The Never-Ending Anything Goes Challenge Winners!

Hey, stamping friends! We hit 150 projects linked up to the STAMPlorations Never-Ending Anything Goes Challenge! And you know what that means -- time to pick winners! Yes, winners -- we're not just picking one winner, we're picking 3 winners, one for every 50 entries.

Congratulations to the following ladies. They each win their choice of one (1) 3" by 5" stamp set (found here) or a $10 gift certificate to the shop.

#43 Lyndal

#97 Kamila Routsis

#117 Jerrie (Sherbert)

Congratulations again, ladies! Please claim your prize by Monday, February 16. Send an email to sheryruss@gmail.com with the subject "Anything Goes Challenge winner". [Note: it is important that you include the subject line, as it will be filtered to a special folder on my inbox. This will ensure that I get your email.] Include your preferred prize ($10 gift certificate or one 3" by 5" stamp set) in your email.

Thanks, everyone! I hope you'll keep creating using STAMPlorations stamps and linking them up to our Anything Goes Challenge. We'll draw winners again when there are 200 projects in the gallery.

{Spotlight Project} Vicki Creates a Triple Embossed Tile Card

Hi, everyone! Vicki here. Gosh, it seems like forever since I have had a project for you all. Today I will show you how to make a triple embossed tile.

Here is the finish card:

{Inspiration Project Post #1} Cards about love, shoes, and you... + an invitation to the Inspiration CASE Playground

Hey there, STAMPlorations friends! Today we're introducing a brand new regular feature here on the blog: the Inspiration Project posts! On the 2nd and 4th Mondays and Fridays of each month, the Inspiration Design Team will be sharing projects that not only will inspire you but will also encourage you to CASE!

You'll recall that on February 1, we introduced CASEplorations, the super fun concept thought up by STAMPlorations girl Maria F. (whose middle name is "Trendy Chic"). It was Monika who came up with the name for Maria's concept. It's where we CASE a project and show you how we do it. Long story short, CASEplorations nicely ties in with the Inspiration Project posts because one of the things we'd love for you to do is CASE the projects we share and link it up to the gallery, which we're calling the Inspiration CASE Playground. The Playground is open until the 5th of the following month...which means you always have plenty of time to CASE and link up as many projects as you can.

February Challenge: Stamps & Hearts

Welcome to the February challenge, crafty stampers! We’d love it if you’ll join us for the entire month! Each month we have a theme, and for February, our theme is STAMPS & HEARTS. You can use stamps by other companies to create projects that you enter to our challenges but please do not use our challenges for the sole purpose of promoting another stamp company. 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!

STAMPlorations January 2015 Stamp Release Spotlight Week Blog Hop Winners

Hey, STAMPlorations friends! It's time to announce the winners of the January 2015 stamp release spotlight week blog hop! We thank everyone who participated and took the time to visit and leave comments here and on our designers' blogs!

Sketch #26 and January Challenge Winners and Top Picks! + Frequent Players Spotlight and Random Prize Drawing Winner!

Hey there, STAMPlorations friends! We've got winners and top picks to announce in this post -- both for Sketch Challenge #26 and the January Challenge. Plus we've got our Frequent Players spotlight and the winner of a stamp and stencil pack.

{Spotlight Project} The Sky's the Limit

Hi, everybody. I am back again with another Spotlight Feature using ARTplorations stencils. Today I'm going to show you a couple of techniques for creating a sky background using the Clouds stencil.

First up is a little HELLO card where I used one of the clouds from the stencil, the fluffy one above the shining sun, to sponge my background.

{Spotlight Project} Shirley's Inspired By Friedensreich Hundertwasser - Take One

Hi guys! For the next few Wednesdays I'll be doing a little feature on cards inspired by architecture, artists or art styles.

Disclaimer: I don't profess to know anything about art - if I like it, it's good art, and that's good enough for me!

I'm starting today with Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Billy Connolly had a TV series a few years ago, Billy's World Tour of New Zealand, in which he featured Hundertwasser's toilets at Kawakawa. So when we were visiting that region of New Zealand a couple of years later, they were on my "to do" list, so to speak.

That led me to find out a bit more about Hundertwasser, who was an Austrian artist and architect who rejected straight lines and preferred fluid, natural forms. He actually ended up living in New Zealand. I'd love to show you some of his work here, but I almost had to sign the Official Secrets Act just to get on the official website - linking images from there is frowned upon, so I suggest you just google his name, click on images, and you'll be able to see his works.

This card is based on Hundertwasser's landscape paintings. Here's a step-by-step of my process:

{Spotlight Project} Cornelia Plays with the Clouds Stencil

Hi, Cornelia here today, trying to brighten up your day!

I love stencils and I am so happy that we now have them available at STAMPlorations. Today I played around with the Clouds stencil and that wonderful sentiment from the Typografia set.

Bi-Weekly Sketch Challenge #27

Welcome to our 27th bi-weekly sketch challenge! This challenge is a super special one because we have the STAMPlorations girls in our brand-spankin' new fabulous Challenge Design Team taking over the challenges starting today! Can we have some fist-pumps and cheers going for these ladies? Their projects will blow you away -- and already I'm excited to see what they'll create for future sketch and monthly challenges!

Here’s the sketch for the next couple of weeks. It’s open to interpretation. Feel free to change the orientation of the sketch, use different shapes, add other elements to suit the type of paper craft you’re making, and so on — just make sure the sketch is recognizable in your submission(s). You can use stamps by other companies to create projects that you enter to our challenges but please do not use our challenges for the sole purpose of promoting another stamp company. 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!

January Spotlight Project Random Draw Winner

Hello, STAMPlorations friends! Thank you so much to all of you who regularly check out our spotlight projects and take the time to leave comments! We are always happy to read your thoughts and we get even happier when we see projects you've made that have been somehow inspired by our projects!

Tomorrow, Cornelia has a really fun project to share to kick off the spotlight projects we've got in store for you this month :o) But before that, we've got to announce last month's random draw winner. We had a combined 200+ comments left on the 9 January spotlight projects so I turned to Mr. Random.org for help in picking our winner:

Winner

ROBYN OLIVER

Congratulations, Robyn! You win 1 ARTplorations stencil or a $10 gift certificate to the shop -- your choice! Please claim your prize by sending an email to sheryruss@gmail.com with the subject "January Spotlight Project Random Draw winner" and let me know your choice of prize. [Note: it is important that you include the subject line, as it will be filtered to a special folder on my inbox. This will ensure that I get your email.]

CASEplorations February

Happy first of the month and welcome to the first installment of our new feature at STAMPlorations! It's time for fun. It's CASEplorations time.

You  may recall reading about CASEplorations when Shery introduced the Inspiration Design Team. Since we are going to be inspiring you to play with your stamps, CASEing our creations, we decided we should do some CASEing too. So on the first of every month you will see this feature, a CASEplorations post, where some of the STAMPlorations DT girls CASE a card and share it with you. You never know - it might even be your card we choose to CASE!

Ready? Here we go.