Rubber Stamping Expands

As many things do, rubber stamping will expand to fill the space allotted. . . . or, more acurately, it will fill your whole house, neighborhood and then your world!!! There are so many kindred crafts that are linked arm and arm with rubber stamping. A few that I have taken up while stamping are scrapbooking (which needs many of the same tools that stamping uses, but thousands more pages of paper), altered books (for which you need your stamping supplies plus old books, paints, fiber, leather, several types of glue and adhesive and just about any kind of embelleshment you can think of) , polymer clay (which uses a lot of your stamping supplies and then requires a PASTA MAKER!!! plus all types of sculpting tools, canape and cookie cutters, a toaster oven dedicated to polymer clay, an extruder tool, molds (both bought and homemade) and tons and tons of either Sculpey or Primo polymer clay. Then, along with polymer clay, comes P.M.C. which stands for Precious Metal Clay. This is pure silver in a clay form (I really decided that I couldn't afford the GOLD!!!) which you mold, sculpt or carve into shapes for pendants, charms, whatever and bake in the toaster oven - then you scrub them with a stiff bristle brush until you can't scrub anymore and then they sparkle and you wear them. Next, there is assemblage which is French for sticking a lot of stuff together that makes you feel good or tells your story - well, kinda. That, along with collage (which is French for sticking a lot of flat stuff together) use many of your stamping supplies, plus the head from your first doll and the skate key your boyfriend gave you in third grade and lots of things with your initials on them and pictures of things you really like and glitter and string and pieces from the junk drawer (yours or someone else's) and even broken tail lights that you pick up in the parking lot at Wal*Mart (don't ask me how I know about that!). Then there's journal making for which you need old leather purses picked up at a thrift store. And, there's glass jewelry for which you need glass slides (like the doctor uses when they draw blood) plus a soldering iron, plus flux, plus solder, plus interesting things to go between the two glass slides. Then there's dry embossing which requires a light box or (drum roll please) a Wizard by Spellbinders. My friend Holly is on the Spellbinders design team and uses her Wizard to do the most amazing things!! I have a Wizard. My Wizard has actually been taken out of the box. My Wizard has not done lots of amazing things. Let's move on!!!

Well, I've listed lots of my stamping (and other craft) supplies that I have and don't use very often. Gets kind of depressing, doesn't it??? Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about something happy - or maybe I'll just list some more of the unused supplies lying around out in my studio. Hey, the studio is basically unused, too!!!

Home At Last

I've been telling all about my years of searching for the perfect craft - or more correctly, the craft that I can be good at. So, now I'll tell you about the craft that I've finally landed on that I think I can call my own. About 9 years ago my niece Tracy and her husband Rob moved in across the street from us. I decided to have a dinner party to introduce them to the neighbors. In thinking about all the different types of invitations I could use, I finally, for some totally unknown reason, decided to stamp them myself. So, I bought a "You're Invited" stamp and a pad of navy blue ink and I was on my way. After the invitations, it was a very easy step to start visiting rubber stamp stores and art stores that carried rubber stamps. That led to Rubber Stamping 101 classes (yes, I took 101 TWICE - at 2 different rubber stamp stores!! LOL). Then, I met a few people in class and that led to more classes and more friends, but more importantly, the knowledge that there were a lot of supplies and tools out there that I didn't have and really needed! The third class I took was an embossing class. I liked it and immediately bought a heat tool and some embossing powder. That started a years long journey of collecting almost every color of embossing powder known to man. Funny thing was that I only use clear or detail gold embossing powder. Finally, I wised up about a year ago and gave all my embossing powders to my friend Ellen who then gifted me with a wonderful Stampin' Up background stamp - "Tres Chic". This is a beautiful stamp and I will let you know when I finally get around to using it!!! I'm truly serious when I say that I amass, collect and hoard, but don't use.



The reason that rubber stamping appeals to me so much is that I can't draw. I have always wanted to do watercolors and I love them, but you have to draw (even just a little) to get the bone structure for the watercolor. So, it dawned on me that I can let other people do the drawing and I buy the art work in the form of stamps. Then I transfer their artwork to my canvas (actually my cardstock) and I finish the artwork with, what else. . . . . coloring within the lines!!!! But, I do use my own creativity to decide the color scheme, the embellishments, whether to emboss or not, which stamps to combine. I love rubber stamping. . . . . but even more than that, I love collecting all the wonderful tools that go with rubber stamping!!

Quite A Trip

Continuing this trip along the craft road, I am constantly being reminded of other crafts that I picked up along the route. There was the brief crocheting stint in college. . . . one Christmas I crocheted hats for several of my sorority sisters. But, crocheting confuses me because I never seem to know which opening I'm supposed to put the hook into. Now, in knitting, it's pretty straight forward and hard to mis-judge, but crocheting just gives too many choices of openings, thus, chances to be wrong!! Also in college, I developed my tendency to always be a "colorer" and never an artist. I had several sorority sisters who were art majors and very good at what they did. Whenever we had to make signs or scenery or whatever for Rush, skit nite, homecoming, Braves' Day, etc. they would draw the work of art and I would be one of the masses who came behind and colored. . . . inside the lines, mind you!!! When you combine this with the fact that I was a business major - well, there just wasn't any hope for my creativity. Or, was there? I seem to have been on a journey ever since. A journey to find the art or craft that I'm really good at.



Eight months after graduating from college, I married Ben (the owner of my beautiful needlepoint fraternity crest. . . . of course I had to marry him!!!). Within 7 months we had bought our first house, so new crafts started entering the scene at a staggering rate. I took stained glass classes because we were going to fix up the house and have lots of stained glass windows throughout. I actually did make one small window (which has been propped up in my playroom window - different house - for the past 32 years) and one candy cane Christmas ornament. Lots of supplies there: glass cutters, fancy pliers, goggles, solder and flux, brushes, and lots and lots of glass pieces. Ben finally talked me into tossing out the 2 gigantic boxes of glass pieces about 5 years ago. Now, I really don't like tossing out anything, but he finally convinced me that there would probably not be an awful lot of stained glass artisans at the Goodwill store. I say, "Maybe, maybe not!!"



Then there was an upholstery class. I had picked up a wonderful old fainting couch from the side of the road and was going to reupholster it for our bedroom. Also, we had Ben's Grandmother's old goose neck rocker, a caned love seat from my favorite antique store and a wonderfully comfortable easy chair from my Mother's house. We recovered the love seat and it sits in our bedroom. I did reupholster Grandma Lucy's rocker and it's in my breakfast room, but to this day still doesn't have trim around the edges to cover the tacks. Actually, a nice throw covers most of them pretty well. We paid a professional to redo Mother's chair and we re-tossed the fainting couch. It was a great idea, but just not for us!! Of course, along the way I had to get GIGANTIC scissors, tack hammer, stretcher, boxes and boxes of tacks (as if we were going into the business!), fabric, etc. Lots more tools to add to my collection.

I'm going to have to speed this up, so that I can get to the original aim of my blog - The Hoarding of Craft Supplies! So, I'll briefly mention that there was cake decorating, basket weaving (both with traditional reeds and with my own weaving supplies that I picked up where ever I could find them - think privet hedge in my back yard and kudzu on my back fence), macrame (now there's a craft that I really didn't mind being bad at), tole painting, one-stroke painting, loom weaving, calligraphy (that's the one where the teacher broke my calligraphy pen over her knee and said not to come back!!!! Just joking, but I was about that bad at it), drawing class (can you say "she sucks at this"), adult education sewing class (still messed up on the sleeves). Then, when I had just about given up, I took several classes in rubber stamping. Bingo!! This is my calling. . . . well, I didn't totally stink at it!

And each and every class and craft has added tons of supplies and tools to my supplies. There's just nothing better than shopping for arts and craft supplies. And I discovered something a couple of years ago while going through a stage of buying more and more kitchen tools. I finally realized what I was doing!!! I had bought in to the theory that "If I get enough supplies and just the right tools, then I'll be good at whatever I do." An amazing concept!!! However, it didn't work with the kitchen tools and I'm beginning to realize that it doesn't work with the craft tools either. But, I keep trying.

Continuing Along The Craft Road

Yesterday I mentioned knitting afghans and mufflers in college, but I skipped over the most fruitful time of my sewing career. That was my last couple of years of high school (good old Campbell High in Smyrna, GA.) when Villager and Ladybug dresses were all the rage. Remember those? Well, basically, it was an A-line dress made of a flowered kettle cloth fabric, sleeveless with 2 darts on the front and a round neck, no collar. There were 2 little cookie pockets on the front with a very long zipper up the back. I could go over to Wayne's 5 & 10 and get the cloth for less than $2.00/yard and knock those things out all day long!!! That was my heyday. Then, in the Fall of 1967 when I started to college, pant suits were coming in. You had to put lapels on the jacket, and don't forget the sleeves (I hate sleeves), and the slacks had to be fitted and have a waist band and placket for the zipper. Oh, how the mighty had tumbled!!! No more sewing for me.

However, I did pick up ceramics and china painting along with cross stitch and needlepoint while in college. My Mother and I would go down to Montezuma, GA. where my aunts and uncles lived and, while we were there, we would go to a local ceramics shop and spend days making tea pots and Christmas dishes and little bowls and spoon rests and I even made a cute little ceramic jewelry box. The lady who ran the ceramics shop would not let you fail at anything. Everything came out looking like a professional had done it. Well, as professional as ceramics from a little shop in a podunk town in middle Georgia ever looked back in the late 60's. I later picked up ceramics again when my son was a baby. My church offered a free nursery for mothers taking classes on Wednesday mornings. So, I took ceramics classes for years. Probably would have been a lot cheaper just to hire a babysitter every Wednesday morning, but I had fun!!! The china painting came in one Summer during college. My Mother and I signed up for a class in a lady's home and went once a week for about 8 weeks. A few of the pieces we made in that class are still sitting in my china cabinet. China painting took more talent than I was able to provide, so I didn't continue. The needlepoint came in when I was a senior in college. I was dating "Ben the Wonderful", later to become DH, and for Christmas, I decided to do a needlepoint version of the crest of his fraternity. Never mind the fact that I had never done needlepoint before!!! I got my dear friend Claire to draw the fraternity crest on canvas, then I did the crest in petit point and the background in needlepoint. That was a masterpiece and still hangs in my upstairs hall. It was also the last piece of needlepoint I ever did. I took up counted cross stitch which I did for many years. Cross stitch is MUCH easier to me. Are you beginning to notice a tendency to pick up and drop crafts? So far in this narrative, we haven't discussed the collecting of tools and supplies to go with the crafts. But, I was beginning to develop my life theme: "Always having the right tools for the job is a wonderful thing." And, along with it the corollary: "You can NEVER have too many of the right tools!!!!"

In The Beginning

Most rubber stampers - and, in fact, crafters of all kinds - can relate to the concept of accruing tools and supplies and being slow to use them. I have taken this concept to a height so unattainable by most ordinary people that I just had to write about it.

First, I'll talk about craft-jumping and being a Jack-of-All-Crafts. . . . . . . Master-of-None. I suppose it all started back in 1955. I was 6 years old and my beloved maid, Annie, taught me how to sew doll clothes. She was being kind to me and sharing a craft, but also getting me out of her hair for a while so she could clean and cook for the family. Otherwise, I would have kept her all to myself and she would never have gotten anything done. My first sewing attempts were for my Toodles doll, my Ginny doll and later for my Jill doll. Raglan sleeves, no elastic - just gathers at the waist, no collars. I was not a future coutoure designer, however it did put needle, thread and fabric in my hands and I enjoyed the feeling.

By the time I was 10, I made my own Easter dress. It was sleeveless, round necked, gathered skirt attached to a bodice with darts and a zipper in back. The material was 100% cotton and a blue bandana print. Somewhat conspicuous among all the pastel organdy flouncy dresses at church that day, but it was MINE. . . . . my work, my creation, my bragging rights!!!
At age 12, I bought a book and taught myself how to knit. I remember going to Rich's (a major Atlanta department store) and asking questions of the lady in the fabric department where the yarn was sold. My Mother didn't knit and I didn't know anyone who did, so I was getting all my knowledge from a book and from the nice lady at Rich's. For the first couple of years that I knit, I had one (1). . . . . . yes, count it ONE skein of pink yarn. I rolled it into a nice ball and I started to knit. I would knit rows and rows, many feet of stockinette stitch and, when I'd had enough, I would unravel it and start over with the garter stitch. Then, after unraveling that one, I'd start over with something else. By the time I made my first item of knitwear, I really had a lot of practice under my belt. I made a major mistake when choosing my first project - it was a sweater!!! I'm no good at sleeves (remember the sleeveless Easter dress?) and fitting things just isn't my forte. So, all of the pieces of the sweater got knit - increases, decreases, etc. But the sweater never got put together. By the time I got to college, I had learned the beauty of afghans and mufflers. Everything's flat - just miles and miles of lovely knitting!! I made a ton of them. Today, I still knit occasionally, but mostly I collect yarn and patterns and tell myself that I'm really going to make something. And, you know what? I still believe myself!