Embellish Stitching Color Challenge :: Sponsored by Your Next Stamp

The idea to start a stamping business began when my sister Robin and I were on maternity leave and began talking almost daily on the phone about our beautiful babies, my son and her two daughters. The conversations started to get fairly lengthy as, not only did we discuss baby stuff, but we had to talk about our ‘healthy addiction’ to stamping and all our new finds that we had to hide from our husbands (oops I guess that cat is out of the bag!)

I’ve always had a ‘creative bug’ in me and I felt it was time to do something with all this energy and excitement for stamping. At first it was going to be all about the shiny cool bling and glitter paper I use to dress up my cards and scrapbook pages – that’s my little addiction! I just can’t get enough of the bling! Then as the set up began I realized we had all these great ideas for stamps and as they say, the rest is history.

‘Your Next Stamp’ was born over a dinner party at my parents place. I was all super excited about starting up my own business and my father pipes up and says you should start a business and call it ‘Your Next Stamp’. The next day I did just that.

I truly believe we have found the best illustrators and suppliers out there for our ideas. Everyone we work with has this amazing ability to take our ideas and bring them to life just as we had imagined them. Thank you to our illustrators and also to Carol who takes these incredible illustrations and transforms them into ‘Your Next Stamp’!

I feel blessed everyday to have this opportunity and hope that our fun and whimsical rubber stamps will unleash your ‘creative bug’ as they have for us.

We look forward to sharing in and seeing all your remarkable creations!

Hugs

Karen

This challenge requires you to create a project that includes stitching. You can incorporate the theme in many ways, such as a card, scrapbook layout, mini book, tag, gift bag, box, etc. The main colors are highlighted in Polaroid inspired color swatches. For suggested colors, see Papertrey Ink’s aqua mist, kraft, and sweet blush.   Slight color changes for each hue are permitted, but try to keep the colors as close as possible to the colors listed above.  White or cream are optional color choices to add to your projects to create neutrality. Outlined images/sentiments in brown or black are also acceptable for this challenge.  Remember, colors can be incorporated into your project in more ways than cardstock.

Don’t forget:

1. Use the colors in the Polaroid-inspired color swatches (featured in the image above) and
2. Use stitching (i.e., sewing machine, faux, hand, stamped, etc.)

You have until Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 11:59 pm EST to submit your entries below.

The photos used in the graphic are by Ashley Cannon Newell of BoldLifestyle Photography.

Upload a photo of your project to your blog or online gallery, such as Splitcoaststampers, Flickr, or Papertrey Ink, then copy the direct link to your project to the embedded link widget below. If you do not have a direct link to your blog/gallery posting that features the challenge, your link may be deleted. If it is deleted, no biggie, just come back and re-link the correct link! Only links left in the link widget will be considered for challenge submissions.

NOTE: **If you are having difficulties with our new link widget, please click the question mark link to get help from their blog.  They offer useful step-by-step instructions.

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We also have a Flickr Group available to share your projects. Please add your projects to Embellish Magazine Flickr group.

If you want to use the graphic above, feel free to, but make sure you right-click and choose the “Save Image As” choice to save it to your computer, then upload to your blog!

After the challenge ends, the design team will select six designers who created hot projects to highlight. Additionally, there will be a designer who will be featured and will win the stamps pictured below.  Please click on the image to see the product on Your Next Stamp’s web site.  The featured designers and the winner will be posted next week. The winner must contact Embellish Magazine within 48 hours of the announcement. We reserve the right to select a new winner if the designer makes no contact.

Ashley created a card that used hand stitching with twine.

Charlene created a clean and graphic card that used embroidery stitching and border stitching.

Maile applied her clean and simple design to create this “Hoppy Easter” card and hand stitched the eggs hopping with floss.

Mariana showcased the stamps in all their glory and used straight and zig zag stitching for borders.

Sarah created a pretty card that feature detailed border machine stitching.

Tina used faux stitching with a white gel pen to border her cute ‘chickie’ card.

Challenge ends Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 11:59 PM EST