Hello and welcome to Behind the Scenes - Meet the Manufacturers!
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 ([email protected]) 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!
Where can we find your company?
Website: www.thecraftersworkshop.com
Blog: www.thecraftersworkshop.com/blog/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCraftersWorkshop
Twitter: @tcwStencils
Pinterest: pinterest.com/jaimeecht/with-our-stencils/
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!
