My Sweet Petunia going after Stampin Up now.

Embri your little die cut critters are art so I can see why they get the Copic love.

I have Prismacolor Alcohol Markers I use for crafting. I am thinking of getting some of the cheaper off brand ones too. A hobbyist artist I know loves the ProMarkers.

I wanted to see the thread about the Picket Fence brushes. I noticed the board is very quiet. It is more quiet than usual. I think Lydia and Dini are pulling posts after posts. The board seemed really censored. Maybe, it's just something that has been going on a long time & I just noticed.

I am not being snarky but I am really surprised the site is still getting decent ad revenue. Traffic there seems to be diminishing. The forum itself does not seem to be very informational. I know if I found that board as a stamper I would think it was a dead board and look for something else. It is a shame because there are so few stamping forums. The girls have been talking over there for months how stamping is not popular. I definitely think that is not the case.. Instagram is proof that it's more popular than ever. I think SCS is not as big or an important resource as it once was. It's a shame it was a really good resource. The worst thing you can do as a mod is be over controlling on your forum. Your forum needs it's own personality to survive.

Totally not a spring chicken but mostly it's so boring over there, no humor. Once in awhile someone makes a pretty good joke and you can tell they don't even get it. Just a different kind of board I guess. Yeah it feels either like a delete or people just don't want to get banned or chastised.

Had this thought about stamp positioners. Seems like if stamp positioners had been allowed to evolve instead of the lawsuit approach we would have ended up a with a better end product. There is room for improvement on all of these and if different companies had been allowed to compete and keep making more refined ones.

amayalylac, when scrapbooking was popular, stamping was not. Since I had been stamping about 10 years before I started scrapbooking, I was delighted when stamping made a comeback. Stamping is still popular, which is why the stamp platform was such a hot item. No, I do not think it is losing interest among crafters, at least not yet.

Embri, you are right. Competition stimulates innovation. Instead of becoming more competitive, MSP just brought legal action to stomp out her competition. I think she knew she couldn't compete. The Tim Holtz platform was a smart improvement. So was the one by Stampin' Up. They were competing with the MISTI, so they had to be innovative in order to be competitive.

Why wouldn't you be annoyed? You (presumably) paid a hefty price for a premium specialty product, and instead got something that started showing signs of damage after less than a month of use. Tools aren't supposed to break under normal operating conditions. Sure, they often wear out over time - but years, or decades of use, not days. There's enough throwaway waste in our modern culture without adding in products that should have a long useful lifespan as well.

I thought about this thread the other day. I’m in some different cookie decorating groups online and someone linked an Instagram post showing a stencil holder tool for cookies that is the same basic concept, a hinged holder thing that the stencil snaps into. Put your iced cookie in it over the outline underneath, flip the stencil down and you can either airbrush through the stencil or “screenprint” with thickened royal icing. I immediately thought to myself, “I wonder if the sue-happy positioner lady is going to go after these people too!”

A near identical system is used for batch screen printing multi-colour designs on t-shirts, too. The various stencils are loaded on a carousel that rotates, so you can apply each colour without fiddling with the positioning.

Embri I was so tired and stressed last week. I didn't mean to say ProMarker's. I meant to type in Spectrum Noir, lol. Those are the ones with refills.

I am in my forties. I started SCS in my thirties. I always felt the generational gap. It's funny the ladies in their 70's & 80's over there never made me feel that way. I have a youthful artsy view about stamping. I am also frugal. I do buy high end because I don't like to buy things over and over again. I buy once and keep it a billion years. I need to have art techniques in my creativity. I am not good at trend tools or trend techniques. I don't have anything against them. I love to encourage, ooh and aah over my friends that love to do those things. For me it feels alien and weird. All that combined you can't help feel a gap. I do see artsy stampers. They do not belong to a community. They will YouTube or Instagram. I guess the artsy stampers are the hermit stamper's, lol.

riley I want to give you 1000 likes about the no humor over there. I loved to be cheeky and I have a good sense of humor. I always felt like I had to tone it down or I would get punched. Yes, I mean the word punched. One of my friends that posts over there really gets mad at the girls who tell her off for being funny.

Don't edit your posts because you think your being too critcal. I bet you were not.

I agree about the stamp positioners could be a better quality product now. I pressed down on Tim's platform the other day and small piece of plastic broke. I do not have arm strength so this was not a case of pressing the platform too hard. I was so upset. No damage to the platform that will make it unusable. Still, a piece chipped off. Competition if a lovely thing. I am so flummoxed that she has been in this industry for years and does not know it at all. A lot of us would have bought her MISTI and the other platforms. We buy multiples of the same kind of tools- positioners, die cutters, trimmer's, etc.... She also forgot this industry does not work well unless they work together.

Also she should have not been a stickler about her religious phrase on the MISTI. I understand that some customer's would be thrilled to have that on their products. Give her customer's options for those who do not want it. Can you imagine if Tonic or SU put a religious phrase on their product? The public would have a melt down.

josie 29 you did a great job. Welcome to the board. I do remember way back at SCS there was a discussion about that
Stampressive and how Iliana (sp?) got the idea from them. Any of my SCS girls do you remember that thread? I do remember it got pulled. I know it was about three to four years ago. That's all I can remember.

Roy Higginbottom the creator of the Stampressive is an angel for making this product & his reasons for creating it. Thank you to him. I have seen so many new stampers who have disabilities now can stamp because of the stamp presses. I wrote in an earlier post I could stamp again without pain because of the stamp presses.

NOOOOO does MS MISTI care about that she helped people become more creative, could have helped them through a dark time in their life, gave them a new spark and interest. OH NOOOOOOO! She cares about suing. Then she puts a Christian verse on her platform? That is just wrong on so many levels.

If I was a creator of a stamp press and I saw homemade versions I would be so excited my product sparked that kind of interest. I would be so supportive. You are always going to have people who will buy the product, make the product or do both. I fall in the do both category. We as a community of stampers both as consumers and businesses need to be supportive & encouraging all types of ways we all stamp and how we use our tools. This kind of thing encourages innovation, freshness and longevity for our beloved hobby.

Welcome to the land of sane, reasonable crafters!
This was my experience as well, and it left an unpleasant aftertaste, let me tell you.  Any kind of discussion beyond mindless head-nodding was shocking and got 'oh my goodness' reactions.  You don't have the same "opinion" as the majority?  Good luck interacting in any meaningful way on SCS. 

Couldn't have said it better myself.  It doesn't take long for a bad rep to get around in a niche community, not in today's connected world of instant information access.  However, I don't feel sorry for her at all.  She made her bed, now she gets to lie in it; reap what you sow.  

Hey, I don't expect you to remember me. I'm so sorry about your anxiety. I personally know how difficult it is to live with & how you need to avoid triggers and it can be really hard for others to understand. I have been a bit of a lurker on here for a while & getting a feel for the place & I love how open the discussion is and it's real & supportive. I am also very sorry that you had such a bad experience over at SCS ((hugs))

FWIW, I am pretty sure the SU stamp platforms are still being sold in the U.S., in spite of the lawsuit.

I bought mine not that long ago from a local SU rep. I would hate to have to pay overseas shipping to get one. If you think you'll want it and can afford it, you probably should go ahead and buy it, just in case. At least that was my rationale.

If you want to make several of the same layered stamped card at one time, it is really nice to have.

I use my TH platform most of the time, but having the SU platform, with extra plates, does make the layered stamping easier for mass production of cards.

I think you are the only one who can decide that. The Stamp Perfect did appear to be a copy of the MISTI, which is why it is no longer sold in the US, but it sounds like you did not know that when you bought it.

I suspect that the people criticizing you are MISTI fans or MSP supporters.

I see the MISTI as an unauthorized "derivative work" of a letterpress, for which the patent was improperly approved. Now MSP is suing everyone else who has done the same thing, including those who made very innovative changes.

I won't be criticizing you for using your Stamp Perfect, but then, it's human nature to ignore laws that are either stupid or unjust. I obviously think the MISTI patent falls into that category.

Also, the MISTI patent only applies in the US. You didn't buy from a seller in the US.

But I can tell you, the MISTI woman and her fans are quite vocal about what she "invented".

Thanks for posting this.