Welcome to Behind the Scenes!
This week I am happy to announce a Dutch manufacturer of awesome stamps. Please meet:
We're talking to Louise today. Louise please introduce yourself.
My name is Louise Kolker and I am the owner of the the Dutch Stamp Company Art Journey.
I am 53 years old, married to Jos and we have a son of 24 years old who studies law. We live in the lovely village Sleen in the north-east of the Netherlands . This is also the location of our stampstore also called Art Journey. Next to my job running our company and our stamp store I also have a day job as management assistant at a HRM department in a hospital.
My hobbies are of course rubberstamping but I also love to read and with
my best friend we are keen Geocachers.
Geocaching is treasurehunting with a GPS. Our goal is to find caches all
over the world.
Can you tell us something about the company? By who and when was it founded and where is it based. Was it originally the intention to produce for the scrapbooking market or did it evolve in that direction in time?
Art Journey started nearly 10 years ago, this year we are celebrating our 10 year anniversary in the weekend of 28-30th of June. I started it out as a hobby in my attic at home. Just because the people who I taught workshops also wanted to buy stamps and stamp supplies and those were not available in the Netherlands I decided to import them and that was the the first step. After a few years of importing stamps in to the Netherlands and introducing stamp companies as Paperbag Studio, Paper Artsy etc etc and trying to hold on to exclusive rights so I could make a difference and not have the same in store as the other stores I decided we needed our own exclusive stamps. With the help of two girlfriends (Sija Teijgeler and Hermine Koster) who made the first designs we introduced our own stamps in 2007. Sija took over the designing and we never looked back. Since then we have released 62 sheets and several single stamps.
Of course my attic was soon to small for the ever growing business and about 5 years ago I rented a great building with a shop and workshop studio where we weekly arrange workshops.
What kind of products does your company offer, which are your personal favorites and why.
Art Journey as a brand only sells unmounted rubber stamps, but in our stampstore we sell a wide arrange of stamps and stamp supplies. My personal favorites are of course our beautiful Art Journey stamps.If I had to choose I really love our nature stamps, with my very favorite the sheet called Nature Flowers. Saying that I also love the stamp sheet Willy Helene as that is the name of my mother, now 85 years old but showing her as a girl of 12 years old, but that is more sentimental value. Also the sheet Butterfly wishes has a little boy on it. That is our son Ben when he was 2,5 years old. You can imagine that those are very special for me.
How are new products developed. Do you have in-house designers or designers from outside.
Nearly all our stamps are designed by Sija Teijgeler, but as she has
moved on to other activities we have a few new freelance designers.
Next to the designers of the stamps, we have a very talented and active
designteam who make wonderful artwork with our stamps. These ladies are really
great and I can’t thank them enough for there inspiring work. They show there
work on their blogs and on our design team blog and our Pinterest account.
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.
Rubberstamping is an art of all times. As it has so many possibilities and can be incorporated in all kinds of art such as for instance scrapbooking and mixed media, it will evolve and find more and more artists that will want to use rubberstamps.
Is there any exciting news you want to share with us?
This year we will release at least 6 new sheets and are looking into the possibilities in selling our stamps wholesale in countries outside of Holland.
Where can we find your company?
Blogs:
http://artjourneydesign-team.blogspot.nl/
http://www.followmeonmyartjourney.blogspot.nl/
Some projects created using Art Journey stamps:
And here is this weeks give away:
Art Journey is giving away not one but 2 beautiful sets of stamps. So 2 lucky people are going to win these 3 sheets:
Oh my, who would not love to win these? I sure would!!
How you can win? That's easy! Visit the Art Journey website . (The website can be read in Dutch, German and English). Find your favorite Art Journey stamp set and come back here to tell us which it is and why. You can leave a comment until Tuesday, March 14, midnight (GMT+1) and the winner will randomly be picked and announced in next weeks Behind the Scenes.
And now it't time to annouce the winner of the previous Behind the Scenes:
Congratulations Sigrit! Please e-mail me your address and you'll receive your prize soon! :)
Thank you all for stopping by!
Enjoy your Friday and have a wonderful weekend!
