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Our 45th Anniversary Flashback Friday series continues and this week we're throwing it back to the 2000s! Here is CEO Aaron Leventhal to share some of the decade's highlights:
"The 2000s were exciting years for Hero Arts and the stamping industry. Scrapbooking, after years of shunning stamps, began to embrace the idea of stamping on pages. This lead to themed collections, photography in catalogs that featured pages, working with scrapbook artists like Jennifer McGuire, and more. It also was an exciting time for new designs, as Hero Arts begin to turn towards 'realistic elegance,' a big change from the colorful and cutesy of the 1990s. Hero Arts introduced Shadow Stamps (2000), Poetic Prints wood sets, including etched flowers (2000), Shadow Ink (2001), Clear sets (2005), and Cling (2008, re-introduced). Hero Arts also first introduced the Color Layering technique (2001)."
Perhaps you remember some of these catalogs from the 2000s...
The Color Layering technique was developed by the Hero Arts artists, including Shari Carroll. Color Layering included both the current technique of stamping in layers, but at that time without clear stamps it often meant inking or partially inking a wood stamp and stamping over a stamped image. It also included the "blowing in the wind" style of stamping with "layering" inks on the rubber (without cleaning) to get different color effects. This technique sheet features Color Layering with the popular Real Flowers.
Shadow Stamps and Poetic Prints woodblock sets were stylish staples in the stamper's toolbox!
Another exciting thing was happening throughout the decade - the web was growing by leaps and bounds! Hero Arts as a website was actually first launched in the previous decade, in January of 1996, as you can see from this early image.
This is how the website would have looked if you clicked over in 2004. We hosted contests in which stampers would mail their cards into Hero Arts.
Some of you may remember when we launched the Hero Arts Blog in March of 2008. The image below shows what the website looked like during the early days of the blog. Does anyone remember the weekly challenges hosted by the Hero Artists? The owl mascot was always a hoot...and a great cheerleader!
Did you enter any of our contests and challenges? 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 16 at 11:59pm PT and you'll be entered to win.
Thanks for traveling back in time with us today. Happy weekend and happy stamping!
Yes, I did enter some early contests and mailed in the actual card. Unfortunately I didn’t win, but that didn’t stop me from collecting more Hero Arts stamps! I have a bunch of shadow stamps and inks, time to get them back out! I still have a bunch of catalogs from 2000’s – they give lots of ideas!
I have some of your older shadow stamps in my stash ! As for the challenges, I believe I did enter some of those – I love joining in!
For a while, you had a series where if you were published in a card making magazine and had used a Hero Arts stamp, you would receive a gift card from HA. You had to send a copy of the page with your card and the amount of the gift card was determined by whether the HA stamp was the focus of the card or if it was secondary. I did participate in this! Thanks for all the good things all through the years and I think Jennifer McGuire is right that you set the standards and paved the way for today’s card making industry.Congrats!
Wow – I have the set of four bug stamps in a box as in your first picture and also one of the ‘shadow’ stamps. I did not enter contests back then because I was just getting into stamping about 2007. Great memories!
I wish I would have been able to join in. Catalogs…who doesn’t miss the countless hours of paging through a catalog and dreaming of having everything.
I only started stamping in the 2000s and really didn’t get into it until 2008ish. That is about the time I became aware of the online stamping community and the fact that there were challenges out there. Sadly, I didn’t know about Hero Arts and your challenges at the time.
Still have and use many of the old sets, “four ladies in hats” one of my favorites
I have entered your contests, but I LOVE you guys from a long time ago.
I didn’t enter contests back then, but have been lately. I don’t do challenges. I would like to but am just too busy. I like to see what others have made though.
My first stamps were Hero Stamps! I was in my 20’s. Yikes, I have grown older, Hero Stamps haven’t!
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