So Many New Things - Part 3 - Stamps!

I was going to say that I vacillate between wanting many, many new stamps, and wanting to stop adding to my collection and figure out and use often the stamps I already own.  This is, of course, not true.  I always want new stamps.  And even though I don't feel like I get around to craft stores which carry stamps on a regular basis very often, I made plenty of stamp purchases this spring and summer.

The bulk of my stamp purchases were at the Heirloom show last spring.  I mentioned in my previous post that I spent the most money and time at the Impression Obsession booth.  They have a line of stamps called "Cover-a-Card" that I can't get enough of.  These are mostly 6" x 6" squares that serve as background stamps.  Because of their size, they will cover the entirety of most cards with one stamping (I use A2 - 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" most frequently).  These are cling stamps which means you have to use IO's fancy rocking stamp mount thing, another really big acrylic block, or, like me, your big 6" x 12" quilting ruler.  They have a million designs.  I had about 3 of them prior to the show.  I bought 6.  There are about 30 more I want!

These are Greenery, Gradation, Sunburst, Fluff, Rain, and Spatter.

The style of rubber stamps and rubber stamping that really resonated with me when I first started was called "art stamping."  By my definition, this was in contrast with cute, cartoon-ish stamps and well-suited to collage, faux postage, and other themes I gravitated towards.  It seems like most of the companies that made art stamps have either merged with each other, gone away, or just don't come to East Coast shows.  One of the few exceptions is Lost Coast Designs, which has been around for a while.

One of my issues with Lost Coast and other stamp dealers from back in the day, is that they largely carried unmounted designs.  One of the things I love about working with rubber stamps is that it's easy and immeidate.  You ink your stamp, stamp it on paper, and pretty much, you're done.  Unmounted stamps, especially those that are the rubber die only, are so much more work - or were.  For years, if you bought just the rubber die, you had to mount it on foam, and then find a wood block to fit the image, and glue that down, and then, and only then can you use the stamp.  Already I'm less interested.  Over the years, folks came up with alternative methods, and I'll talk more about that in my next post, but suffice it to say, I never purchased many stamps from Lost Coast, even though I liked many of them, because they were unmounted.  For unknown reasons, or perhaps because I can't resist Gibson Girl drawings, I gave in and bought three stamps/plates from Lost Coast at the Heirloom show.

One of the last booths I visited at the Heirloom show was that of Technique Junkies.  I'd heard of them, but never associated them with a line of rubber stamps, only with accessories and other stuff.  As I walked around their booth, it turned out that not only did they have great stamps, they had a bunch I already had in my collection, as (I read later), they had taken over an older line from Stamp Camp.  I bought a bunch of stamps from them:  Cherry Blossoms, Daisies, Three Flower Collage, Draped Fabric, Love Fulfilled, and Umbrella People.

After the Heirloom show, my rubber stamp purchasing binge ended.  For a while.  I mentioned in an earlier post that in August I went to the Moon Rose in Huntington, NY.  There I bought two stamps only - one each from Rosie's Roadshow and Magenta.  The Paris quote attributed to Audrey Hepburn is, I think, a line from the original version of Sabrina. I have plans for both of these already, although when I looked, I could have sworn I had more than one Eiffel Tower stamp...

Somewhere along the way I learned about Deep Red Stamps.   I generally don't like to buy stamps without having seen them in person, so I just made a long list of their images I was interested in and periodically looked at their website to add new things to my list.  Suddenly, a few weeks ago, it became imperative to have one of their stamps right away (guess which one...).  So I bought four:  Gibson Girl, Composition Notebook, Victorian Evening Dress and Train Station.

At about the same time I was making my Deep Red order, by going down some rabbit hole or other, I learned of a stamp store in Washington State which sells stamps online, Scarlet Empress.  I think they sell many lines in their retail shop, but only their own online.  Their site is down just this moment, but one of the two stamps I bought is this one called Let's Do Lunch.

I still have a whole bunch of stamps on my shopping list and a few stores I might try to find when I'm in California in couple of weeks...

One more post in this series:  Tools, etc.