Holiday 2015 Collection... Sneak Peeks Start Today!

Hello, hello! I couldn’t be more tickled to begin sharing our Holiday 2015 clear stamp preview with you. My friends, we are adding FIVE NEW SETS to our Happiest Holiday Collection! In fact, it’s been so hard to keep it under wraps, I’ve already shared peeks of my sketches on my Instagram feed (@marcellahawley if you’d care to join me over there).

I tell you, concocting the ideas for the collection, doing loads of research (what an awesome “job”), drawing the images, styling the sentiments, and all that jolly jazz is an affair in its own right, but ladies, you ain’t seen nuthin’ until you see how the Bloom Brigade design team has transformed my artwork into showstopping Holiday cards.

And we absolutely cannot wait to see what YOU will do with them! Oh, goodness me. The possibilities with these sets are pretty great... from elegant to homespun, and lots of variety in between. Here is a teensy sampling of today’s set just to give you an inkling of what I mean...

Details from gorgeous new cards by Leslie Miller, Cindy Lawrence, and Tosha Leyendekker

The artwork style for the stamp above is inspired by an ancient design technique known as arabesque. According to the dictionary, arabesque is “an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines, originally found in Arabic or Moorish decoration,” and the style was adapted into Greek, Medieval, Renaissance... there isn’t really an art form that hasn’t used it! I’m sure you’ve got a few images with scrolling lines and shapes in your stamp arsenal.

But what really got me into this vibe was the idea that you can start with a shape or “ornament” and then fill it with your own variety of flowers, vines, berries, fruits, what have you — to come up with an image that holds a lot of interest whether it’s shown in a single color or shaded to the nines!

From the Handbook of Ornament by Franz Sales Meyer, 1957, Dover Publications, Inc.

Here is a neat example from a wonderful resource called Handbook of Ornament, which is a collection of ornamental designs, both 2- and 3-dimensional, throughout history. It’s basically a go-to tome of decorative design, and I pull it out on occasion as a jumping off point for ideas. There’s an entire chapter on flat designs rendered inside a shape, and here I’ve shared a snippet from the Oblong Panel page. Now as you can see, the designs of these ornaments are repeat patterns. The same design elements (leaf, vine, fleurette, scroll) are repeated in each area of the panel to created a unified whole design. NIFTY! And also, it’s something I see done beautifully in the crafting world. So, to make it my own, I decided to take the concept of creating several design elements (poinsettias, berry clusters, roses, lilies, mistletoe, leaves, and vines) and put them together into a tree-shaped ornament, but with an organic structure, so each area of the tree is unique! I saw a wonderful embroidery pattern of spring flowers inside a tree ornament that captured my heart, and I knew that holiday botanicals would be something fun to try! Take a peek at my pencil sketch, which I then went in and fine-tuned and redrew with a Pigma Micron pen...

With the mix of flowers and fruits, seeds, leaves, and berries, you can use this set for the Holidays, or really, for any time of the year! Introducing our first Holiday set of the 2015 release... Botanical Tree.

I have kept you here waaaaaay too long, because what is truly spectacular about our arabesque set is what you can DO with it! Just take a look at what our Bloom Brigade has created for today’s kick-off:

Cindy Lawrence

Julie Koerber

Kathy Jones

Leslie Miller

Stacy Morgan

Tosha Leyendekker

I do hope we’ll see you back here tomorrow for another fresh new Holiday set peek! ALL SETS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE on Sunday, October 18th!!!

Have an absolutely awesome day everyone!