Ginny's Small Studio

A Good Friend

There is very little that is better than a chat with a good friend. I don't know what your criteria is for a good friend, but my list includes someone who laughs easily and who makes me feel good just to be in their presence. There are many more things, but my friend Michele Monet is a gem of a friend. Michele walked into my old store, Creative Block, one day right after we opened. We hit it off immediately, sharing our life stories and cementing our relationship right then and there. Michele designed the very first Stampers Anonymous stamps for me back in 1996. They were an immediate hit. Over the years, Michele, who is a professional photographer, has taken photos of our entire family. We have had many a long, long dinner together, never running out of things to talk about. She has a ready smile, quick laugh and she is tremendously talented in so many ways. She also designs my business cards, postcards and ads. They are always just what I want, but much better. Here is the latest ad she did for me.

I am so thankful for her friendship. I hope you have a friend like Michele.

And on it goes....

This is another new product by Tim Holtz. How do I know that? Why it says "By Tim Holtz". I am sure he thinks his people will know he didn't design these images just by looking at them. True, but wait a minute. It does say "by Tim Holtz". I am confused.

Stampers Anonymous

Most of you know that I founded and owned Stampers Anonymous for almost 10 years. In 2005, I sold the stamp line to Ted Cutts because I was getting married and moving to CA with John. Ted hired me back to be Art Director for a couple of years. At that time we were approached by Tim Holtz to do a stamp line with his name on it. Stampers Anonymous had never put the artist's names on the stamps and none of our excellent artists had ever asked for that recognition. It was during the infant days of family owned stamp companies who were pretty naive about marketing and commercialism. Tim Holtz's popularity is well-known and he works hard to keep his brands forefront, but I think it is just wrong and misleading that his name is on each pack of images that were designed by our original artists.

A number of the original stamps have been released as "Classic Stampers Anonymous" and are now available in cling mount.

The majority of the classic Stampers Anonymous images chosen were designed by Michelle Ward for Stampers Anonymous. I was thrilled to have this exceptional artist and just good human being design for us. Others were by David Simon, a professional artist who works at a local advertising agency. David designed more than 300 images for us and became a good friend. There are images in this collection by Michele Monet, our very first artist who is a wonderful talent and professional photographer. There were also a number of other artists who designed just a few stamps for me back then and all the rest of our images were designed by me. I feel with the new release of these stamps that new stampers should know that the artists for these classic Stampers Anonymous images are not Tim Holtz. I don't want them to be confused with the "Tim" images. The packaging should be clearly marked as just Stampers Anonymous classics. Tim had nothing to do with these images and in my opinion, his name should not be on them.

The Carson Show

This coming weekend is the Carson CA Rubber Stamp Show hosted by A Stamp in the Hand. I have been going to this show since it's inception, first as an attendee and later as a vendor. It has been the best of the stamp shows for decades. It was such a wonderful show, that even after I moved from CA to CT, I would fly back to attend. Back in the beginning, I would meet my friends there and we would stay at the hotel across the parking lot, all taking rooms on the same floor. We would shop and shop the show. The big draw booth in those days, was Stampa Barbara which would be 5-10 people deep the entire show until owner, Gary Dorothy, would just simply run out of stamps to sell. It was a feeding frenzy. After we shopped, we would line up all our purchased stamps along the hotel hallway on our floor. The person with the most feet of stamps would be declared the winner and the rest of us would have to pay for her dinner. After seeing each other's hoard of stamps, we were back again the next day to buy what we had missed! After several years, I had my own stamp company, Stampers Anonymous, and I was thrilled to be allowed to have a booth at Carson three times a year. I would fly in with my booth from OH and feel right at home again, chatting and laughing with many of those same old friends. Fast forward to 2007 and there are many, many shows all around the country, but Carson is still at the top for me. This weekend I will still be at the Stampers Anonymous booth as always. The booth, now that I have sold the company to Ted Cutts (who always manufactured for me) is much bigger, sells a ton of accessories and features not one, but two demos going on all the time. It is not quite the same experience for me. I again live in Los Angeles, so I drive in to Carson instead of flying. I work for Stampers Anon instead of owning it. I seldom have a chance to walk around and shop, but it is still wonderful to see those old friends and all the new ones I have made over the years of attending the show. Stop by and say hello.