A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA

Featured Sponsor: Scor-Pal

by Heather Meeson: A Muse Designer

Scor-Pal is a versatile scoring tool that simplifies folding for both scrapbooking and card making ... or for any paper craft at all!  This extraordinarily useful tool was invented by Diana Crick, an avid scrapbooker and card maker in her own right.  The Scor-Pal is a blend of her desire to teach others and her experience as a tool design expert in the polymer clay field.

The Scor-Pal consists of two pieces: a slightly-textured scoring surface, and a scoring tool.  The 12"x12" scoring surface is grooved in 1/2" and 1" intervals, but also has grooves for making gate fold cards, A2 cards, and brochures -- and the raised edges of the scoring surface mean no more crooked folds!  The scoring tool combines with the surface to provide crisp, quick fold lines, and mulitple folds can be scored without having to move the paper. 

Here at A Muse, the Scor-Pal is frequently used by our designers and instructors.  In fact, here are a few photos of our very own Julie Ebersole using the Scor-Pal in one of her classes during A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA!

We’re pleased to have Scor-Pal as an A Muse-a-Palooza Sponsor this year!  And, to celebrate,  All registered A Muse-a-Palooza participants that leave a comment to this article, will be entered to win one of 2 Scor-Pals we have to give away!  That's right!  You could WIN A SCOR-PAL!  How cool is that?!  Comments close Thursday, July 17th!

A Muse-a-Palooza 08 Peace & Cheer Kit with FREE class!

For those of you who may be celebrating the countdown to A Muse-a-Palooza 08 far from a participating retailer, have we got sumpin' fab and fun, brought to you by My Creative Classroom and A Muse Artstamps!

Check out the exclusive A Muse Peace & Cheer Card Making Kit!  Available only online, it contains a wonderful new stamp set along with specially select A Muse papers and embellishments that are all designed to help you create beautiful holiday greetings!

And, best of all, this is a kit with class--literally!  Every kit purchase comes with a FREE online, interactive class!  Yippeeeee!!!

Order your kit, create your free MCC user account HERE, and you'll be ready to step into the virtual classroom on July 15th!  There's even an online chat in the evening, on the first day of school!   Click HERE to find out more!

I hope to see you in class!

  

 

Featured Sponsor: My Creative Classroom

by Julie Ebersole, Creative Teams Director for A Muse

Taking classes to learn more about any art and craft is one of the most enjoyable aspects of crafting itself.  It gives us an opportunity to observe a new technique or project first-hand and close up, to receive guided practice from a knowledgeable teacher, and to connect with other crafters.

But, many folks find it increasingly challenging to fit creative classes into their lives, due to busy work and family schedules, or too great a travel distance.

To the rescue came Jeri Parks, Owner and Founder of My Creative Classroom, who left corporate online training to launch a website that embraced a flexible and personal creative learning experience through interactive online classes.   The personally selected MCC Faculty includes instructors from around the world, each of whom have undergone extensive training in online education.  From the comfort of home, at any hour of the day, class is in session and you are at your leisure to participate at any level you prefer!

Most MCC classes include opportunities to interact directly with the instructor and fellow students.  With classes in nine different categories, from altered art to rubber stamping, jewelry making to fabric crafts, creative writing to decorative painting, MCC strives to offer students a wide variety of creative learning experiences, with plans for expanded class offerings in the Fall of 2008! 

     

As an MCC Instructor, I am thrilled to announce that MCC, Official A Muse-a-Palooza 2008 Sponsor, has partnered with A Muse to offer a FREE online class to those that purchase the A Muse-a-Palooza 08 Exclusive Stamp Kit, which will be available only online, beginning July 7, 2008!  Purchasers of the kit will receive an online enrollment key for classroom access.  You can create your free MCC user account HERE, so you’ll be ready to go when you receive your A Muse-a-Palooza 08 Kit.

And, of course, there’s more fun!  All registered A Muse-a-Palooza participants that leave a comment to this article, will have their names entered into a random drawing for the following MCC goodness:

• One $50 MCC Gift Certificate to FOUR (4) lucky winners, good for any class, expiring August 2009
• One seat to FOUR (4) lucky winners in one of two August MCC classes by Julie, Simply Sensational Greetings or Happy Mail, featuring A Muse Artstamps.

You must be registered for A-MUSE-A-PALOOZA 2008 to play (if you registered last year, you'll need to register again this year).  This giveaway ends June 27, 2008.

  

 

Featured Sponsor: Clearsnap

by Julie Ebersole, Creative Teams Director for A Muse

Best known for their Colorbox line of ink pads, Clearsnap has been developing art supplies for rubber stamps for over 20 years.  Their famous Rollagraph roller stamp system, launched in 1986, became, and remains, a favorite among stampers due to the ease with which larger surfaces could be quickly stamped using inter-changeable wheel mounted images and a self-inking cartridge inside the handle base.

Stampers are fond of Clearsnap’s beautiful array of colors, and variety of ink formats, including pigment, chalk, dye, craft and metallic.  One aspect of Clearsnap’s appeal is the variety of ink pad sizes available, from the 2 x 1”  Cat’s Eye,  mini pads, full size pads, and Option pads, which feature removable ink pads in a multi-color palette.  The Paintbox and Petal Point formats of Option pads make them one of the most affordable and versatile inks known on the market today.  One of the most recent and popular innovations released by Clearsnap are the Queue’s, a stack of Cat’s Eye pads that snap together for storage and come in an assortment of gorgeous color palettes, available in both chalk and pigment ink.

At A Muse, our designers and instructors rely on Clearsnap’s line of Colorbox Fluid Chalk Inks for producing soft backdrop effects with our various background stamps:

The Cat’s Eye pads work fabulously for applying touches of chalk color directly to the edges of our paper projects:

Colorbox Pigment and Fluid Chalk Inks are also a favorite to use with our line of clear stamps, due to complete coverage and deep saturation of color:

 

We’re pleased, once again, to have Clearsnap as an A Muse-a-Palooza Sponsor this year!  And, to celebrate, well, I’m sure you savvy readers know ‘zacly what’s comin’ next!  Yup!   All registered A Muse-a-Palooza participants that leave a comment to this article, will be entered into a Giveaway, featuring some yummy Clearsnap goodness!  Comments close Tuesday, June 17th!

  

 

Featured Sponsor: Splitcoaststampers.com

Author:  Julie Ebersole
Creative Teams Director for A Muse Artstamps

Back in late 2002, Splitcoaststampers.com was built by Daven Nolta, to enable his wife, Tracy, to connect with her group of sales consultants for a DSA rubber stamp company.  The membership primarily consisted of her downline, and good friends.  The site was intentionally left open to the public, in the interest of creating a welcoming, inclusive online community for stampers--ANY stampers.

Folks either found the site by accident, or word of mouth, and eventually Daven rejoiced over the excitement of having 30 members on the site at the same time, perusing the site, uploading and sharing their stamped creations, with perhaps a few hundred or so random visitors throughout a given day.

The community has quickly grown, and it is not uncommon for members and friends who've come to know each other through the website, to organize gathering events in different areas of the country to swap, stamp, and sometimes, meet each other for the first time in real life!

        
SCS Gathering 2006, Austin, TX                     

Southern California Stamp-a-Mania 2007

Today, Splitcoaststampers is known as the world’s largest online stamping community, and features a gallery to match, housing well over half a million images.  Home to over 177,000 registered users, and an average of 1,000 gallery images uploaded daily, the site offers community forums related to all things art-stamping and paper crafting as well as online technique and project tutorials.  You’ll find artwork representing just about every rubber stamp company in the industry within its galleries.  Try typing the keyword " A Muse" into the search box, and check out the results!

Splitcoaststampers Fan Club Members, who donate financial support to the site each year, receive access to a very special "thank-you" gallery of stamped artwork, unveiled once each month and all created by 12 highly talented designers, each selected right from the community on a rotating basis.  It was my pleasure and honor to serve as a designer on the "Dirty Dozen" Design Team (as it is affectionately referred to) and later as SCS Design Team Coordinator for three years prior to accepting a full-time position here as A Muse Artstamps Creative Teams Director.

We are pleased to have Splitcoaststampers as a Sponsor for A Muse-a-Palooza once again this year and, if you haven’t yet, we encourage you to open up your own user account--it's completely free! You can engage in fascinating forum discussions related to stamping, get questions answered, connect with fellow stampers, and start your own gallery for sharing and archiving your artwork!

Gift Card Holder by Jennifer Balcer, SCS Gallery

And, if you’d like to see exactly what’s inside that very special Fan Club Gallery, leave a comment to this post, about what you enjoy most about stamping, and your name will be entered into a drawing.

That’s right!  I have FIVE (5) SCS Fan Club Memberships to give away!

So, tell me:  What do YOU enjoy most about stamping?

  

   

Featured Sponsor - Strano Designs

Strano Designs is a ribbon/design company founded by the husband and wife team of Lou and Jennifer Strano. In 2002, with fifteen years of retail and manufacturing experience, Jennifer started designing ribbons in response to recognition that there was a need for a boutique quality ribbon company that was easily accessible on the web without compromising original design, finest quality and excellent customer service.

In 2005, Lou, who since the 1990s had been designing print and web media for small and large companies in the Northeast, joined Jennifer full-time assuming the responsibilities of web communications and branding.

Strano Designs offers over three-hundred high quality striped, polka dot and stitched ribbons. Their focus is on developing new designs with fashion forward colors. They also offer a line of fine imported Swiss velvet trims. They sell directly to customers via their web store www.stranodesigns.com and wholesale their ribbon world wide to all types of industries and manufacturers.

They have a ground-breaking new product called RibbonStiff™. Used as an adhesive, RibbonStiff™ will dry flat, flexible and clear, securing ribbon onto paper, chipboard, book board or any paper crafting project. It enables ribbon to easily be used as journal, album or book binding. Ribbon stiffened using RibbonStiff™ can be die-cut, punched or embossed. It will knock your socks off!

When we asked Jennifer, “What is it about your products that make them unique?” she replied, “Color, design, quality and the sense of humor that goes into making it all work.”

The idea for Strano Designs began with last season’s belts! It was Labor Day of 2003 when Jennifer made the very difficult decision to leave her job as Manager of a family-owned specialty store. The plan was to take a few months off, hit the beach and enjoy her girls who were toddlers at the time. After investigating Ebay as a possible outlet for past season belts from the family store, she realized that good, unique ribbon was nearly impossible to find. Jennifer never did hit the beach – Strano Designs hit the web instead. After a month of research, Jennifer told Lou that she was going to spend five-hundred dollars and create her own ribbon to sell on Ebay. With Lou’s response of, “that’s great honey,” within five months, Strano Designs had launched it’s website with fifty designs of ribbon in three sizes.

Featured Sponsor - Marvy Uchida

Marvy Uchida has been providing a wide range of papercrafting, art and office supplies for over 30 years from their Torrance, CA location. They have approx. 50 employees and are a subsidiary of Uchida Yoko JAPAN.

Uchida’s products are known for their high quality and they consistently update their product line with unique designs and innovative merchandise. They are probably best known for their fabulous craft punches. The punches come in a variety of fun shapes, sizes and styles. The scalloped edge punches are favorites among the A Muse Design Team!  They also make paper crimpers, heat embossing tools, ink pads and storage solutions products.

Another great line of Uchida products is the wide assortment of pens for the artist and papercrafter. Included in the collection are double ended markers, paint brush tipped markers, fabric markers, opaque paint markers, glitter markers and many specialty markers for painting on surfaces such as glass and ceramics.

You can see the full product line at www.uchida.com. The site also offers a color chart, newsletter and sample projects.