Yes, we did! On our announcement of the Artfusion Event we planned we got a lot of comments about the location. Many of you asked us why we didn’t plan it somewhere in the middle of the Netherlands. It would be easier for you to get there and it would also increase the travel distance/time for a lot of you. Also we heard that April was already so full of events and stuff.
And we agree! So we decided to postpone the event and find a better location. We think we found the perfect place!
Artfusion will now take place June 15-16 in the middle of the lovely city of Utrecht. Being a big railways junction in the Netherlands and only 45 minutes by train from Schiphol airport we think Utrecht is one of the best places we could have chosen.
The facility (Kade Ateliers) is a canal house at the Leidsekade 17, near the center of Utrecht where we have the availability of 2 lovely, light rooms. As we see it, we have all the ingredients for an amazing creative weekend on hand here.
Check out the Artfusion blog for al the information about the workshop, schedule and prices!
We would love to meet you there for some Artfusion!
One of the new (for me) products I brought home from CHA is Kroma Crackle. I was blown away by the amazing and colorful samples they had ad the booth and just wanted to try myself.
This was one of my first attempts. I sprayed the gel with glimmer mist and then dried it with my heat gun. Yes, you know, I'm a little impatient. I like the result but it turned out very different then what I was looking for. I wanted those crisp crackles, with sharp edges, lying on top of the paper. So, time to get patient...
I applied the gel to cardstock and let it dry overnight like I was recommended. And yes, it cracked, but parts of the cracks fel of the paper :( What did I do wrong?
When I e-mailed Kroma Crackle (because I didn't read the instructions on the website) I got looong e-mails in return. They even called me all the way from Canada, just to try and help me as much as they could! What a wonderful, helpful and kind team! I learned that after drying you need to seal the crackles with f.i. gel medium or acrylic paint. And that worked :)
Wow, don't you just LOVE the texture?
So it took some patience, practice and some help from the Kroma Crakle team but finally I ended up with this little 6x6 canvas. And I love it!
You can find more about Kroma Crackle on their website or on their Facebook page. Make sure to pay them a visit and be amazed!
In one we will create a journal that can be used for whatever you like. An art journal, diary, travel log, mini album... We'll create an awesome cover using a double embossing technique and fill the album with (handmade) papers, envelopes, transparencies and tags.
Then there will be a mini album called Snap Shots. It will focus on Instagram and Hipstamatic snap shots but can also be very well used for traditional pictures. In this album you will work with Elizabeth Craft Designs Shimmer Sheets (a fun new product that can be embossed and colored to create a nice metal look) and more!
In the third workshop we will bring scrapbooking and mixed media together! You will learn how to create awesome textured backgrounds using mixed media techniques and incorporated them into your layouts. A fun workshop for everyone, whether your a scrapbooker, an art journaler or love to create off the page mixed media projects!
Welcome to a new episode of Behind the Scenes on this cold and wintery Friday!
Today I'm thrilled to introduce to you a company for which I'm designing for over a year now. They have great products that I love to work and teach with.
If you have seen my Creative Jump Start video you know how awesome their Fab Foils are and if you ever took one of my mixed media workshops you know how fabulous the colors of their embossing powders are! But there is more: lovely stamps, Melt-it powder and there is more to come...
Please meet:
Today we're talking to Tania Ahmed. Tania, please introduce yourself!
My name is Tania Ahmed and I work for WOW! Embossing Powder. I look
after sales, marketing, show organization, plus a little bit of everything
else! I love meeting and speaking to new customers and seeing how our products
inspire them to create fantastic projects!
Can you give us some background information about the company and the products you offer?
WOW! Embossing Powder is based in the United Kingdom and we have been trading
in the craft industry for over 6 years now! Our parent company is a family
business which was established 300 years ago and specialize in printing. Our
primary product is embossing powder which we sell to large card making and
printing companies worldwide.
Our flagship products are our embossing powders and embossing glitters
which have been through several different processes to be as static-free as
possible. Store the embossing powder in its original packaging and only use
paper to return the powder back to the jar. Using plastic boxes and trays
increases the amount of static that you are introducing to the powder!
What is
your favorite product and why?
My favourite products are Melt –It and Clear Matt Dull. I think they are
very unique products which are not found anywhere else in the craft industry!
Plus they are perfect for mixed media projects which are a big trend these
days!
How are new
products developed. Do you have in-house designers or designers from outside.
We work very closely with our Design Team and manufacturing department
to come up with new products and unique uses for them!
How do you
think the scrapbooking/mixed media scene will evolve in the upcoming year. What
will be hot and new, what will be out.
Mixed media is becoming an even bigger trend day by day, and
scrapbookers are beginning to prefer art journaling over traditional
scrapbooking! I can see that mixing neutrals with hot fluorescent colours will
also be a big colour trend.
Would you share a fun story about yourself with us?
I bumped into WOW!’s salesperson at a big chain craftstore and he
introduced me to the company and the products about 2 years ago. I applied to get on their design team, but
they liked my work so much, they asked to join their permanent team in their
main offices :) Dreams do come true, and it pays to take risks sometimes!
Is there anything exciting and new coming up soon?
We are super excited about our very new product called Melt-It which is
an extremely fine embossing powder, almost similar to icing sugar (Don’t eat it
though!). Melt-It is perfect for melting down and creating 3D shapes using
moulds or creating free form shapes on your heat-proof mat! We are also
releasing some new mould designs at the end of March, follow us on our Social
Media sites to keep up to date with news!
If you are the lucky winner of this give away you will receive a storage case with 6 beautiful embossing powders, a jar of bonding powder and 2 colours of Fab Foil.
How you can win? That's easy! Visit the WOW! website. Find your favorite product, whether it is a stamp set, a specific colour of embossing powder or one of the other great products and come back here to tell us what it is. You can leave a comment until Tuesday, February 28, midnight (GMT+1) and the winner will randomly be picked and announced in next weeks Behind the Scenes.
Good luck!
And here is last weeks winner. The lovely Viva Las VegaStamps plate is going to:
Congratulations Darcy. Please drop me an e-mail with your address and I will make sure it will be send out to you!
And now last but not least... If you would love to learn how to work with WOW! products then come to Nat Kalbach's and my Artfusion Event in April and take this workshop from me. I promiss you, you will love it! :)
Yes, finally we get to announce our little secret :)
The date was set for ages, the plans were there even longer, we just had to make it concrete and now we did!
The weekend of April 13-14 my sweet friend Nat Kalbach is coming to my home village Winsum in the Netherlands where she and I will be teaching together on our Mixed Media Event called Art Fusion! You can find all about Nat, her awesome colorful mixed media art and all her amazing initiatives (like Creative Jump Start) right here: Nathalie's Studio!
A fusion of nationalities, styles and art media brought to you in 4 workshops. There will be 2 workshops on Saturday and 2 on Sunday.
The exact location will depend on the number of attendees but it will be in Winsum which is easy accessible by car, train and bus.
We started a blog where you soon can find all the information regarding workshops, time tables, prices etc. and you can find it here!
Welcome to my part of the Craft Stamper Blog Hop! If you didn't pop in here because of the blog hop then make sure to hop over to the Craft Stamper
Blog first now to join in, as there are awesome prizes to be won!
My name is Birgit Koopsen and I'm a newbie on the Craft Stamper Design Team. I'm thrilled to be invited to work with such an awesome and talented team and looking forward to creating hopefully inspiring projects for the magazine!
I would call myself a mixed-media scrapbooker. I love to create layouts and mini-albums as well as off-the-page projects like canvasses and every now and then do some Art Journaling. I love vibrant colors and lots of texture. I'm always trying to combine different techniques to create colorful and interesting backgrounds or embellishments. My style goes from quite clean and geometric to busy and messy depending on my mood and the products I have on hand.
Now, the theme for this blog hop is "Looking Back". We were asked to pick our favorite project/technique of last year. Since my first project for Craft Stamper Magazine is yet to come and I therefor don't have a personal project from last year I decided to go through some previous issues to see which article inspired me most to try myself. I came across Kate Bentley's "Gelli on a Plate" article in the newest issue. I know, that's not exactly last year, but.... I brought home a gelli plate from CHA last year and it has been sitting on my desk for a whole year, not used once, although I thought it would be real fun and I absolutely wanted to try. So now I thought was a good time to do so. I spend an afternoon in my studio playing and ohhh you won't believe the fun I had. I just couldn't stop. Every print brought up ideas for a next print and at the end of the day I was left with about this:
And then I made a couple more using more different colors and layers on one print:
For these prints I mainly used stamps, stencils and paper shapes but I can think of so many more objects to "stamp" with!
Stamps are from MyStampBOX, Darkroom Door, 7Gypsies, Prima and Infocrea. Stencils from The Crafter's Workshop.
The technique itself is quite simple. You add a thin layer of paint to the Gelli Plate and stamp or draw in it, add stencils or paper shapes on top and then put a piece of paper on it. You can keep on adding layers and colors as long as you like. Just imagine all the things you can do with these prints. Use them as backgrounds for your layouts or art journal pages, create nice mini-album covers, die cut them to create fun embellishments or make a simple but nice card like this one:
To be in with a chance of winning simply leave a comment on this blog post by midnight (GMT) on Friday 8th February 2013. The winner will be drawn at random week commencing Monday 11th February.
I hope you enjoyed my post! Your next stop on the hop is Kim Dellow.
If you get stuck on the hop at any time, pop back to the Craft Stamper Blog. Have fun checking out all inspiring blogs coming next and good luck! Maybe you are one of the lucky winners! :)
Thanks for stopping by, but don't leave without checking out my previous post with another awesome prize to win, generously donated by 7 Dots Studio!
The last year I've very much enjoyed beeing on the WOW! US DT but starting this year I switched to the UK team as that seemed more convenient for me living in Europe.
I have done a guest post on the WOW! Embossing Powder UK blog bu today I have my first post as an official DT member up there!
Did you know that there is a monthly challenge on the blog featuring the theme of that month?
By entering the challenge each month, you'll get a chance to win a set of 12 embossing powders of your choice in a handy carry case. The winner will be randomly selected from eligible entries.
Click here to see how you can play along this month!
I hope you enjoyed last week's episode! Let's start with the winners of those lovely Sizzix dies choosen with random.org! Here they are:
Congratulations ladies!! Diane Bosscher, Marie-Anne Raeman, Kim H, Jean A Marmo and Anette, please e-mail (info@birgitkoopsen.nl) me your addy and you will receive your prize soon!
And now on to today's manufacturer, please meet
I love The Crafter's Workshop Stencils! I use them a lot, especially for my textured canvas workshop, which I will teach a.o. at the Intohimona Skrappays Event in Helsinki, Finland, April 19-21!
The Crafter's Workshop stencils have very versatile designs. A couple of the designers are some of my favorite artists and friends, like Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, Ronda Palazzari and Dina Wakley. (Make sure to check out their blogs too to see all the gorgeousness the create!) These girls make the most awesome stencils, as does TCW's owner and Creative Director Jaime Echt, who is giving you some fun-to-know background information and a wonderful giveaway today!
Thank you Jaime for playing along! My blog is all yours now :)
Hi, my name is Jaime Echt, I am the Creative Director for The Crafter’s
Workshop. I coordinate the creative process behind all of our products. Whether
it’s actually drawing the designs for our stencils and metal dies, or
overseeing the artwork done by our Signature Artists, I have my hand in every
design that gets translated into stencils and dies including the packaging into
which they go.
When I’m not glued to my computer screen or at my studio desk playing
with mixed-media goodies, I’m hanging out with our two kids in our 1940’s brick
house located near the Hudson River in New York, just 20 miles north of New
York City. Our eldest son is heading off to college next year, so we’re knee
deep in college applications right now.
And our youngest daughter is busy with Girl Scouts, piano lessons and
learning how to twirl a baton and do aerial silks gymnastics. Busy, busy, busy.
A little background, we opened our paper arts store in 1997 in the
little town of Elmsford, NY (a commuter town north of NY City.) All of the products in the store reflected my
personal taste. That’s all well and good if you’re a clone of me, but if you
have slightly different taste, well, then that’s not so good. I soon realized
that I needed input from other people in order to please my wide range of
customers. The same goes for our
stencils. We have been so blessed to have very talented Signature Artists on
our team who create beautiful and unique designs which complement mine. I think it rounds out our selection
perfectly. Personally, I’m drawn to the
more intricate designs. I like the way
sprays and pastes get caught in the cut away parts of the stencil. Dimension
and tone-on-tone are my “thing”.
Not too long after opening our store, we realized that our customers
wanted scrapbooking stencils that reflected the current design trends that they
were seeing on Seventh Avenue (our fashion district in NYC). With a background
in fashion design, I figured I could create something that would make everyone
happy. So I called all of our store-owner friends and asked if they would buy a
few from us. They said yes, and we’ve been cutting stencils ever since!! We did
eventually close our shop, though. It was just too hectic to run a wholesale
business, a 7-day/week retail business and have two busy kids to run after.
We’ve grown a lot in the past 15 years as a company, and we still make
everything in the USA. Our designs are constantly evolving and becoming
well-loved around the world, we are also branching out into the world of metal
dies…you know, the ones that are used with those fun die-cutting machines like
the Big Shot®, Cuttlebug®, Wizard® and many others. If you love paper, you’re going to love our
new dies!!
I think Scrapbooking is changing and growing as well. Many of our
stencils are now being used to create memory pages using divided sheet
protectors. Becky Higgins’ Project Life® is a great example of that trend. Many
of our stencils and metal dies are shaped to fit exactly into a 3x4 or 4x6
window. It makes journaling so much easier and faster with the right tools!
If you’re looking for a place to buy our stencils, check out our “where
to buy” page.
There are many brick-and-mortar plus online stores that carry our
products around the world. And if you
create something that you’d love us to see, be sure to post it on our Facebook
page, or tweet it! We’re good sharers!
Check out TCW's "Video How To"-page for amazing videos and tons of inspiration!
Here's the first on on that page to get you in the mood! I'm sure you want more after seeing this :)
And here is today''s give-away. How cool is that? How would you like to be playing with this soon?
This is what you have to do:
First visit the TCW website and/or "Video How To"-page, then come back here and tell me what your favorite product and or video is and why. Comments close on Thursday, January 31 at midnight (GMT+1). The winner will be announced in the next Behind the Scenes on Friday, February 1.
Next week's manufacturer is 7Dots Studio! Don't miss it! :)
Thank you so much for stopping by today! Have a great weekend!
I like to layer all kinds of stuff like tags, doilies, tissue paper, chipboard pieces, buttons, bookpaper, lace etc. Cover the whole with gesso, add some modeling paste using stencils and then spray paint it.
Here are 2 layouts I made for one of my classes using Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist and Chalkboards.
On the 14th I will be posting another texture canvas on the Tattered Angles blog using some of the new colors that are being revealed at CHA! They are totally amazing and I am very excited about them!
Finaly I want to remind you that today is your last possibility to comment on the Behind the Scenes - Meet Panpastel post for a chance to win an amazing prize. Comments close today (January 10) at midnight (GMT+1).
