Old Stamps and Other Stuff!

Aloha, all

     I found myself at Bear Lake in Minnesota having some time on my hands, with no company in the cabin, and having just finished a book. What to do with myself? I had chosen not to try to travel with a kit of stamping supplies because (1) I thought I wasn't going to have much crafting time, and (2) I just didn't have enough space in my luggage to stash all the stuff I really want to have when I'm making cards or scrapbook pages.

     Now what?

     "What" happened was that I started to look through drawers in the back room of the cabin and found – ta da! – an old Stampin' Up! stamp set! The set is called "Just Buzzin' By" and has the cutest bees ever.  But to do anything with this find, I had also to find ink and paper at the least. 

     Without going into boring details of the hunt, I found the following: "Stampin' Kids Stamp Pads," some 5" X 8" lined index cards, Crayola markers, and Elmer's School Glue glue sticks. Oh, and the best find (well, second best) was an old Fiskars cutter with, wonder of wonders, a sharp blade. Shows how much paper crafting gets done at the lake!

     Anyway, off I went to make a card. The stamp pads weren't really juicy, but with a lot of tap-tap-tap, then pound-pound-pound, I got those stamps inked up. The old Stampin' Kids black stamp pad wasn't really black, but a kind of grayish dark blue. Nonetheless it created the images just fine. Once I got the images inked, I had the challenge of finding a group of colors that I could use not just to color, but also to do some shading. This was made a bit more difficult as several of the markers were definitely dry. Or the points were no longer points, to be expected as these were kids' markers. As you can see, I was able to figure something out. Watercolor it's not, but it would do just fine.

     The next trick was to be how to make this into a card. I used that trusty Fiskars cutter to cut the stamped card down to a size that was two sizes down from a full-sized folded card (1/2" vertically and horizontally). Now I needed a mat. There was not so much as a scrap of construction paper to be found! Can you guess how I made the mat? Hint: it involved a marker.

     So I had myself some crafting time and now that's out of my system for today! Tomorrow we leave the lake and start our traveling towards the west coast. I do believe. I will not find myself bored again for a while!