EK Success is a company known for a lot more than just punches. “As a leader in the creative products industry for more than 30 years, EK Success Brands is at the forefront of fostering and building creative minds through education, innovation and inspiration,” says Andrea Silva, director of consumer and interactive marketing for EK Success Brands.
The brand includes the EK Tools, Inkadinkado stamps, Jolee’s Boutique stickers, K&Company, Laliberi, Martha Stewart Crafts, Dimensions Crafts, Paintworks, Perler, American Girl Crafts and Sticko stickers. They also have the largest comprehensive line of licensed products in the scrapbook industry, including Sesame Street, Disney and Nickelodeon.
The EK tools include products like Cutterbee cutting tools. Top-ranked by many scrappers, products like the Honey Bee Scissors grace many scrapbook tables and are known for being able to cut through even the stickiest of materials, whether it’s stickers, foam or other adhesives. With super thin blades, they’re great for small paper piecing, fine cutting and very small areas – but they also do the job for larger areas as well. The brand also includes the Cutterpede Trimmer, which cuts 12” x 12” paper and has added accuracy thanks to the magnetic locking of the arm.
My favorite fine adhesive, the Zig writer pen, is also an EK product. This pen is perfect for applying adhesive to fine details and easy to apply. If you apply the glue and attach the item while the liquid is blue, it will be a permanent adhesive, but if you let it dry slightly and apply while clear, it will create a temporary adhesive – great if you’re not certain that it’s in the spot you want or if you’re trying techniques like masking.
Offering a large line of punches, there are options that appeal to virtually everyone. There are a variety of types of punches, ranging from edger punches that allow you to create a design along the edge of your paper (my personal favorite is the binding edge, which looks fantastic on school-themed layouts) to Paper Shapers, which allow you to punch a shape out of any piece of paper.
One of the most innovative products released under the Inkadinkado line is the Stamping Gear kits, which allows stampers to create beautiful, symmetrical patterns, which look great on both cards and scrapbook layouts. Stampers mount a stamp onto the stamping gear paddle and can then stamp the image around the cog or wheel.
Inkadinkado offers a wide variety of both clear acrylic and wood-mounted stamps as well as a large selection of ink pads, chalks, pens and pencils, paints and adhesives. One of the great tools available is the Stamp-a-ma-jig Stamp Positioner, which aids in ensuring your stamps are placed precisely where you want them in a border, repeated pattern or even a centered image. It’s also easy for left-handed stampers to use.
The EK Success line of paper touches on the licensed products line as well, offering paper that’s ideal for children and the young at heart. The paper line offers products that are perfect for any Disney trip, such as the Disney, Princess or Mickey Mouse collections, as well as products ideal for toddlers who love Sesame Street. There is also a coordinating line of stickers for embellishment through Jolee’s Boutique and Sticko.
Both sticker lines offer something different to scrappers. Stickos are generally flat and have a lot of images on a sheet, occasionally in varying sizes. Sticko also does a line of alphas that are ideal for titlework.
Jolee’s Boutique, meanwhile, are a line of layered or dimensional stickers, often with accents like gems, glitter or foil. They have an amazing range of stickers that are suitable for any occasion, as well as a line of title stickers that make putting a page together a snap.
Martha Stewart Crafts, which debuted in May 2007, are manufactured by EK Success. At the time of the launch, EK Success CEO Chris Skinner said, “We are proud to be a part of creating this unique product line that embraces a lifestyle as well as a craft. The Martha Stewart Crafts line combines the power of the Martha Stewart brand name with the product expertise of EK Success, offering unique features such as how-to tips, craft project ideas, recipes and creative inspiration.”
That has certainly rung true over the past six years as the line has grown and expanded. The line includes a variety of crafting essentials, including stamps, markers, glitter, adhesive, tapes, craft punches, scissors and more, all known for being high-quality.
Over the past few years, the Martha Stewart Line has launched new products like Punch Around the Page, which uses punches together to create one continuous die-cut border. The punches come in a variety of designs and can also be used separately to create elegant corners on cards or to trim the edges of your scrapbook pages.
Scrappers don’t have to be square, either. The Circle Edge Punch cartridges, used with the edge punch base, creates circular die-cut borders. The Punch All Over the Page punches, meanwhile, does just what the title suggests - offer scrappers the freedom to punch a design wherever they want on the page or create one large, continuous design using the alignment guide that comes on the punch.
Finally, EK Success is also doing its part to help encourage the next generation of crafters with the American Girls line. This collection is aimed at introducing children to scrapping with brightly-colored papers, punches and stickers that allow them to express themselves creatively through a variety of mediums. The Scrap and Stuff book, meanwhile, allow young girls to make a Smash Book-style scrapbook to help preserve their memories and memorabilia.
