How My Stamping Hobby Turned into an Obsession

I bought my first stamps twenty years ago. I needed some Texas themed images for my rehearsal dinner invitations. In the days before clip art was available, I found a set of stamps that were perfect. The invitations turned out great and the stamps were put away. Twelve years later I found some beautiful Christmas stamps and decided to make our own Christmas cards.

The rest probably sounds like many of your stories. One stamp led to another. I found more and more that I needed. Soon I began to run out of space. Why? Well besides the space the stamps took up, there is the supplies needed...inks, embossing tools, ribbon (many types in each color!), cardstock etc. I took over the cabinets in our laundry room. This made it easy to ignore the sheer number of stamps I was accumulating. Scrapbooking became popular and I added this paper craft to my favorites. When we moved to our current home I took over the room that was to be the kids playroom. They never used it, preferring to stay in their rooms. So I made this room my studio.

I think this is how it happens to most people. It sneaks up on you and before you know it yo have a room full of material and a love for paper crafts of all types. I became disabled five years ago and this hobby helped provide an outlet for me. Having always worked, suddenly staying home all the time and unable to do most daily tasks, I found that being able to create cards, altered art or scrapbooks provided me a feeling of being able to accomplish something. I am thankful each day for these hobbies and a supportive spouse.

The introduction of digital stamps in recent months have added an additional way to add to my hobby, without taking up space on anything but my hard drive. There are some great artists out there providing us with new unique artwork to use on our paper creations, I will be introducing some of them in the coming days.

Today I am leaving you with a Thank You card I made. The stamp is from Great Impressions. It is colored with watercolor pencils and a blending pen. This is one of my favorite techniques for coloring images, it is easy to learn and the supplies are not expensive.