Exciting News... A Brand-New Stamp Company!!!

Today I've got some super-exciting news! My fabulously talented friend Shar - aka Sharon Briss - has started her very own stamp company, Rogue Redhead Designs! 

Shar is an avid stamper, and you may already know her as a founding femme of Gingersnap Creations blog.  Her new stamp company will feature stamps in several different styles including vintage, eclectic, and modern.  Rogue Redhead Designs offers deeply etched unmounted stamps on high quality rubber.  Her first full plate release is a tribute to the literature lovers in our midst; the “Relish Reading” unmounted plate is perfect for creating hand-made bookmarks, adding a personal touch to journals, and creating beautiful note cards.  I absolutely love the level of detail!  It's an 8" x 10" plate, and includes images and elements to get you stamping right away, from a full-sized background to focal images to sentiments.

And now the enabling part.  "Relish Reading” is available at the Rogue Redhead Etsy store. As part of their initial release, RRD is offering this brand-new plate on sale for 20% off the regular retail price of $22.00 until December 15, 2010. Yep, that means you can get this full-sized plate for $17.60 - cool, eh?

I am very honored to be on Shar's first design team, and have been having tons of fun playing with these stamps.  For my project pictured above, I wanted to create a bookmark as a little thank-you for a friend who lent me a book (Water for Elephants - great read!).  Bookmarks are great little gifts for book club members, or to accompany a gift certificate to a bookstore, or just to say 'thanks for lending me your book' as in my case.

I stamped the reading girl right onto some text print paper from My Mind's Eye Lost and Found Line, and colored her with Copics.  I used light to medium colors to keep the transparent effect.  Next up came some papers on top and bottom from Pink Paislee's Parisian Anthology collection.  The butterfly is punched from the same paper, and highlighted with a little bling.  I also gathered a bit of blue seam binding for a trim, and used it as the tie for the bookmark, with a crystal charm also from the same Pink Paislee collection.  The sentiment from the Relish Reading stamp set is stamped and distressed, and added to the top of the image. 

Here's another version of the same bookmark, this time with a different quote and a different butterfly embellishment.

Want to see the entire plate and some more samples made with "Relish Reading"? Check out the new Rogue Redhead blog to see what the Rogue Crew have been creating.