Tuesday, May 21, 2013

My Creative Monday

I have just returned from a brief creative journey to Northern California at one of our favorite stamp companies...HERO ARTS...lucky me!

I'll be sharing with you in a few demos during June some of the tips, tricks, and techniques taught to us by the fabulous Shari Carroll, a long time designer and educator for Hero Arts...featuring the new Stamp Your Story line...stamps, stencils, daubers and ink...Mark your calenders for June 1 and June 23 and join me for some creative fun!

In the meantime, come along with me as we tour the Hero Arts facility in Richmond, California...

The building was a former cannery located near the docks in Richmond and has been beautifully renovated...spacious, light, and modern...in the reception area this gal was busy all day inputting orders into her computer...

Our tour guide was Aaron Leventhal, CEO and president of Hero Arts...he is the son of founder Jackie Leventhal...
Aaron explains that the 'dirty' part of the process, vulcanizing the rubber sheets and cutting wood for the wood mounts is done in their Oakland, California facility...this warehouse is super clean and quiet!

These shelves are full of rubber stamp sheets...
First they need to be placed on the foam cushion...a process that was innovated by Jackie Leventhal and now considered an industry standard...This gal, who has been with Hero Arts for 17 years, places the rubber sheets on the sticky foam cushion....

It is either cut by hand, or in a few cases, with a guillotine cutter for straight edge designs...
This gal, (who looks serious but gave me a huge smile after I took this picture), is cutting the rubber stamps by hand...yep, all by hand...with regular size shears...no die cuts here...each one is hand cut!
Amazing!

More cutting and trimming...Wouldn't you think they'd use detail scissors? They don't though!
Placing labels on cling stamps...
This gal is putting the trimmed stamp on a wood mount...she checks each piece of wood to make sure it passes quality control standards...


Packaging and labeling...




These shelves are full of stamps ready to be pulled for orders...

These gal prepare the pulled orders for shipping...
Order packed and ready to go!
I wonder if our order is in here somewhere!
Hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I did!

Make Someone Happy...
Sheila

16 comments:

  1. Wow, can't believe it's all done by hand. I'm really looking forward to the new stamps and your demos. Thanks, Sheila!!

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  2. I am shocked that all the cutting is done by hand.. impressive though... that way, you can check for quality along each step of the way :)

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  3. This certainly proves why Hero Arts quality is superior to so many other brands! love Hero Arts products!

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  4. I love Hero Arts stamp, their quality is the best! Thanks so much for the hard work! U are amazing!

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  5. I used to do all these steps in a small northern MI company. We sold our stamps and stamps from Hero Arts and many more companies as well as custom stamps. Loved that job, too bad it no longer is around.

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  6. Wow, this was a great tour, thanks. All those stamps cut by hand, they have some talent, I couldn't do it.

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  7. Wow wonderful tour, thanks for sharing!!!

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  8. That was a fantastic tour! It is so nice to see the people behind the stamps and how much work they do. Hero Arts stamps are such high quality and this is the reason why. Thank you for sharing the tour with us. I <3 Hero Arts!

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  9. So cool and I can't believe they cut the rubber by hand! That is incredible.

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  10. TFS. I didn't realize the rubber stamps were hand cut.

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  11. Amazing how stamps are made.
    Sue C

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  12. Did you order the doily embossing folder for the store. I believe it is one that you used for one of the cards you made in Shari's class. I would love one of those if the store is going to be carrrying them.

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