Wowser is all I can say!

The new stamp pads arrived in Monday's mail.  Considering I didn't order them until Friday afternoon and they were sent from the east coast that was pretty impressive!

Any way, they are so much nicer to use and they make nice clear impressions.

I have learned some lessons though about the stamping process:

• It can be messy and you can smudge the the card or paper using them.
• You only get one go at each stamping and if you blow it you could ruin the project.  I have decided that I will not stamp directly onto my cards, I will stamp onto a different piece of card and stick the piece of card with the stamp on into the card.
• I still need to practice.....a lot!
• You can roll ink on embossed card and it will just colour the bumps as in the pink card with the blue dots above.  The pink card next to it is just embossed so you can see the difference.  This will be great with my Christmas cards as I emboss the front on a lot of them.  I like to layer my other cards with one of my layers being embossed so it will be nice to add a bit of colour to the embossed layer.

I will not just be using stamping on my cards, I will only use it for verses and backgrounds.  I like to decoupage my cards with the cut outs.  I have spent a couple of days assembling flowers.

I need to use my dies to cut out some more 'greetings' then I will have plenty of things ready to make more cards.

I do so like the winter months as it gives me more time to do crafty things.

I need to make some curtains next for our bedrooms upstairs.

An update on the stamping progress!

**Warning! Photo heavy and a bit boring**

Well, I am a little disappointed in my progress on the stamping front.  I have concluded that the problem is the cheapie ink pads that came with the stamps I got at Christmas, (as well as user error!)  They have dried out very quickly and are not very big so I have difficulty getting the stamps inked evenly.

I did a lot of online research and have realised that you need to buy good quality refillable ink pads and bottles of refill ink to ensure even stamping.

But! and as I have said many times before, there is always a BUT!

Good ink pads and refills are very expensive to get an assortment of colours. The ones I like are $8 for the pad and $4 for a bottle of refill.  To get six different colours that comes to $72 plus mailing costs as we do not live anywhere near to a good craft store.

So I have been churning over and over whether to spend the money on the inkpads and refills.

I couldn't commit that much money, it defied logic to me.  I decided to check out ebay and found some inkpads that came with refills in  the brand I wanted.  They are the previous model of pad but a pad and a refill bottle were only $5.50 for the two. So I gritted my teeth and ordered 6 and I eagerly await their arrival next week. I negotiated on the mailing cost so that helped with the decision making. As you can see from the cards below, the stamping is patchy and feint.  I am really hoping the new ink pads and ink will solve that problem in the future.

I make cards because I really enjoy doing it and also because good quality ready made cards are very expensive.  I try to personalise the cards too, like my daughter likes dragon flies and one of my my granddaughters likes unicorns so I try to incorporate their likes into their cards and I really like matching envelopes.  I can  pretty up the envelopes to match the cards using the stamps or even make them with nice paper.  

This is what I have done lately:-

This one I will use, not 100% happy with it but it was made with love and it is my first home made matching envelope

This one will probably languish in the bottom of the 'made cards' box to be used only in emergencies. The stamping is not good, partly user error and partly bad ink pads.

This one is not finished yet, will certainly not be doing any stamping on it until the new pads are here.

It is dull and cold so I am trying to get organised by cutting out flowers, butterfies and greetings etc so they are ready for when I want to make more cards.  My husband is also tied up with a project of his own so I am getting more time to spend on my card making right now, which I am thoroughly enjoying.  There is something very therapeutic about running these dies through the Sizzix machine and popping out the shapes.

 I also cleared out an old set of plastic drawers to use for my supplies.  I had things in there belonging to my son from when he was a teenager.  They are tucked away now in a plastic tote and I have organised the supplies into the drawers.  Much easier! They sit right by my work table.

Will post again after the ink pads get here.  Fingers crossed they help a lot.