Something that makes me about as happy as anything else in the world is stamping.  It is my business, but with having a child in school (and volunteering a huge amount at the school), I have less and less time to do it.  But when I do it, life is good.  It is sublime.  All my cares and stresses go away.  It is the best therapy I can imagine.

 

So it is only natural that there will be a stamping post here from time to time.

 

The first rubber stamp I owned came my way in 1985.  It came because it was a frog, not because I was a stamper.  I would not become a stamper until 1996.  (Story for another day.)  But the point is that I have been making things using rubber stamps for more than twelve years.  And as I mentioned, my “job” is even about stamping.

 

When I started stamping, there were not a lot of resources for ideas.  This meant that I came up with my own ideas for things to stamp.  And THAT meant two other things:  1)  I spent way too much time coming up with ideas (not my forte), and 2) the things I stamped were not nearly as cool as they could have been.

 

As time went by, there were more and more resources for ideas which saved me loads of time and allowed me to copy some of the coolest things in the world; most of my stamping projects are inspired (a little or a lot) by things other creative people have designed.  (In the stamping world we call it C.A.S.E.—Copy And Share Everything.)  Don’t get me wrong, I am a good stamper.  I have done it long enough that I am fast and good at it.  But to come up with the ideas?  Well, why bother most of the time?

 

Today’s creation is out of my own head, however.  Sort of.  It is not the latest technique or coolest idea out there; usually I make much more elaborate cards than this.  But I love this one anyway.  Why?  Because I was inspired on my own to do it!  And what’s more, when I saw the inspiration, I wanted to make the card, knew how I wanted to do it and had everything I needed to do it.

Some images © SU! 2007

 

There are a lot of things I love about stamping, but one of the big ones is that I have so many stamps and accessories and tools that I can pretty much do anything I want.  Although this card is simple, it is exactly what I wanted.  (And it looks so much better in person, but you will have to trust me on that.)

 

Now here is the best part.  The thing that inspired me was this picture.  It was taken by  Tom Wigley from Welcome to Wigger’s World.  (Thanks, Tom, for generously letting me use this.)  He hosts Sky Watch Friday every week where you can find some absolutely incredible pictures of the sky.  There are a lot of wonderful things to see there, but this one just caught my eye.  Maybe because when I saw it, I knew I could do a close duplication.  Maybe because I love flowers and sky.  Maybe because it looks like Queen Anne’s Lace in the silhouette (though I don’t think it really is), and I love Queen Anne’s Lace (which we don’t have here in the desert).  I don’t know why.  But I loved it.  And it inspired me to go stamp something from my own head. 

 

I had no idea this blogging thing was going to inspire me so much!

 

By Louise Cannon

 

Note:  For those non-stampers out there, the technique used to get the background “clouds” is called “Polished Stone.”  There are many ways to do this, often involving alcohol inks.  I do not own any alcohol inks, but I do this by putting a generous amount of rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball, then putting 2-4 drops each of 2-3 colors of ink on the cotton ball, then daubing it all over glossy cardstock.  When it dries it can look like many things including marble and clouds.  Different colors create vastly different results.  By the way, I use inks made for stamping, not just any ink.  Any ink might work in one way or another, but time to experiment is something I do not have.