Friday 30 December 2011

The Stamp Man 3rd Annual Awards!!!




For the last 2 years we have held The Stamp Man annual awards and we'd love you to join us for our 3rd year by proudly presenting your best/favourite project that you feel you have made during the year.

It doesn't have to be something you entered for our challenges, the most important part of this is that we would like you all to have fun and enjoy taking time to look back on your crafting over the last year.

There will be a random prize draw for the top prize which will be

£30 of Stamp Man Gift Vouchers, and 4 runner up gifts!

For a chance to win a prize you must:

- Display our award blinkie in your sidebar
- Link to a post about our annual awards.  Within the post you should then either show your project again or you can place a link to your original project whichever you wish to do.
- Use Inlinkz to link to your post.

The design team show their favourite challenge projects, and what a great selection there is from the team!  If you have the time, do call at their blogs to read more about their projects and perhaps leave them a comment.

Here is my favourite project of 2011


It started as an address and birthday book with a plain red cover.   The reason I have picked this project is that it has proved the most useful.  I have carried this book around with me all year and I did wonder if it would stay intact and apart from losing a sticker (it's probably in the bottom of my handbag!) and it looking a little more aged, it is still doing well.  I made it for the embossing challenge back in April, you'll find more details about my original project HERE

On behalf of the team I would like to thank everyone who has taken part in our challenges this year, it has been such a pleasure to see all your creativeness throughout the year and we hope you will join us again in 2012.

Happy New Year!!

Jill and The Stamp Man Design Team

Click here to visit our Challenge blog for more details about the awards.


Monday 19 December 2011

Shop and website - important update!!!


We are still working hard adding even more products to our website, it is hard to believe that there are over 5,000 products on there already!  We intend to add more features to help with your crafting, so please bear with us. 


Just a little note about the discounts on the website, I have been through all the products and changed all the prices so that the price you see is the discounted price, before it just gave a blanket discount at checkout.  I'm sure this will make shopping even easier!

Last posting date for orders before Christmas is Thursday, 22nd December.   We will be accepting orders thoughout the Christmas and new year holiday and will despatch these, where possible, during this time.  We will be back to full service on Tuesday 3rd January.
We have also started selling on Ebay, our shop on there is simply called 'thestampmanshop', so keep an eye open for more bargains there.

Now that our new website is up and running we have decided to finally close our actual shop to visitors, our last day open will be this Wednesday 21st December.  We will now be concentrating on the website and will also be attending many more shows in the coming year.

We have 3 shows booked for January and we are looking forward to meeting people who are local to the venues which are...

SUNDAY JANUARY 15TH 2012

Ross Papercraft Shows
Don Valley Stadium, Sheffield (10am-3pm)

SUNDAY JANUARY 22ND 2012

Ross Papercraft Shows
Rainton Meadows, Houghton-le-Spring, Sunderland (10am-3pm)

SUNDAY JANUARY 29TH 2012

Leeds Grammar School (10am-3pm) Ross Papercraft Shows
Thank you for your continued support and we wish you a happy Christmas and best wishes for 2012.
Jill and Ian

Sunday 18 December 2011

The lucky winner of the shabby chic bag is....

We have been offering a chance to win this shabby chic bag to everyone that shopped with us on our new website or in the shop up until Thursday 15th December.

The prize draw has now revealed that the lucky winner of this gorgeous bag


Containing all these goodies...



 is.....






Lynn Wild 
of Lancashire

Congratulations Lynn!!!!

Hopefully your prize will arrive in time to be an extra Christmas present.

Watch for a new competition coming in the new year!

Jill

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Website update




There's over 5,000 items reduced by 20 % on our website, some are reduced by 50%.  It took some doing but I've edited them all so it's easier to see the price you'll pay straight away rather than a blanket discount at checkout.  I think I deserve to eat chocolate now:) 




Don't forget there's a chance to win this gorgeous shabby chic bag full of shabby chic loveliness if you order before 15th December!!!!




Well done if you are keeping up with Tim's 12 Tags, our price reductions are on everything on the website so if you need any of Tim's stuff for your tags, do look on our website as Alcohol Inks are now £2.80 each for plain colours, Distress Inks and Stains £3.99, basically there's 20% off everything!


I hope you are keeping warm, it's freezing today, but at least we don't have any snow here at the moment!!


Jill x

Friday 2 December 2011

Make an Ornament Challenge - Block Art



I attended a Woodware Retailer Day back in September and one of the projects I made was this Christmas ornament designed and inspired by Woodware designer, Jane Gill.

There were so many inspiring projects that weekend but this really fits our ornament theme over on our challenge blog this fortnight.

I thought this was such a brilliant idea and a great way of using all the wooden blocks lots of us are busy removing our rubber from!  Are you dis-mounting yet?  I spoke to a lady in the shop this week who wasn't doing it yet so perhaps I should explain...  As our wood mounted stamp collections have grown and grown over time, lots of us are finding storage difficult and as more people are getting used to using unmounted stamps, it seems logical to remove the rubber from the wood blocks to save storage space.

I don't know what everyone is doing with the resulting pile of wood but we gave a lots away when we moved out of the shop to a customer who has a wood burning stove.  I think this is a much better use for them.




I'm sure this idea will suit us crafty hoarders who don't like to throw things out, we can simply alter them!  I think it is a perfect idea for a gift or an alternative to making a card, the greeting can be put on the back and can be made on any theme appropriate to personalise it for someone.

Anyway, back to this ornament, we used the following products that you'll find on our new website, it may look a long list but I'm sure you'll have some of the things.  The Clearly for Art film is a very interesting new material and I'm sure it will work really well with Jane's other large flower designs, not just the Christmas designs.


Block Art - inspiration from Jane Gill

Large wooden stamp block
Clearly for Art
Woodware JGCL551 Christmas Verses
Woodware JGS260 Festive Background
Woodware JGS256 Christmas Rose
Sakura XYKT49 Identi Pen - Black
Sakura 41301 Pen-Touch gold pen
Woodware Peel Off Pens (red and green)
Lucky Squirrel PS8/TR Translucent Shrink Plastic
Stampendous Embossing powders, Red Dragon and gold ep
Burgundy card
Pale patterned 12" x 12" background paper
Woodware Crafty Edger starter set
Mark Richards Cluster Gems - Autumn
Woodware RIB09 Olive green ribbon
Woodware GG3 Red Glitter Glue
Plier punch, Versamark pad, crafty glue, hot stuff mat, ds tapeGlue dots


Cut background paper to fit all around the block with a little extra for overlap.

Stamp and emboss the wording background on the middle of the landscape paper.

Place the end of the block on the back of another piece of the background paper, draw around, cut out and fix in place.

Use wet glue to ensure the embossed paper is stuck down firmly over all the wood surface.  Allow to dry.

Punch ribbon border with the crafty edger, the ribbon pattern comes with the starter set.

Thread the ribbon through and fix the ribbon ends to the back of the punched piece.

Fix this to the block.

Make a tag with shrink plastic stamped with a greeting, make the hole before shrinking!

Attach a ribbon bow to the tag and use the same ribbon to tie the piece to the ribbon border.

Stamp the flower onto Clearly for Art using black Staz-On ink and cut out.

Turn over and colour the reverse of the flower with red and green peel off pens.

Using a black Identi Pen, draw patterns such as swirls or dots.

Put the flower onto a hot stuff mat and heat for a few seconds using a heat tool.

Shape the film quickly to a desired finish.  Apply more heat if you need to reshape any parts.

Fix the flower onto the block with a few gluedots.

Decorate with cluster gems and apply some red glitter glue to the centre of the flower to finish.

Hopefully you've managed to get down this far and are interested in entering our Ornament Challenge.  Our design team's work is, yet again,  truly awesome!!!  There are so many different ideas so hope you will join us and share yours with us too.

Have a great weekend!

Jill x

PS:  A little reminder... All orders in the shop or online placed before 15th December qualify for a chance to win a fantastic shabby chic bag. See the post below for details!!