September Challenge: Stamps & Markers

Welcome to the September challenge! We’d love it if you’ll join us for the entire month! Each month we have a theme, and for September, our theme is STAMPS & MARKERS. You can use stamps by other companies to create projects that you enter to our challenges, although if you have our stamps in your stash, we'd be tickled if you use them -- and we've tweaked the prize a bit to encourage you to use our stamps if you have them!

Put your own spin on this month's theme -- as long as you use stamps in your projects (as opposed to projects without stamping whatsoever) and you use markers (alcohol markers like Spectrum Noir and Copic, Distress markers, Memento markers, Sharpies, and basically any kind of marker), we'd love to see them!

PRIZE

The winner (as voted by the design team) receives 2 stamp sets of her choice if her project has STAMPlorations stamps in it. If there is no STAMPlorations stamp in the winning entry, the winner receives 1 stamp set of her choice. The other stamp set will go to a participant who used STAMPlorations stamps in her project. The winner also gets to be a guest designer in our next monthly challenge. (Visit the shop to see the available stamp sets.)

A TWIST IN OUR CHALLENGES

Participate in all 3 challenges we host this month and you'll be in the running to win a $15 gift certificate to use on products on the STAMPlorations shop.

INSPIRATION PROJECTS

Our guest designer is Cris G., who was our July Challenge winner. She created an amazing card for this month's challenge.

Guest Designer

CRIS G.

using Vignette: Celebrate Artsy and Sketched: Simple Gift

"First of all, I would like to thank to Shery and the design team for choosing my card among so many fabulous entries [last month], and to say how much I appreciate being here for my first assignment as a guest designer. A heartfelt thank you! I've been a crafter all my life, in different disciplines…maybe because I'm a Gemini; I have a (very) wide range of interests and like to try my hand in many of them. I fell in love with paper crafting especially when I saw one of Kristina Werner cards sometime during the fall of 2012, and I started making cards myself in March 2013. Since then I haven't stopped because this is a real pleasure to me, although sometimes I feel the pressure of competition…that is the part I don’t like that much. One of these days, you will see the blog my sweetheart gave to me, but it's in a kind of limbo for now, coming to life. For now I'm on my Flickr gallery."

And here are the projects that the STAMPlorations girls created. Clicking on our names will take you to our personal blogs where you can read more about how we created our projects. We hope they’ll inspire you and we're excited to see what you create!

MARIA F.

using SENTIMENT BUILDERS: Thank you

DEBRA

used Sketched: Cupcake

KYLIE

using Holiday Sketches: Christmas Bells and Vignette: Christmas Block

VICKI

using Bloom Sketches

SHIRLEY

using Holiday Sketches: Christmas Flower

MONIKA

using Holiday Sketches: Christmas Candles, Holiday Sketches: Christmas Flower, and Patchwork Frenzy: Graphic Squares

DEEPTI

using Bloom Sketches

CORNELIA

using Vignette: Retro Mod Shapes and Bloom Sketches

NONNI

using Bloom Sketches and Boxed Blooms

SHERY

using Bloom Sketches

READY TO PLAY?

• Create a card, tag, mini album/scrapbook cover, layout, home decor item, or any paper craft that features STAMPS & MARKERS. Any style is welcome — CAS, shabby chic, vintage, grunge, and so on. Post your creation on your blog and submit it by 11:55 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, September 30. Don’t have a blog? You can post a photo of your project on your Pinterest page, Flickr, or any public online gallery. (Please note: If the theme isn't obvious in your submission, we reserve the right to remove your entry.)

• You must use stamps (rubber, cling, clear, digi — from any company) in your creation(s).

• Copy the link of your blog entry where you have your project posted and enter it to the linky found at the end of this post. Remember to link directly to your blog post, not just your blog URL. (This will make it easy for us to find your submission and leave a comment. Please turn off word verification as well.)

• Include a text link back to this challenge post in your blog post and encourage other paper crafters to participate.

• You can submit a maximum of 3 entries for this challenge.

• You can submit your creation(s) to other challenges — as many as you want.

• Be a follower of our blog to qualify for the prize.

• And lastly, have a great time creating your project!

We'll announce the winner and top picks on Thursday, October 2, Sunday, October 5, here on the STAMPlorations™ blog and on the All About Scrapping page on Facebook. That’s it…we look forward to seeing what you create! 

~ The STAMPlorations™ girls

PS: The September Christmas Pre-Release Sale ends tonight! All 5 Christmas-themed stamps are available as a bundle at 29% off. These stamps won't be available at this price next week when they're officially released. We've only got a few bundles left. Get these stamps HERE.

PPS: Keep your eyes peeled -- we're going to have a stamp release blog hop next week!