Life in Arizona was hectic and crazy and things were really starting to come together. I had my new team in place and I was looking where to take this crazy idea of mine and I started thinking… As I said in the beginning, I was always a stamper and when I thought about die cutting I always knew the two could be married.
Here is an interesting fact that you may not have know. Spellbinders was the first company in the crafting world to match a stamp to a die. I was taught from a very early age this famous quote by Les Brown, “Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours”. Well, I had the pleasure of working with a woman who owned a stamp company when I first started Spellbinders. She actually worked with my company for a brief time and we matched our dies to her stamps!!! Here's an example of one of the very first "Stamps & matching Gemini embossing dies" all the back to 2004!
Being ahead of the curve is something I seem to do quite a lot and I cannot say if that's a good or a bad thing. LOL! Fast forward to 2006-07 and my art director Michael's brilliant artistic ability was yet again transformed into dies with you guessed it...Matching stamps. And as you can see we offered both clear and red rubber stamps ... And here is a tip: I'm sure you notice there is detail in the matching bell die.... So how can you stamp in that? It's easy, just by cutting any spellbinders die you get just the outline image... It's only if you do the embossing step that gives you the added detail! So.. This allowed you more options and versatility! But again years ahead of what you all see as normal today. We were still the only company doing this.
Today you can see oodles and oodles of stamp companies out there making dies to match stamps. I am so proud of the trend Spellbinders began it's cool to see your vision become a worldwide trend!
Spellbinders rebranded our geometric dies into Nestabilities the same year Michael did the second round of Spellbinders stamp designs to match our dies. It was then I began to see another trend emerge.
It was the fact that everyone wanted to match their stamps to our Nestabilities. Some Companies asked permission to match our images and as you might guess, unfortunately, some did not ask... They just "took". I decided to take a negative and turn it into a positive… so I decided to share my files with small stamping companies to help them grow. And this is how our cross promotional partnership began. I'm happy to say that today Spellbinders works with a lot of stamp companies to cross promote matching dies and stamps. It's a beautiful thing to see a die used with a wide variety of matching stamp styles. Click
here to see some of the amazing cross promotional partners that make this trend possible. Our partners are on the left hand side of the blog.
So, here’s to... Change... Diamonds in the Rough... to the Epiphany...Expecting the Unexpected...and Sharing Freely. So, as I reflect on my past…My future is already upon us!! I am going to be taking a small break from this story over the next few weeks so I can help you Explore Beyond what is normally seen at CHA and give you a fun look at what really happens behind the scenes.
I also want to wish everyone a prosperous, healthy and Happy New Year!
Hugs,
