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!!!