STAMPtember™ with Memory Box

Happy hello to you all today! Happy Sunday :) This is one of my favorite days of the week. It tends to be a low-key kind of day - often spent with family, running errands, working on fun projects. It's a day we get the opportunity to tie up the loose ends from last week and plan ahead for the next. I like those kinds of things.

Welcome to the 16th day of our STAMPtember™ celebrations! Today, we are featuring a wonderfully creative and stamper-friendly company "Memory Box". Memory Box is in their 18th year in business and started out by selling 3 colors of cardstock to local stores! As a family based company, Memory Box's creator, Dave Brethauer is also the product designer for Memory Box. It's good to work with good people and the "Memory Box" family are good people. Memory Box has a line of stamps, papers, and dies that we sell in our store.

Stay tuned because Dave has a special $5 off any purchase coupon code for you if you check out his blog!

Check out what Dave has been working on using some dies from the new Holiday 2012 collection (Colette Ornament and Drop Ornament used below):

From Dave:

You'll start this fast and easy project by getting a piece of watercolor paper and wetting it with plain water. I then painted it with two colors of paint - a bright pink and deep red watercolor paint. (you could also use Tim Holtz Distress Markers) Adding the paint directly to a wet surface allows the two colors to blend much more easily than if you tried to blend them on dry paper - so remember to wet the watercolor paper first. Allow the paper to dry completely - at least an hour, or you can hurry the process along by gently warming the paper with an embossing gun.

Once the area is dry, you'll die cut the Drop Ornament out of the painted paper. I designed the drop ornament with a clear grid so that you could easily see where the die was going to cut - and the grid really helps line up details.
I did another swatch using shades of green paint - same technique using the wet paper and paints...

Try doing a few color schemes to see which ones you like - then you can decide on a winner before putting together your final project!

The next step is to die cut out the overlay using the Colette ornament...
When I designed the Colette Ornament die, I wanted to give the idea of gentle loops across the die and I was so please with how intricate they turned out. I cut the shape out of white cardstock, but you could use any color you like!
It's easy to assemble the layers - just tape the Drop Ornament onto a card and then carefully glue the Colette Ornament on top - I used toothpicks to apply crafters glue to the back of it in little tiny dots. And see the cap of the ornament? I cut it out of some silver cardstock. I'm not sure which I like better, the red ornament or the green ornament. What do you think?

We are honored to also feature a collection of exclusive dies manufactured by Memory Box in our Simon store. The Simon Says Stamp series of dies are a treasure to us. It's been tremendously exciting to see these visions come to life! What is most exciting is that we have many designers involved in the creation of these dies - including our very own teammate, Kristina Werner. Strategically planning how to partner stamps and dies together has been a BLAST! Below Kristina shows how she incorporated 2 Simon Dies named Holiday Shapes and Ribbon Banner with a sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp Handwritten Sentiments stamp set that she designed in her own handwriting.

I know this is STAMPtember™ (emphasis on stamp) but I could not wait to share the card below with you that Kristina made this week! Can you believe she only used paper, dies, washi tape and liquid pearls to make this!? I totally want to use this idea for my Christmas cards this year. Aren't the liquid pearls BEAUTIFUL!? She used the Mod Tree die to create the positive and negative imprints below.

Looking for stamp and coordinating Die sets? Maybe these will wet your whistle :)

InLinkz.com

Want to win a Simon Says Stamp product Prize pack worth $100!? Love makes the world go 'round:) All you need to do is like SimonSaysStamp.com on facebook and link back to this blog post. OH YEAH!