Quality time with my inner nerd

Saturday I let my inner nerd out to play. Since she’s not cool, she didn’t care about sporting grey sweatpants, a flannel shirt and some bedhead. She had a Snickers bar for breakfast and she danced around a little bit because hey, that’s what Napoleon Dynamite would do.

Wearing her square-shaped Burberry plaid reading glasses (the pair with the church-lady chain that goes around her neck), she spent an entire afternoon playing with her rubber stamp sets. Ever seen a grown woman color? Didn’t think so. Get to know me better and I’ll show you my colored pencils. Uh-huh.

I spent an hour or so stamping images and watercoloring them with aqua-pencils, working on my techniques. I did a sweet little bird that I alternately colored as a wren, a robin, and a bluebird. Flowers that despite my experimentation with more interesting colors, always looked best in pink and yellow. Fall leaves—much harder to do than you’d expect. Butterflies, which look tacky in bright colors but are tough to get right with muted browns, golds, oranges, and reds. Pictographs of turtle, a fish, a fern, and a seashell, tinted with soft washes of color (the blues and greens didn’t work, even in small doses, the apricots and tans were better).

I got a totally cool background stamp at Creatine, a small craft store here in Belgium. Use this stamp and you get the illusion of a layered collage image with fine script, ferns, and pressed foliage. Looked gross stamped in sepia ink but was perfect in celery green.

I immediately visualized a card design using it, a heart, and some leaf stamps that I have. I cranked out several cards in that pattern, loving that they didn’t involve layering paper. Of course, I screwed one up—my background stamp didn’t take enough ink in the center (or I didn’t press hard enough) and so the main image had a faded area. I tried stamping over it, which despite my best efforts to line everything up perfectly, blurred the image--but in a surprisingly cool way. Hmmm. That led to experimenting with another design, layering a pine branch and some words over the image. Worked great. Another disaster averted by Stamp Grrrl—and another design to add to my portfolio.

By the time my inner stamp nerd came up for air, it was dinner time. The family was off on a 20 kilometer kayaking trip, so there was no need to cook. This means I could seamlessly move into scrapbooking and let my other papercraft persona have a turn at the table. But first, I did a little dance, because damn, you know, nerds have more fun--even when they're alone on a Saturday night.

Comments

[Lilian]

YES, Yes, Joy...

[Nancy]

So good to do something for yourself once in a while, isn't it? :-)

[mamatulip]

I think it's cool your inner nerd came out to play. My mom used to collect rubber stamps, and she made the coolest cards and stuff with them. I still have them, somewhere...

[Jenny]

At least your nerdy side is an innie. Mine is more of an outie. Slightly less cool with no watercolors.

[Shirl Grrrl]

Your cards sound awesome! Send me pics! So glad you had a chance to let the inner nerd out to play! That's so much fun!! Good for you, Grrrl!

[Ceece]

wow, sounds like lots of fun! You need to post pictures I'd love to see them :-)

[TB]

Yeah, but you're so GOOD at it. Tha's not nerdy, that's awesome. I don't want to send the bwautiful card you made to anyone because it's just so lovely.
Glad you had fun :o)

[Tylene]

Nerdy? No way! Spending time stamping & scrapping sounds likes so much fun!! I say let that creativity flow and celebrate it!!

Now that all my supplies are all packed up & on there way to Belgium I can't wait until I'm settled so I can have a day like yours.

So happy to hear there is actually a craft store in Belgium that sells rubber stamps! Who knew?? Any chance of a local scrapbooking store? :)