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Dee Returns as Celebrity For Our First Anniversary!
Dee Gruenig, Posh Impressions
As we are here to join in the celebrations of the first anniversary of the creation of S.S. Reflections, Posh Impressions is celebrating its 25th! Dee was on the record to say she was privileged to be the spotlighted celebrity in the first edition of S.S. Reflections when she was asked last September and she says she is absolutely tickled to be asked to return for our First Anniversary Milestone for a special joint celebration.
Dee Gruenig is widely known for energy and innovation in abundance! She produced what were probably the first instructional videos for stamping and her stamping text “The Great Rubber Stamp Book” was repeatedly featured by the Book of the Month Club so that it sold about a half million copies before it was placed in Costco twice. But mostly Dee likes the challenge of finding a better way to stamp, scrapbook and do cutting edge crafting. She is often ahead of the times.
One example of being ahead was her teaching scrapbooking to packed classes of 22 students each that nearly always had an impatient waiting list. That was in her first store, Posh Presents, in Laguna Niguel, California. So what’s so unusual? The year was 1986, long before scrapbooking took hold and years before the buzz words archival and acid free meant anything to anyone! Here was the staff of that first store:
A second example was discovering a way to stamping colors as they really appear. Let’s say to stamp trees as green, the sky as blue, a squirrel as brown and a boy’s jacket as red. In the early 80’s there were only dye ink pads. The boy near a squirrel under a tree would all be the color of the pad – all black, all purple etc., or if a rainbow pad was used, colors had to be placed everywhere indiscriminately. Yes, you could stamp an image as an outline and color it in like a coloring book.
Dee asked herself “What if” and she took a Marvy brush art marker to place color directly on the stamp’s rubber surface before pressing the stamp to the paper. This simple act changed stamping forever and it certainly increased the sale of Marvy pens!
She wasn’t done. A tree is not merely the color green, but is several greens...maybe hundreds of different greens, and the leaves can be partially brown, and/or grey and maybe a little blue. Skies have various hues of blue as well. Likewise for squirrels and there are shadows on a red jacket. She discovered that colors could be more realistic and accurate by blending corresponding colors with pens on the rubber!
This meant Dee needed more colors for variations, so Marvy invited Dee to add 36 more pens to the 72 they had to make 108. And just this summer, Marvy introduced Dee’s Signature Set of her 24 favorite colors beyond the 108 for a total of 131. All colors are new except for a standard black. This set is just now appearing in stores everywhere, so you can ask for these pens at your favorite store.
Blending watercolors right on a stamp’s rubber with Marvy’s has now gone dynamically further. Just introduced this week are Dee’s Signature Graduated stamping pads! Each pad, the maneuverable size of a Marvy Matchable, has 4 compatible colors with raised felt so, like a pen, the pad can be taken directly to the rubber of a stamp and the preferred amount of color(s) can be applied without needing to choose a pen, uncap and recap it, etc.…so easy to blend (mix) the colors for a delightful realistic watercolor look.
OK! All of the above may be notable, but in the next week there’ll be a new tool so useful, so fresh and needed that it will make the way we do many crafts much more pleasant, especially stamping, scrapbooking, faux finishing, polymer clay and some others. Most people are only now discovering that it is needed.
Once upon a time no-one knew an automatic transmission would make driving a car simpler. Heck, they could handle a clutch and a gearshift. Once upon a time few thought they needed a cell phone. They had a perfectly good phone at home! Both of these inventions reached the tipping point from non-awareness to becoming a big part of the way we do things. Until now we’ve been accepting that we had to scrub our hands, ruin our manicures and handle/affect archival papers and photos with 5.5 acidic hands. Until now we’ve accepted that if we chose to wear a glove, it was of latex or worse, gloves that made hands perspire, that smelled badly, that did not fit and were considered by some to be unhealthy.
That was once upon a time! There are now 100% Lycra fitted, tactile, cool, comfortable, archival, photo safe, durable and reusable gloves from Dee with Procraft! When the gloves are dirty, rinse them off or toss them in the washer and dryer! They even make hands feel great and make them softer! Lycra is used in clothing to make things fit and be cool and comfortable. Revolutionary is a much overused term. These gloves are revolutionary because when they appear in less than a month, many crafters will be using them as if they had always done so.
Of course Posh would love it if you would ask for the above products in stores. It would help the companies they feel privileged to work with. If you can’t wait for the Lycra gloves, it is possible to purchase some early with previous packaging by calling 1 877-PROCRFT or go to Pro Craft.
And now the BIGGEST news from Posh that will affect you today!
Posh is a leader in designing and producing unmounted stamps (both red rubber and clear polymer) for stamping and scrapbooking. Advantages are many, including much lower cost, solution to storage problems, ease of organization and transportability. The time for unmounted stamps is now and you can already see the change in many places. Posh is thrilled to have the same company that makes the industry's highest standard clear stamp make theirs, and Posh says they are made in the good 'ol U.S. of A.
In addition, they will also have unmounted stamps made of red rubber to be manufactured by Sunday International. Dee's designs will be incorporated into S.I.'s marvelous EZ Cling (no adhesive needed) system indexed on pure white 3 holed panel boards able to be stored and transported in an ordinary 3 ring binder. Fabulous!
Going further, Clear Stamps can be integrated with the Sunday International system because Posh will have panel boards available for clear stamps, too. It's quite a combination and Posh is more than a little excited about it. This is evolution!
Don’t overlook Dee’s altered art stamps from the leader All Night Media. They are wonderful and Dee had the designs critiqued by the guru of the altered art movement, Beth Cote.
So when and how do these new products for a new chapter in Posh appear? September 15, on their brand new web site Posh Impressions.
You can see that with Posh Impressions and Dee Gruenig, there is new, new, new and more new!
What else is new? The Club Posh web site was just rebuilt and redesigned for the company’s 4,300 friendly and helpful members and moderators. It’s faster with more features. You can join or look it over at Club Posh.
And what is exciting right now, this moment, for you? In order to have the new web site with new products and all you have been reading, there is currently a site-wide sale at 40% off everything, even their best products. Yes, everything that is currently in stock is 40% off. They have never had such a sale in their 25 years. So we’d suggest that you go there right now, as much is already gone. More: Posh Impressions Sale.
Dee Gruenig
Posh Impressions
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