From time to time, we will feature guest artists who will present their unique designs. We hope you enjoy their work. Please feel free to contact them with your questions or comments.

With the holidays on the horizon, I suspect that many of you have considered doing something different with your stamp images. Marie Schell is our latest guest artist and has graciously offered to share her approach to creating a collection of images and presenting those images in an attractive frame. What a great way to show off your special works of art, or create gifts for friends and family.

Marie Comments:
Even tho I had been scrapbooking for several years, I asked a friend of mine to help me make some greeting cards for my Red Hat group. And, I was hooked!!! I discovered the Stamp Art Shoppe, in Roseville, CA., have taken classes at the store and heard that Sandy was hosting a class by Karen Lockhart. I really like her stamps designs, so I signed up for the class. I totally loved Karen and her stamps and have a great collection of her stamps.

I wanted to do something different with my colored stamps. I found a frame and created my collection using a "summer" theme. I have done a fall, Christmas, and now the summer "Chair with Fan" collection seen here.

My husband took me to the Stamp Art Shoppe for my birthday and I immediately went to the Karen Lockhart section and grabbed three of the new stamps. My husband said, "Boy, you knew right where to go and grabbed those fast!" I could not wait until the next day when my husband "gave" them to me. It was a fun day!

Marie Schell

I wanted to create a collection for summer using Karen's "chair" stamps. I used the Wicker Chair - 2105, Web Lawn Chair - 2131, Adirondack Chair - 2084, Vintage Garden Chair - 2083 and the Electric Fan - 2088 to create my summer arrangement. All of the stamp images were colored with Prismacolor pencils, distressed with Broken China Distress inks and finished with Peeled Paint Distress inks from Tim Holtz. Each image was matted using Botanical Collection Page, from Prima Marketing Paper, cut in 2 1/2 inch squares. I then matted the images to a turquoise Bazzill Basic Tropical cardstock.

The frame with 5- 3" square inserts is from Aaron Brothers.