Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Great Stamping Controversies of Modern Times

I love reading about stamping controversies.

Every year, there's a stamp set or two that generates a kerfuffle and it's great entertainment.

There was Tardis-gate, when the whole world was up in arms that some of us colored the phone box in the Feeling Sentimental stamp set BLUE - horrors - so that we could make Dr. Who cards. There were lengthy pronouncements about how police boxes and call boxes were DIFFERENT and NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. God forbid a stamper ask a viewer for a little creative license - IT'S NOT ALLOWED. STAMPING IS SCIENCE, NOT ART. (Apparently.)

There's snowflake-gate too - nearly every year, when some cheeky artist takes liberty with a snowflake and ONLY GIVES IT FIVE SIDES! Institutions around the world immediately collapse, and all human knowledge is sucked into a black hole created by cards with five or eight sided snowflakes. Cards with these heretical approximations of real snowflakes are burned upon receipt, and their ashes are sprinkled with holy water, to keep their evil spirits from returning.

For some reason, the hordes of legless butterflies don't seem to generate the same amount of ire. Nor do animals in clothes, pigs that stand up, or stars which look nothing like actual stars. What about floating baby heads? Spiders with long eyelashes? Those, apparently are all kosher.

We are very selective in our application of scientific details to stamped images. Stampers are quirky like that.

I observe no rules in my art, so I watch these scandals emerge with great amusement. Maybe I'll take some time this week to make a blue callbox card with five sided snowflakes twinkling around it. I'll refer you to my post on dogma for a refresher on irreverence.

What will the next stamping controversy be, I wonder? Or maybe you know of some I haven't heard of yet - if so, feel free to share!

I've been obsessing over my MISTI still. This thing has so many tricks. The trick that sold me on the thing in the first place was the ability to correct mis-inking errors. I was actually using it on this card to align the flowers from Painted Petals with the "smile" from So You, when I realized that because I was stamping on watercolor paper, the ink was blotchy on the first stamping.

All I had to do was re-ink and stamp again a few times to get smooth coverage. Since the stamp and paper are always in the exact same place, it's just flat out awesome.

Now to get the sentiment aligned in the first place, I just put my ruler inside the MISTI to give me a straight edge to line "smile" up on.


Then after stamping that a few times until the ink was perfect, I arranged the flower stamps around the sentiment where I wanted them, picked them up with the lid and then stamped them in white and embossed them. I used Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise, Baked Brown Sugar and Lucky Limeade reinkers to watercolor the background. Then I used a little glue and some microbeads for the centers.



Pin It

I've been binge watching Cutthroat Kitchen this weekend, trying to empty out my DVR. It just struck me that this show is GREAT at breaking down cooking dogma for a group of people who are notorious for being somewhat dogmatic - chefs.

When someone has to make a turkey dinner with no turkey, or create a vegetarian version of French Onion soup, they have to leave their notions of some of the most basic foods behind and just get crackin' for the scant time they have to cook in.

So don't let that little wonky snowflake get in your way. What if all the other snowflakes made fun of him because he was different? Wouldn't you feel terrible for rejecting him because he's missing a leg? Just make something pretty with your special, special snowflake!

Loveyameanitbye.

11 comments:

  1. You are my sister in many ways. I've never understood the need to get all analytical when it comes to stamp designs. If you don't like it, don't buy it and if you're so left-brained that you cannot slip into creativity then maybe stamping isn't for you. Oh dear, it looks like I am climbing a soap-box. Great post, Lydia.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL! These crazed snowflake call box haters educated me..... I had NO IDEA there were rules.... Nor did I care LOL

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks so mucha!! So nice of you to figure out these cool tips I'll need next week with my Misti!

    (And I'm okay with eyelashes on stamped spideys & spideys illustrated in children's books, thanks to 'Charlotte'.) ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am misremembering the Santa kerfuffle. Oddly, my phone word recognition software put MISTI in when I typed misremembering. We thrive on petty controversies. Silently stalking the mailman for my MISTI...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great card - looks like your MISTI is coming into its own! ;)
    I have personal experience of the stamping controversy myself.. I made a (beautiful, if I say so myself) card for a friend whose favourite colour is a stunning aqua-turquoise blue. It took me a ton of time and I put a lot of effort in, including watercoloring a flower in soft aqua shades. I was - still am - especially proud since watercoloring is quite the learning curve for me. And when she received it, she said 'oh, but flowers aren't ever that colour, are they?' In a voice like I was an idiot for thinking they did. Idiot for making it her favourite colour on her special day, more like! Zero appreciation for artistic endeavour. Ah well, win some... lose some... Rx

    ReplyDelete
  6. This cracks me up! No creativity in card making what so ever. You MUST follow the rules at all times. SAY NO TO BEING ORIGINAL. ;) It cracks me up how people get sometimes.

    I'm going to have to get one of those MISTI tools. I don't have a stamp alignment tool now and you have sold me!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have not watched a single video of this Misti... I know I know,
    I think the restamping the sentiment just may have sold me on it. (butIhavesomanywoodmountedstamps)
    hahahaha laughed through the irreverence.

    ReplyDelete
  8. OMW! I miss so much! I didn't know there were all these controversies! I think my husband (the rebel) must be rubbing off on me because now that I know of Tardisgate I would make a TARDIS card right now and flood the internet with it! LOL

    OHHHHHH! I love how you positioned the sentiment with the ruler! Right now I get my graph paper, place my card front on it, get a thin piece of paper to find my straight line, oops the card front moved, 20 minutes later, I think I have it straight and I stamp............and the sentiment doesn't fully stamp. SAMJ moved slightly, NO hope under the sun of stamping in the EXACT place. Case in point, tomorrow's CAS card. Sigh. There's a sentiment banner over the booboo. I would get 10 bonus points (if only in my own mind) if the sentiment was stamped directly on this CAS card.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Lydia, you are too funny! how did I miss seeing you all this time online? i'm a little computer challenged, and I know that i'm now subscribed to your blog. but how did you follow me? I know I clicked follow for you also. I could not see if it was facebook, instagram, pintererst, or flickr. I belong to other things also, but don't have a clue how to use them. if its too complicated, don't worry. i'm taking classes on Lynda.com, so eventually i'll figure all this out. you seem like so much fun. I look forward to getting to know you. I go by a bunch of different names (computer challenged lol I didn't know what a username was lol) I go by treen, katrine leber, katrinegaley, and craftytreen. I think that is all of my aliases lol. thanks for the fun!

    ReplyDelete
  10. You iconoclast you! Loved this post. I'm a careless stamper myself but have come to appreciate my Misti in a big way!

    ReplyDelete

Every time you leave a comment, a new LOLcat is born. ALSO - don't panic if you don't see your comment right away - I moderate my comments to keep those spammers out, so your comment will show up in short order. Unless you're linking me to Russian brides or Nigerian princes.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...