LOST..MISSING...HEARTBROKEN!

HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CARDS?!

We finished our last show of the season earlier this month on Long Island. Back in our own home state for our final show of 2008. Earlier in the week one of my most favorite of favorite customers surprised me with an incredible gift. It was a package sent all the way from Finland with three incredibly detailed, professionally designed cards from the internationally famous Swedish collage style rubber stamper Nina Aaslund. I didn't even have them for 5 days, but I wanted to show them off at the show.

If you have ever been to one of our shows you would know we set up a demonstration table where I demonstrate our NO Effort Mosaics all weekend. A couple of hours into the show I took a 5 minute bathroom break. Upon my return I was told by my husband to look for my seahorse card (the card I refer to in my demonstration as the "finished product" -a layered and embossed multi colored, multi patterned background of tiles. (we do not emboss or build finished cards at the booth due to time and mess). It was gone! He told me a customer had picked it up and was walking around with it. He could not leave the register and when I returned she was gone. Another customer was shopping and told me she was here and she also saw the woman walking around with the card.

That's when I noticed that not only was my most important demonstration card was gone but so was my beautiful Swedish collage cards I had displayed on the same table! I cant tell you how heartbroken I was to discover this theft. All the time and love that went into the making of theses cards far outweighs the price of the paper and ink. They had travel across an ocean and were loving shared with us by our generous friend. In addition to my cherished Nina cards we also had another card given to us by one of our designers Lori Tecler. It was a valentine card just in time for valentines day.

Perhaps the sticky fingered lady thought that walking off with samples is ok. Maybe she thinks its not stealing, but I assure you that taking other peoples property without asking is indeed theft.

All in all 4 cards were stolen from us.

We travel the country from state to state and I am sorry to say the only two times in all my years of doing shows that I have had projects stolen have been when I have been close to home. One of my previous designers Becky Oehlers made us a beautiful card box which was stolen in Pennsaulken, NJ and now these four cards taken not 20 minutes from where we live.

While I realize this is a little more personal than we normally are over here I wanted to post this for a few reasons. First to tell you that if you attend a show and think its OK to walk off with someone else's creative property I hope you think twice and second, I am hoping that whoever took our cards will have a change of heart and return them to us. (no questions asked)

These are our missing cards:

Published in Simply Sentiments Magazine
Square mosaic seahorse demonstration card:

Swedish Collage challenge card by Lori Tecler:

Nina Aaslund Swedish collage cards:

If found please return to:

Starving Artistamps

219 Feustal Street

West Babylon, NY 11704

BLOG CANDY WINNER ANNOUNCED!!

Congratulations goes to LORRAINE comment # 64 the winner of our blog candy Santa's Sweet Shoppe new release!! Lorraine please email us your information strvingartistmp@aol.com , you didnt leave your email address or any contact information!

NEW RELEASE AND SOME GOOD CANDY!

I confess this release is a wee bit tardy and this time it's all my fault. You see Irene sent me these designs almost 2 weeks ago but we were away at the stamp show in Indiana for several days. Once we got them in our hot little hands we realized that we really should put together some fun sentiments to match. And that's when time got away from us. So I take full responsibility for not showing you these until now.

In an effort to make nice we are are doing two very special things. First, we are going to put this set up at a great price and as an added bonus from now until Christmas we are going to give you all the matching sentiments for FREE when you buy the full set. (An 11.95 value!)

But since we don't like to force you to buy stuff you don't want, we are also going to offer these incredibly cool guys individually in both unmounted and mounted. You will also be able to purchase the sentiments separately if you feel the need to.

These will start shipping sometime around November 11th. The molds are on their way here already. If you have ever pre-ordered from us before you know that we are pretty good with our ship dates. (shipping ETA's are always posted on the home page if you haven't noticed)

So here it is... Brand spanking new from the DoodleFactory ....

We are pleased to introduce you to Santa's Sweet Shoppe!

This set retails for only $19.95 for the complete set of 25 unmounted stamps

(also available individually or in smaller sets in mounted and unmounted)

And here are the matching sentiments you will get for FREE when you purchase the set:

(size comparison: "warm thoughts" is approx. 1/2" x 3" across)

As I mentioned, we are doing TWO special things for you tonight... Well here is the second cool thing... We are giving away a set of Santa's sweet shoppe and the matching sentiments

as blog candy!

From now until November 11th post a comment on this post and agree to do THREE things.

• First and foremost you must SPREAD the WORD by telling every STAMPER you know about our new stamps and blog candy (yes, we do check!)
• Second you must stroke Irene's ego and tell her what you love most about her wonderful stamps. It would be especially helpful if you tell her why you love her artwork and why waiting for the newest release is so difficult!

• Lastly, you must agree that if you win the prize you will lovingly USE your stamps within 2 weeks of getting them and send us a photo of your project for us to show off on our gallery.

That's not too hard for the chance to win $32 bucks worth of stamps right!

To be fair to everyone we will only be accepting one comment per person.

The winner chosen by random number generator will be announced after November 11th, 2008. No purchase necessary.

If you have any questions you can always email us at: strvingartistmp@aol.com

Need some inspiration? We just loaded lots of new cards to the gallery tonight from some of our favorite designer and customers www.starvingartistampsgallery.blogspot.com

Don't forget, this new release will not begin shipping until approximately November 11th. But you can start ordering tonight, they are already posted on the website www.starvingartistamps.com We expect a big response to these so get your orders in early since we fill them first come first serve. Don't worry about waiting for the blog candy to be announced, if you order and you end up being the winner you will get your choice of any other DoodleFactory or Starving Artistamps stamp set/sheet you want!