Sunday, July 26, 2009

High Hopes Challenge #41!!!

Well, hello again, Stampers!! We hope you are having a wonderful summer weekend....although it's a rather nasty rainstorm for us here in Southwestern Ontario today. Yuck!!

We have a random winner for last week's challenge and that is.......StephanieZ!! Be sure to send us your mailing address Stephanie and congratulations!!!

This week's High Hopes Challenge is brought to us by the lovely Nikki!! Her theme this week is Sparkle and Shine!! So add lots of sparklies, glitter, shine, bling...whatever you like! That shouldn't be too difficult....at least not for those of us who loooooooove sparkle!! Haha!!

The random winner of this week's challenge will receive Party Cat and the Party Animal sentiment, as featured on Nikki's sparkly card!!

Now put on your sunglasses, because there are lots of sparkles and shiney things on the Divas' inspirational cards!!!



























































Sunday, July 19, 2009

High Hopes Challenge #40!!!

Happy High Hopes Sunday, stampers!! It is once again time for another amazing High Hopes Challenge!!!

Firstly, the random winner of Anna's challenge last week is......Ula from My Cards World!!! Congratulations, Ula and be sure to email me with your mailing information!

Well, I hope that you all are having a wonderful summer and are doing lots of fun things outdoors with your family. But today I'd like you to think about snow and presents and winter...oh my!! I'm the hostess this week (that's me, Kimmie) and this week's challenge is.....Christmas in July!!! So pull out your holiday themed High Hopes stamps and get started on your Christmas cards!!

The random winner of this week's challenge will receive Mudzie and Choppers Carolling and the new sentiment as featured on my card!

Now crank your air conditioning up to full blast, grab yourself a cup of hot cocoa and get stampin'!!!

Here's some inky inspiration!!




































Monday, July 13, 2009

Important High Hopes News!!

We would like to thank you for your support over the last four years as we started with a dream and an idea, and were blessed to watch it grow. We have made so many cherished friendships along the way, and cannot state enough how much we appreciate those of you who have shared ideas, and your beautiful artwork with us.

As of August first 2009 High Hopes Rubber Stamps will change from accepting both wholesale and retail orders to accepting wholesale orders only. We will of course continue to process all existing retail orders until they are complete, and in your hands.We hope that this change will not discourage you from keeping in touch, and continuing to share your ideas and art with us. We will continue to have a project of the month that we hope our awesome family of retailers will be making available to you. We will of course continue on with our super talented Design team, having calls for "Guest Divas" every three months, and highly anticipate great new images by Crissy every three months as well. The design team blog will continue to inspire you, keep you posted with updates, challenges, and blog candy. We feel so blessed to have one of the most talented group of ladies designing for us, and look forward to meeting new designers as we have the guest spots filled.

The decision to go wholesale only was a very hard one to come to, as we loved having personal contact with so many talented, encouraging, funny, and lovely people! After much soul searching, however, we feel that this is the best route for us at this time. We had grown so much over the past two years that we had been working 14-16 hour days to process orders, and just when we thought we were getting caught up, we would be blessed to have a card or project featured in a magazine with one of Crissy's beautiful images...which of course would create a new influx of orders! The blessings we were feeling, were giving us growing pains, and sadly were not allowing us to give each of our customers/friends the top notch personal customer service that they deserve. It truly weighs so heavy on our hearts if just one customer is left unhappy or feeling un-appreciated.

With this new change, we hope to accomplish several things:

1) We will continue to keep the whole line of stamps listed at our website, as well as listing new releases
2) We will update our list of retailers so you can easily find us, as well as list companies that will mail order and ship internationally... This is the main benefit to our existing friends as when you order from one of these retailers, they will have the stock in store, and can ship immediately. You will not have a waiting period as you have currently while we custom make each order.
3) Wholesale orders are much easier for us to fill, so hopefully this will free up some of our time so that we can work on an updated catalog (YEAH!!). Once completed we will have a free downloadable pdf. catalog available, and hope to have a high quality catalog available to order.
4) We also hope that with this change we will be freed up to complete a stockpile of stamps so we can go to shows and get to meet our friends face to face! It's our hope that we can talk Crissy, and some of our divas to come to shows with us, so that they can meet you as well.

We have no delusions as to the source of any success we have been given, besides giving glory to God (whom we have looked to daily for strength and wisdom), we know it is the blessing of the awesome design team that has shared their talent with you, and inspired you to take a chance on us. We cannot state enough how much we appreciate all their hard work... as they are the real "Stars" of our show!

Likewise, we sincerely thank you for your friendship over the years. We cherish the sweet encouraging emails, the ideas that you have given us, and all the beautiful art that has been shared with us. We hope that this transition will be an easy one for us all, and we hope that you will stay in touch with us, as getting to know you has been the best part of this business!

Tina, Bethany, and the High Hopes Family

Sunday, July 12, 2009

High Hopes Challenge #39!!

Happy Sunday morning all!! Hope it's nice and sunshiney where you are! It's time for another awesome High Hopes Challenge!!

But first, the random winner from last week's challenge is.........Anita from The Hovey Hut!! Congratulations....and be sure to email me with your snail mail information!

Now, for this week's challenge the fabulous Anna has come up with....Upsy Daisy!!! She would like you to include daisies on your creations, whether it's daisy stamped images, daisy paper flowers, daisies on your patterned paper or daisy punches! If you don't have daisies, just white flowers will do too!

The random winner for this week will receive ALL the stamps used to create Anna's gorgeous card below!!!

Now be prepared to be wowed by all the gorgeous designs from our talented team of Divas!! You will also get to see some of the amazing new stamps that were just released yesterday!!


































Saturday, July 11, 2009

High Hopes July Release!!!

Happy Saturday mornin' to ya!! Not only is it the weekend but today the new High Hopes releases are available!!! Woohoooooooo!! Well, I hope you've got a fresh cuppa coffee and a spare few minutes to sit back and enjoy some inky eye candy!! The design team has done another fantabulous job with Crissy's ever-so-adorable images!! Be prepared for lots of 'ewwwwwing' and 'aaaaahhhhing'!!!




















































What did I tell ya??!! Awesome, huh? Now hop on over to the High Hopes website and punch in HOTP (Hot Off The Press) in the search field and away you go!!

Also be sure to come back here tomorrow as we'll be posting another fantastic challenge....and you MIGHT get to see some more samples using the new images!!