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[twocheeseplease.livejournal.com]

I quite love to do craft swaps, which I guess are a lot like art trades. I haunt swap-bot about twice a week, scanning for new swaps. Although I've had to cut down recently because international postage bites when you're on a tight budget, I couldn't help but sign up for this hand-carved stamp swap as that's a craft I'm REALLY into right now!

We were only supposed to carve one stamp, but I think that's rather boring so I carved as many as I could without going over the first weight bracket for postage, meaning I could make my partner SIX stamps. Six is undeniably more fun than one, don't you agree?

I've also included an ink pad for her, because in her profile it says she can't really find many cute colours so hopefully she likes this one - they're brand new to my Spotlight store (hopefully this means stamping is coming back into fashion!) and it's my favourite colour blue, as you might be able to tell from my blog! I use that blue for the borders on my pictures, links and sub-headings - that type of stuff.

 

Her name is Jaravee, so I made her a signature stamp that I thought might be cute to make printed tags, or perhaps to sign letters? Who knows! I mounted that one on a block of wood (thank you wood-carving father who has lots of off-cuts he lets me "borrow"!) because it's carved on Speedball Speedy-carve, and is therefore only about 1cm thick. The other stamps are carved on DATS erasers, so they're big enough on their own to make stamping comfortable.

I stamped the images onto some nice cardstock and before lifting the stamp up again I drew around the outline so I would have the perfect size to cut out and glue atop the eraser, so now you can tell which way is up when you stamp! (this idea is actually courtesy of DIY Obasan, who shared her secret with me.)

There's a wee chicka-dee, and a re-appearance of my feather along with another design I've been meaning to do for ages: an envelope with wings! I also made a "to:" and "from:" for gift tags or letters or addressing envelopes - who knows!

And I've 'gift-wrapped' it all up in a quilted envelope, something I worked on last night.

Overall I'm happy with how this came out.

Those who know me in real life will know how much of an utter perfectionist I am. In fact, a lot of times, if I can't do something (and do it perfectly) the first time I get upset and angry and throw it away, never to try again. I ALMOST threw the whole thing away while trying to attach the snap (which was the finishing touch!) just because it JUST WOULDN'T WORK AND I WAS SO MAD I JUST WANTED TO THROW IT ON THE GROUND AND JUMP UP AND DOWN ON IT IN STILETTO HEELS WHILE CUSSING LIKE A DRUNKEN SAILOR.

Phew.

But I'm glad I persevered because it turned out that the first snap just wasn't doing it's snap-thang and the second one worked like a charm, and made it all look so easy that I couldn't remember why I was upset in the first place.

There are some things I would do differently next time.

• I'm not 100% happy with the shape - I think it would look cuter if it was more square instead of rectangle (it'd also make the 'pocket' deeper).

• I will do less lines (or a wider space between them). I like the effect with all these lines but I nearly went cross-eyed while stitching!

• I think I might top-stitch with a darker thread - I just think it would make a nice accent. What do you guys think?

The flower fabric is a rayon or a vicose, I can't remember which, but either way it was a very slippy fabric, so I was nervous about quilting it as I've only ever worked with cotton or polar fleece before and they're pretty straight-forward, but I'm glad I did as I think it's good to tackle things that scare you.

In that spirit, I just might one day make that sock monkey quilt I have the charm squares for. Maybe..