Crafty Me

I love rubber stamping. Been doing it—off and on, of course, like all hobbies—about the same length of time I've been counted cross stitching. And because it's been that long, it's a counter-culture thing, on the "weird" end of the "cute v weird" wars in stamping. Back in my letter-writing days I loved using stamps to decorate both the letters themselves and the envelopes. Then came the electronic age, and it's kinda hard to stamp an email. More recently, I've been participating in holiday card exchanges and took up stamping the cards for those (and, of course, the cards I send out to friends and family and family friends).

Then BFF-J relocated to Annapolis because the economy is so very seriously sucktastic here in what used to be a truly massive military-industrial complex. So besides keeping up with each other with emails and Facebook, I've been on a mission to keep her snail-mail box occupied with stamped cards, shooting for at least every couple of weeks, and not just holiday-ish occasions, to let her know she's missed and not forgotten. To that end, I've spent a chunk of my tax returns on a new storage system for my stamps (and I'm very happy with these cabinets!) and a variety of new tools and papercrafting toys and papers. And found, through a stamping magazine, a blog, which of course leads to other blogs.

What I've found thus far falls very heavily in the "cute" end of the spectrum. Which is okay, really, because what I'm looking for is more in the realm of layout kinds of things more than images. I've seen some really beautiful stuff. And some ugly stuff. And some genuinely ugly stamps. One thing I honestly do not understand is the fascination for the stamps from Magnolia—mumps-cheeked faces with little black beady eyes (think Little Orphan Annie filled in) and neither noses nor mouths. Frankly, I find them creepy looking. But that's the nature of things: one woman's "creepy" is another's "adorable" (insert hurling emoticon here).

I also haven't had much luck finding stamping bloggers/blogging stampers who lean toward the "weird" end of the spectrum, leaving me with some nice layouts, but otherwise insipid works.

I really need to start photographing my efforts. I sure hope BFF-J is saving my masterpieces for posterity.