Some Artwork Selectable for Larger View
"Ctrl P" to Print
Wow!
Dee Gruenig of Posh Impressions
Wow! I feel quite honored to be asked to grace the first edition of SSReflections.com! From the moment my husband described this new on-line magazine and then the second I saw the professional home page, I believed this new medium would have to be a big winner!
So what comes to mind, as I'm thinking about what to write? Gratitude! Gratitude for the 25 years, since 1979, I have been blessed, yes, blessed, to be able to work for myself and do what I love - rubber stamp and make scrapboook pages.
I was originally a kindergarten teacher and each summer I learned a new craft - macrame' (dating myself), pottery making, needlepoint and others - UNTIL I RUBBERSTAMPED!
While I taught school, I did home parties with my company of just me. I sold mostly gifts and then added rubber stamps because they are small and I could have them on hand for the purchaser to take home that same evening instead of waiting for their other purchases. I had my first party at a nice home of a friend three doors away from mine, with about 40 people attending and 2 or 3 of those wanted to then host a party themselves. Sales went so well and so much money rolled in during that first year that when I arrived home at midnight, my husband Warren said he wondered what my evening profession really was!
This led to three employees doing home parties with me in my fledgling company, but we halted them before the summer of 1984 when most thought the Southern California freeways would be loggerjammed with traffic during the Los Angeles Olympics. But organizer Peter Uberoff did such an amazing job with traffic patterns and wary people stayed home so that traffic was the lightest in years.
Nevertheless, we'd quit home parties and had opened our first store, in Laguna Niguel, CA, with five more stores to come over the next 12 years. The first store was my favorite, though it was the second one that was invited into prestigious South Coast Plaza of Orange County. The first store, a combination gift and rubber stamps, won a second place national award for store layout and service from Gifts and Decorative Accessories magazine of New York. I guess a first store is like a first child!
This led to our own line of rubber stamps manufactured by Rubber Stampede and then ten books, besides the videos. The Great Rubber Stamp Book was lucky to debut early in the explosion of rubber stamping and it outsold the other 400 books from Sterling Publishing that year... somewhere around an astounding half million copies - the first 180,000 in hardback.
Scrapbooking is a special area and a special love for me. In my first store, and in all stores, my staff and I taught a class with a waiting list called Awesome Album Art. This was, believe it or not, in 1986. Hardly anyone knew anything about acid free and archival quality, including me, but the classes were successful. It was some years later when Creative Memories emerged, making scrapbooking very popular.
During the early years we did some rubber stamp shows/conventions, including the very rewarding Junior League Shows. Like my first book, timing is important, as stamps were still very new in 1983 and though the three of us in a booth barely know what we were doing (except for Kat Okimoto of A Stamp In the Hand who demo'd and was probably the world's first demonstrator of stamps at a stamp show), there was a stampede in to our booth that pushed us out the back, breaking it down, with the result of a Junior League sales record! The next year I demo'd for the first time, as Kat was unavailable, and that record was broken to last another 8 years.
Shows were discontinued when we didn't feel we could be excellent anymore...we were spread so thin with stores and more, and now a busy web site has replaced them. The web site has a world market instead of a local area. All of the above led to what we are primarily doing now which is designing and creating for excellent craft companies. I am busier than ever.
We create, or have created or designed, for the following companies and it continues a wonderful adventure. These companies command respect, not only for quality of product, but for the integrity of those who own or run them, reflecting the fact that the craft industry is one deserving great respect. Rubber Stampede was the first company we worked with, then Hot Off the Press, Speedball (brayers), Sterling Publishing, Ranger Industries, Paper Adventures, Design Originals, Plaid/All Night Media and Mrs. Grossman's for stickers. Forgive me if I have left anyone out.
During most of this time I have had barrels of fun doing television with HGTV, DIY, Public Television, and earlier, Aleen's channel. My first television appearance was the scariest...ABC Network's hour long Home Show shot LIVE, during some national catastrophe, when it was continually interrupted with news bulletins.
I hope you will be able to join me, this coming November 10, with the first of 10 Carol Duvall Holiday Shows, taped with a live audience.
Two recent honors are 1) to be finishing my sixth year serving as a member of the HIA Board of Directors, and also to have an on-line club with discussion and galleries in my name called Club Posh at www.deegruenig.com. There are currently 3700 wonderful members and it is very professionally run by three moderators that we are now meeting for the first time. Well, we've recently met two of them. The three are Char Maguire, Jil Robertson and Daylene Strickland and all are terrific! You are warmly invited to drop by.
Following are finally some graphics. You have been so patient to read all of the above (or you wisely skipped to the end) and as stamping and scrapping are visual mediums, I'll now cut the chatter and show the visuals. I will mention what products were used. The stamping and scrapping I choose to do are things that are easy and even quick to do, as survey after survey tells us this is what most stampers want and have time to do. If you want to make these and you have any trouble, we pride ourselves on personal help and friendly attention where you can talk to our competent crew, toll free, at 1 800 421-7674 or e-mail them info@poshimpressions.com.
Thank you, Dawn, for the privilege of rattling on in your debut issue of S. S. Reflections. I don't get to do this much and you may be sorry you asked for it!
You asked me to mention plans for the future. Why, it's to continue doing what I'm presently doing with our wonderful staff and excellent companies of affiliation that have earned my respect and devotion giving my best as I understand it.
Come visit: Posh Impressions
Or visit: Club Posh
CARDS AND SCRAPBOOKS
I love to show that when you make a card, you can go ahead and make a scrapbook page, too! Except for the stamp, the supplies and techniques are the same or similar. Below is the outside of a card, the inside of the card when opened and the matching scrapbook page.
ALBUMS
I truly enjoy making albums. This one chronicles my trip to South Africa in 1998. The front of the album, the back and inside is shown along with layouts of a horseback safari. Pictures should be large with photos mixed with cutouts from magazines, wrapping paper that has appropriate supportive backgrounds, extended stamping where a small stamp is extended by not stamping one edge, then joined and joined and joined... a mixture for more interest. As you can see, I laminate my albums to protect them. I really value them, and few have seen them, as they are large to handle.
STAMPS AND SPONGES
A product that is still a bit of a secret that should be ready to explode with crafter's awareness is the Rainbow Sponge and Inkabilities from Posh Impressions and Ranger Industries. The sponge is much different than any other and the Inkabilities inks can be used with the sponge, alone or in combination with many other products.
To the right you can see one of the popular Posh Impressions Dee's Duets, the dragonfly, used with the sponge. Duets, made by Posh Impressions with Plaid/All Night Media, are two stamps that can be used together or alone. One is bold to produce lots of rich color, and the other is brush line art for only the outline of an image.
The newest, the smaller Triple Ups are smaller than the Duets and the third stamp, to make them "triples" are a shadow stamp for each that can be used with any other stamp.
Illustration #1 shows the side of the sponge used to produce tiles.
#2 uses the edge of the sponge to make a swipe.
#3 uses the edge to make a wavy wiggle.
#4 uses the side of a large 4" x 4" sponge with the picture drawn on the side of the sponge and then stamped. It can make about 50 images without re-inking and #5 is another example with a message added.
This is simply a card with the sponge used as a background, then the ladybug Duet stamped with both bold and outline stamp on top and then only the outline in white below. My small handwritten message around the bugs completes the card.
A simple example of use of the sponge with a scrapbook page is as follows. One of the things I wanted to do years ago was to break away from small, hard to see images, placed symmetrically on a page. You know, the way we all did it when we were in kindergarten with four on a page...top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. It isn't interesting. A page like this takes only a few minutes.
For fun, here is the fan Duet and Japanese word for thank you used with only Inkabilities put into shaving cream for the background. In Club Posh, a member posted a comment about Inkabilities with shaving cream and 109 posts followed with 10,353 views! Then I got to show it on HGTV's Carol Duvall Show.
Something totally different is to use just the edge of the sponge to make lines for a background. Bow ties, squiggles and other shapes can be made, as well.
POSH IMPRESSIONS STICKERS WITH MRS. GROSSMAN'S
I was thrilled to be asked by Mrs. Grossman to be their first outside surface designer. Here are Mrs. Grossman's Posh Impressions stickers placed on Lucite postcards that we sell. Mrs. Grossman made the stickers facing opposite directions so that all of the stickers could be placed directly over each other on opposite sides of the transparent postcard to look like this. Yes, they do go through the mail, but it is best to put two stamps on instead of just one.
PAPERS WITH PAPER ADVENTURES
Another company I am privileged to work with is Paper Adventures that make delightful papers. Here is a 12" x `12" scrapbook page using Duets and other stamps over their papers that have miniature duets in checks in a pattern. Paper Adventures has made numerous collections of Posh papers.
For example, here is an example of the Duets used with their parchlucent vellum papers...one sheet bold, the other transparent. This is fun.
Above are a few of the products and uses for them I am privileged to be part of. Once more, thank you Dawn and the crew of S.S. Reflections and all best wishes for widespread success.
Dee Gruenig
Posh Impressions
Celebrity Headliner
S.S. Reflections, Inc.