Posted by Hero Arts
on May 02, 2019
Your calendar does not deceive you - it is Thursday! So why are we here with the next Flashback Friday feature? Since our 3-day countdown leading up to the May Monthly Hero kit launch is scheduled to begin tomorrow, we decided to adjust on the fly with an early flashback. We hope you don't mind! :) It's already time to explore Hero Arts' third decade in business and CEO Aaron Leventhal is back to provide an overview of the 1990s:
"The early 1990s saw Hero Arts move from consumer shows to wholesale, and soon international distribution. The 1990s included a heavy dose of backgrounds and borders, messages and themes, including a full catalog and a Christmas supplement each year. Popular techniques included hand coloring with pencils, watercoloring, bold ink colors and more for cardmaking, with only wood stamps, as no clear or dies were yet available. Hero Arts won a number of awards for its color label tops and catalog photography and layout, and got its first patent for Press-A-Frame. The industry was in dramatic growth, and independent retailers were the focus of the industry, with some stores so popular people would choose their vacations based on the stores they wanted to visit."
Check out some of the era's understated and elegant catalog designs:
The 1990s were marked by bright and colorful stamp labels and you can see many of them if you check out the photos tagged #herocelebrates45 on Instagram. Thanks to our customers for sharing - we've truly loved seeing these treasures!
* Above photos courtesy of @cardcrazycook on Instagram. Thank you! *
Does anyone remember the Press-A-Frame that Aaron mentioned was our first patented product in 1996?
"Using the paper template and a pointed pressure tool in the kit, stampers can quickly add a variety of shaped frames around stamped images."
Here's an example of the projects you would have found if you opened the pages of our 1998 catalog. A fun tidbit: Sally Traidman, still on the Hero Arts team today, created some of these beauties!
Do you own any stamps with colored labels? Let us know in a comment below and we will pick one winner at random to receive a $25 Hero Arts gift card! Comment by Thursday, May 9 at 11:59pm PT and you'll be entered to win.
Thanks for stopping by today! Until next time...happy stamping!
159 comments
Yep have many! Sadly my coloring skills never equaled the colorful labels on the wood stamps!
I do own several HA stamps with their pretty colored labels – a butterfly, fall pumpkins and confetti are among them.
They have dates from the 1990’s. Thanks for the look back at your 45 years!
Congrats on 45 creative years! Yes, I have posted two stamps to Instagram with colored labels – a flower from 2001 and a single birthday candle 1995.
Yes, I have a lot of stamps with the colored labels. I started stamping before clear stamps were popular, and the wooden stamps are easier for my two girls to use so I still buy them. A few of those stamps are Hero Arts, and I still love them. Thanks for the peek into the past!
I used to have a couple stamps with colored labels!! Now I just try to stick to clear stamps because of space.