DIY Rubber Stamp

I can't believe that I never blogged about this...It's my moose stamp that I made myself months and months and months ago...Last Christmas (2010) I fell in love with this moose paper punch that I can no longer find on the Paper Source website. I hope they didn't discontinue my sweetie...Anyway, two examples of Moosie are down there. I made a lovely lady walking her moose and kraft gift tags for that year.

The only bummer about the moose punch was that it was so tiny...I needed a bigger one.  Paper Source at the time was holding a lovely "make your own rubber stamp" class. I think I was in the middle of IVF treatments and I needed an escape, so onto the class I went.

In order to make your own rubber stamp, this is a great kit. You can get all of the components at Michael's by themselves, but for the DIY Rubber Stamp virgins, this is great. 

Decide what you'd like to make. Remember that whatever image you use, it will be opposite once you stamp with it...so if you're using text (for example) make a mirror image of it in Word or Photoshop. The kit includes tracing paper, trace your design onto it...

Then put the tracing paper onto the rubber and rub the design onto the rubber. The lead from your pencil (oh yeah, you need to use one of those) will rub off.

Use the scrapers to cut away the negative space. There are two different sized scrapers in the kit, a smaller one for more detailed work and a bigger one that acts like a shovel for the larger spots.  

Test out the stamp to see where you need to get rid of more negative space. You can see on here that I had lots to go on this test shot. Oops!

Voila! It's a moose!!!!!

Baby stuff!

Since I'm pregnant (finally-that took awhile) I now have a slew of baby items that need to be crafted and so this is what I've been working on for the past few weeks...

These are the petal enclosures that I created for my baby shower. Yes. I made my own baby shower invitations. I've been waiting for years to get pregnant and I was so excited, I just couldn't resist. The enclosure is THIS one from Paper Source and I painted swirls on it with my kindergarten watercolor set. Oh, I chose the ducks instead of the flowers as they looked more baby-ish. THIS is the duck paper punch that I used, then I attached them with brads and used bakers twine to close them. Super easy. 

My thank you for buying me baby things cards. I made these using my super fabulous Epic Letterpress.  I'm all into blind embossing right now, so that's what I did. So fun.

Envelopes for the cards. I lined them with discontinued baby feet paper from PS. The envelopes themselves are vellum and they're pink (super fitting since i'm having a GIRL) and I love that they're see through. They look very chic. 

There are a few other things that I need to get done. We're hopefully moving soon, so the craft room is packed into boxes that are currently split between the 1st and 3rd floors of my house. If we don't move, the craft room will be Baby D's room...so either way, craftiness is being repositioned in my house. Or another house. Rambling...

Given my new love of Pinterest and my hearts board, I might start making hearts again. Who knows. It might be fun. It was supposed to be a 365 hearts project, but those 365 don't have to be consecutive days do they? Methinks NOT! TTFN!