Blog Hop with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer & the Crafter's Workshop

First, a little business...our Challenge Winner for our Under the Sea challenge is all the way from the Netherlands...Miranda from ‘Mir’acle Art Inspirations. Congrats Miranda!

And now for today's fun...in March we began manufacturing a line of stamps that coordinate with stencils from The Crafter's Workshop. Designed by the unbelievably creative Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, these six stamp sets are designed as such:

Each stamp set works independently.
Each stencil works independently.
Each stencil has a matching stamp set. Each stamp set a matching
stencil. And they work together.

This is way out of my comfort zone, but I thought I'd play along to challenge myself. Stencils obviously lend themselves to being used with paint, and when paint is involved anything goes. I played around sponging backgrounds with some pearlescent acrylic paint. I decided to really just play with them and see where it took me. Ultimately I sponged and layered a bunch of different designs on a big sheet of watercolor paper and then cropped out the bits that I liked. I kept my card designs simple to really feature the designs and did a little bit of a closeup that shows the pearlescence better.

Today the IO design team and Julie are doing a blog hop. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer is giving away an entire set of stencils and stamps to one lucky commenter!  So check out everyone's blog for more ideas using these fun new products:

 Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

Jeanne Streiff

Daniela Dobson

Laura Fulcher

Vicki Garrett

Jenny Gropp

Dina Kowal

Julie Koerber

The lovely and talented Jeanne Streiff created a little photo tutorial of the stenciling process and I will include it below as well.

The stamps and stencils are available at many of our retailers across the country and overseas.  We will also be releasing several new designs at the Craft & Hobby Association show in July.