Horse Clean Up

Only a couple more miscellaneous horse stamps and we're done. Time to clean up after the parade.

Baby's First Pony, 2" x 2 1/4"

My Little AQ Pony (I couldn't help myself), 3" x 2 3/4"

She needs a name, don't you think? Marjorie is already taken, though.

When is a Horse Not a Horse?

For the Horsin' Around event, a number of people carved different images for a series called "When is a Horse, Not a Horse?" You could look on the event page for some of the other interpretations of this theme. For mine, I carved 5 different stamps. See if you can guess what they are (no fair peeking first):

1 1/2" x 2 1/2"

2 1/4" x 2"

1 1/4" x 2"

1 7/8" x 1 1/4" (bonus points if you figure out both answers)

2" x 1 3/4"

Some of these stamps will also be up for adoption, either together or separately, after they come home from Cherry Valley.

Horses in Art

There were four stamps in the Horses in Art series for the event (Horsin' Around, in case you're jumping in mid-stream). What can I say? The fat cave pony is my favorite. This series of stamps will also be up for adoption to be planted permanently elsewhere after they come home.

Cave Art, 1 7/8" x 1 1/8"

Chinese Art, 2" x 1 1/8"

Horse Rearing, 1 3/4" x 2 1/4"

Stylized Art, 1 7/8" x 1 3/8"

Horses in Mythology

The Horses in Mythology series contained 5 stamps. Since Winnebago County is a bit...(trying to think of a nice word for anal retentive...) um, controlling, they can't remain as permanent plants in the park where the Horsin' Around event was held (which was amazing, btw. Trail Rider and Co do a fantastic job with their events.). As soon as they come home, this series of stamps will be up for adoption.

Centaur, 2 1/2" x 2"

Hippocampus, 1 7/8" diameter (I saw this exact image in embossed gold on someone's bag at the event. Very cool!)

Pegasus, 2" x 1 3/8"

Unicorn, 1 1/2" x 2 1/8"

Epona, 2 3/4" diameter (Martini Man carved the same image for the event. Talk about good taste!)

The two biggest challenges for me in carving for the event were 1) finding images that didn't all have the same look to them, and 2) finding images that remained kid-friendly--especially in the mythology series. Not sure how well I succeeded on the first, but I was pleased to be able to accomplish the second without too much headache. Epona was the hardest (No, Don't do a Google search.). Maybe that's why MM and I ended up with the same image. It was the only acceptable, carvable one we could find. Now, if this had been a pin-up event, I would have had options. :P

Stampede

Now that the Horsin' Around event is over, I'm going to start posting the stamps that I carved. It will take a few days and by the time we're done, you'll probably be as tired of horses as I was. Let the Stamp-ede begin!

Toward the end of the carving marathon, I decided to start a Horses in History series. I had at least four images picked out, but this is the only one that was finished. I found a patch for the Pony Express National Historic Trail, and since patches and letterboxers are a natural match....well, it had to be done. We had picked up an old fiction story about the Pony Express for spare change at a library sale years ago, so I turned it into an altered book to put the stamp and logbook in and it became a HIPS box. Stamp size is 2 7/8" x 2 3/4".

Now, I'm happy to report, the stamp is headed west to be planted as a traditional box on the actual historic trail of the Pony Express. The Pony Express might have been a short lived venture that left it's originators bankrupt, but the idea was and still is big on bravado and romance. You know you've dreamed about it at least once.

Portrait of a Newborn

Portrait stamps are difficult, there is no question about it; but there are several things that can make it even more difficult.

• Teeth--I don't care who the carver is, I have never seen teeth done well.
• Familiarity with the subject--Carving a stranger is harder than carving someone you know (okay, that sounds weird). Knowing a person's expressions and personality helps in determining what is important in an image.
• Potential for offense--If you carve the image of a jellyfish, it's not likely to walk off in a huff if you botch the job. Carve your Mother in Law, though, and you'd better get it right.
• Babies--even the babies themselves aren't familiar with their own expressions, so how can anyone else be? Add to that their rapidly changing bodies and you have a conundrum in short order. And of course, hands are so very key to a baby's expressions--and we know how easy they are to carve, right?

Now that I've pointed out how hard portraits stamps are, it's going to sound obnoxiously self serving to say that I am very pleased with how this stamp turned out. But I am enormously happy (and relieved) with the results, in spite of how intimidated I felt in the beginning. I think I will always feel that way about such personal images.

I'll let you know what Mom thinks when she gets it.

Signature Worthy of Kings

Sorry. I couldn't resist the word play. It was either that or "Carving Royalty". Anyway...

The Stamp Exchange platform on AQ is a nifty thing. Get rid of stamps you don't want anymore or don't have time to plant, or find something you need. Help someone or be helped. With hundreds of stamps carved, I'm to the point of having no idea what to do with them all. The stamp exchange has helped me off load several. I also just carved the above sig for some new boxers. It was fun finding the different crowns for each of their family members. (permission to post granted)

I am aware of the argument that everyone should carve their own sig. They had.  They were just looking for something that better represented them. Since the image came readily to me, I decided to carve it.

Now I'm working on a new series of traditionals that I have in mind.

Bender Teddy

If you go down to the woods today (hic)
You're sure of a big surprise...

After the picnic, Teddy got a good look at himself and immediately checked into rehab.

Lesson for today: Do not carve stamps while watching Madagascar--especially when it is your last piece of PZ Kut.
No, this stamp is not going in the Etsy shop.

Pony

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes

PussyCat

The first of the stamps designed after the mobile characters:

"Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?"
"I've been to London to visit the Queen."
"Pussycat, pussycat, what did you dare?"
"I frightened a little mouse under her chair."
"MEOW!"

**all of these stamps from the mobile will be listed in my Etsy store.

Ahhhh....

...back in my element. This carving was a good reminder that your stamp will only be as good as your image transfer. The image I started with wasn't very clear and so carving it took twice as much work. However, I really loved that it had both candles and pinecones in it.

On the mundane side (for posting purposes, at least), we are all still struggling with whatever bug this is that has taken hold. And both of my brothers are visiting from out of state, along with a whole passel of nephews and nieces. So unless I can dig up some more retro postals, this blog will be a little on the dry side this week. But I will be back sooner or later!

Project Blizzard

The books by Laura Numeroff in the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series are some of our favorites. They are perfect illustrations of the Sequences that I mentioned earlier. Our own edition began when I made the mistake of giving my crafty child the Gooseberry Patch Christmas books some weeks ago. She now has a list for me that will take until August to complete.
At the top of that list was her desire to make our own wrapping paper this year. To that end, I began carving...
In the meantime, about a dozen rolls of Christmas paper were discovered in the basement. No worries though. We have already dreamed up several other messes that we can make with the stamps. Stay tuned...

Reservations for Norway

The owner of each Artful Logbook was to decorate the first page according to their own theme. If I were truly given the opportunity to travel anywhere in the world, I would have a very difficult time deciding between Norway, Israel and Spain. And Greece. And Washington.
In the end I decided that since I live in a very Norwegian community (Ya, sure, you betcha) I would have much more opportunity to plant Scandi themed stamps. And I decided to do my whole page with stamps. As a pop-up.
If you live around here you may recognize these stamps as the contents of the Norway in a Pine Box letterbox. There are 12 stamps in all.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

...to bring you National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or NaNo hereafter). For the uninitiated, NaNo is the bit of insanity that possesses the amateur (and some of the professional) writing community at large during the month of November. I say at large, because currently there are close to 89,000 people signed up to participate this year, world wide.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the whole point of NaNo is to write the rough draft of a 50,000 word novel over a 30 day span. Most likely, a really bad rough draft. But a complete story nonetheless.
That boils down to 1,667 words a day. This will be my first attempt at writing something this big, but after writing 5,000 words on Tuesday alone, I'm pretty sure that I can do it. By ingesting a significant amount of coffee and not sleeping at all.
Oh, and did I mention that I will also be typing up the novels that both of the girls are planning to write?

So, what am I writing, you want to know? Thanks for asking! The current story outline includes a boy named Citrian, a kidnapped mother, clues carved on cubes, talking/dying rocks, a villain filled with glass shards, and a double-edged allegory. If you want to find out how I intend to combine elements of geology, letterboxing, and mercy, you'll have to come back after I figure it out. I can't start writing till Sunday, after all.

Since I probably won't be carving for awhile, I had to make a stamp dedicated to NaNo. Just 'cuz.


The automatic "guest" posts will begin on Monday. See you all in a couple of weeks!

Puss in Boots

This is the last of the Kliban Qats...for now. I saved the line dancin' cat for last. Most of my childhood memories of my Uncle Bob and Aunt Bonnie revolve around guitars and singing. "Grandma got run over by a Reindeer" and "Little Brown Shack out Back" were silly favorites of all the little cousins.
I may post a collage of all of the B. Kliban cats on Saturday*, but other than that, the Bonnie Project is complete. Unless, of course, I decide to stamp them "just in case" before I mail them off to her. ;)

And since These Boots were made for Walkin', this cat exits stage right.

*Upon further reflection, the girls and I have decided that this project might not be quite done.

Legacy in Stitches

"Legacy in Stitches" is one of those stamps that I'd like another crack at, but will not likely ever take. This quilt stamp was created for the Country Comforts postal letterbox series that I did a while back. Fiber Arts is such a big part of so many people's lives and nothings brings back memories better than a hand made quilt.
For the image, I took one of my Mother's quilt books and scanned all of the block patterns for one applique quilt into my computer. Then I used Photoshop to piece them all together and resize them. Which was insane. Still, I ended up with a decent image transfer and the carve went fairly well. I was still in my "pink stuff" phase and combining negative and positive carving.


I attempted to color the stamp like the quilt in the book. Even after practice it took 20 minutes. This is the best color image that I was able to get.

Want to hear a funny quilt story?
My parents went on a vacation and I stayed at their house to take care of things. One day, I was cleaning up and tossed a dirty quilt into the washer. It was mostly white, with a multi-colored double wedding ring pattern on it. I knew that Mom washed it and so did think anything of it. Until I opened the lid of the washer. The entire quilt was the color of cranberry juice! Only then did I remember putting some mulberry placemats in the wash the day before. I was positively sick. I cried. I couldn't eat. I was sure that my parents had received that quilt as a wedding present and I had ruined it.
A couple of days later when Mom called to check in, I confessed to what I had done in between sobs. I knew she was going to be upset.
The first thing she said was, "What? You mean the dog's blanket?"

We're still laughing about it.

A Whale of a Postal

If ever there was a stamp with a tale to tell, it would be this one.
I was still learning to carve (and still am) and had begun experimenting with ways to create the visual image of texture with the rubber. It was mildly successful, and I was pleased with the results. The Humpback was carved for a postal and I was taken by surprise when it was hard to let it go when the ring started. Emotional attachment to a piece of rubber wasn't something I had expected.
Over the next 2 1/2 years it traveled. It visited more than 60 people in three separate rings. It spent countless weeks in a "black hole" on more than one occasion. That includes the time it slipped down behind someone's couch cushions and was presumed dead. Toward the end, I gave up trying to keep track of it. I retired the stamp and forgot about it.
And then one day it surfaced in my mailbox. Just like that. In perfect condition and with a full logbook. Talk about a happy dance!

A Fairy Tale

The Three Little Pigs
the Letterboxing Version

Once upon a time (March 4th, 2005, to be exact), a timber wolf was reading the Woodland Telegraph and happened upon an article about the hobby of Letterboxing. The article was not very clear, as many of them aren't, but the idea intrigued him and he decided to look into it further. After finding Atlas Quest on the internet and reading the tutorials and glossary, he thought he would give it a try. He created a profile for himself, using BigBadWolf as his trailname. Then he printed out some clues and went out and found a couple of letterboxes that were in the forest nearby. He loved it so much that he carved his own signature stamp immediately and spent the next several months happily hunting letterboxes.

Then came the fateful day a few months later (July 9th it was). With backpack full of Marvy markers in one paw and clues in the other, BigBadWolf set out for the Fairy Tale Forest Preserve to hunt for the notorious "Building Materials" letterbox series. Very shortly after starting on the trail, he came upone a house made of straw. It was in ruins. The door was completely gone and the rest of it was a shamble. Nevertheless, he managed to find the letterbox in the rubble. He stamped into the log, and inked the box's stamp. Just as he was huffing and puffing on the stamp to moisten the ink, around the bend came three little pigs, laughing and jostling each other. They stared in horror at the wolf with his lungs full of air and the wreckage in front of him. He started to try to explain, but they ran away squealing.
The wolf shrugged his shoulders, rehid the box and moved on.

It was a considerable hike to reach the spot for the second letterbox and by the time BigBadWolf reached the top of the hill, he was quite winded. Little did he know that just ahead of him on the trail were the three pigs. The little pigs saw him come over the hill huffing and puffing and thought he was chasing them. Before he could call out to them, they fled in terror. Since there was nothing else he could do, the wolf found the second letterbox and stamped in; all the while trying not to let the thought of Muggles ruin his entire day.

The last box was the hardest and it took BigBadWolf a long time to figure out the clue. Just as he was about to give up, he spotted a suspicious configuration of bricks covered with ivy on the edge of a ravine at a heading of 137* from a round stone the size of a bowling ball. (Don't ask how a wolf knew what a bowling ball was.) He clambered up a slope and was feeling around the bricks (it was an old broken chimney) for the letterbox when some of the bricks tumbled, smashing a front and back paw as they fell. The poor wolf howled in pain. He hopped around on one paw huffing and puffing on his sore fingers for a minute then sat down in frustration. This hadn't been the best boxing day for him. Suddenly he felt that he was not alone. Slowly turning around, he saw three pairs of eyes peeking out from behind a dead tree.
"Please, come out." He said. "I'm not going to hurt you. And I could use the help finding this last letterbox before it gets dark."

Then, with many interruptions (they were little pigs, after all), BigBadWolf proceeded to explain to them what he had been doing that day and to tell them all about letterboxing. The little pigs helped him find the box in the chimney and he taught them how to be extra careful when putting the box back so that it would be safe for the next boxer that came along. He wrote down a couple of websites and they planned to keep in touch. Of course, the three little pigs went squealing "Whee! Whee! Whee!'' and doing their happy dance all the way home.

Now the 3LittlePigs and BigBadWolf are friends and go out on many wonderful letterboxing adventures together, even though the pigs prefer Postal Letterboxes because they are too fat to do much hiking.

The End

Originally created for a postal ring once upon a time. Not my best stamp.

Carving Orange Stuff

With the current shortage on White PZ Kut, I decided that it was time to develop the character quality of flexibility (rather than whining) and start practicing carving on other medium (media? mediums?). Since "the orange stuff" seems to run a close second in popularity to the white, I thought I'd try that first. The image was a little tricky to transfer at first, until I realized that none of the traditional methods like xylene, ironing or burnishing would be work. A simple, firm hand tracing technique proved most effective. Also, this was the first time ever that I have had better luck with gouges over the whole image. "The orange stuff" seems much softer than the white and I just didn't have the control over the depth of the cut with the exacto that I'm used to. The surface wasn't as smooth or flat, and I found it necessary to keep a paper towel handy to wipe off the image occasionally. I was unaware that "the orange stuff" weeps a clear, sticky fluid as you carve. On the other hand, it is significantly cheaper than the PZ Kut grade A that I customarily purchase. It remains to be seen how the orange will hold up to multiple inking and stamping sessions, and I have serious doubts about it's longevity during our cold, wet winters. Perhaps I can convince Kirbert to run some comparison tests. With practice, it could make a fair substitute, but all in all, I miss my PZ white.

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing?
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown -
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

~Robert Louis Stevenson