­tion” Design Team. Yes, I am now coor­di­nat­ing my very own Design Team. I know there is no way I can show the ver­sa­til­ity of my new stamp line all by myself.

Ronda will show you how per­fect these stamps are for those who like to layer and layer with gesso, inks, mists and paint… you know all the messy art jour­naler types. I try so hard to get past the messy hands but yikes, I just can’t do it. I really hope Julie Fei-Fan Balzer is not read­ing this. I love how Ronda lay­ered and stamped the pocket watch and gen­tle­man from the Fine and Dandy stamp set. I think this guy and the pocket watch stamped just min­utes away from mid­night are per­fect for her “T’was the night before Christ­mas” card.

Kris­tii will show you how per­fect these stamp sets are to use with Copic Mark­ers to cre­ate beau­ti­ful cards with a vin­tage flair. I love how Kris­tii used Dr. Warner’s Corset stamp to accent the snowflake cen­ter. I never would have thought of punch­ing out the stamped image and plac­ing it in the cen­ter of a snowflake. Never in a mil­lion years I tell ya.  And the bird from the Styl­ish and Fash­ion­able stamp set cut out ever so pre­cisely works per­fectly as a win­ter dove accent atop the glit­tered snowflake.

Karin will show you how to cre­ate dreamy, sug­ary want to eat them up cre­ations. I love how she uses glit­ter (sur­prise I know) and cre­ates paper mosaics by incor­po­rat­ing vin­tage wall­pa­per and pat­terned papers, crepe paper and rib­bons into her tags, cards and mini albums. Plus read­ing her blog about her sons espe­cially one (nam­ing no names) who runs up an $80.00 lunch bill is hilar­i­ous. Here you can see two tags she cre­ated using the Fine and Dandy, Styl­ish and Fash­ion­able and Soci­ety Lady stamp sets.

As you can see these stamp sets are per­fect for any style and are just wait­ing to be inked, painted, glit­tered, misted etc. I plan on hav­ing an “Anti­quated Col­lec­tion” inspi­ra­tion gallery so when you cre­ate a project using my stamps please send a few pho­tos my way. I would love to post them so they can be shared with every­one. And you never know you just might be asked to be a guest designer.

Hugs!