I'm a happy stamper

Friends, readers, total strangers,

A confession. I thought I knew a little about stamping as I had read up a tiny bit on it. I had drooled over stamps and stamping and ink and thought all I needed was the desire to learn.

As I found out at yesterday's rubber stamping workshop at The Little Happyshop, you need to be steady with your hands. Let me just say this first. I enjoyed the workshop a lot. It might not show on my face but I did.

Who is this homeless looking guy? (Just kidding, Joe) He's the rubber stamp guru - Mr Joe Chiang of Monster Gallery. Yep, this is the man. Honestly, I took a bad pic of him. I blame it on the light.

Here's a better shot of Joe. (I pinched the pic from his facebook.)

There were five ladies in the class. It was held at The Little Happyshop and it looked like a happy shop. I kinda felt happy when in the shop so it's a good name. Very good fengshui!

These are the essentials for the class - rubber, scraper, sharp pen cutter, tracing paper and dark pencil.

The easy part is transferring the image to the rubber. A reverse image is transferred. Must remember this. I had to do this twice because the first time my outline was too thin. So I got left behind! I'm the slowest "kid" in class. At some point during the lesson, I heard Joe saying "Let's wait for Jane!" hehehehe

Cutting the outline is the hard part. If you're a stamper you'll know about the valley you have to carve out. I'm quite clumsy and was a little nervous about hurting myself. At home when I cook, it's common to hear me yell out in pain. In fact, my kids are so used to it they won't come running unless I cry out "Help."

Where was I? Ah yes, the valleys. They are harder to cut then expected. So I cut and I cut and at the end, my result is quite crude. My lines are jagged when they should be smooth. Also, I did not taper the waste enough so the stamping gets additional lines. But I got the idea. I'm the sort who gets better with practice.

When I reached home, I worked on the stamp a little bit more and it looks a little better.

This morning I had a few minutes to spare and decided to work on a new stamp. I made a tulip because I like using tulips in my embellishment. It looks like a crown. I'm not even sure I've seen a real tulip. Well, a tulip is pretty easy to carve but I managed to not get the precise outline again. Much more practice is required. Once I get additional rubber, I'm carving every day.

Ah, a peek at my inspiration notebook. Meet Teddy, my new bear. I named it after a dog. I have limited ink colours . I would love turquoise, teal, red and hot pink. I settled for this dunnowhatkindofblue blue. The pink was too light.

I combined the stamped tulips with some embroidery. I'm soaking it to see if the colour fades. If it doesn't, it'll become a coin pouch. What do you guys think?