We interrupt Andrea’s regularly scheduled nervous breakdown..

Things aren’t winding down yet but there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I have two help desks going live next week so I’m heading back to Colorado Springs on Monday.  Then the next phase goes live on September 27th – one desk in Colorado Springs and one in Costa Rica. 

But the bulk of my work should be complete by the second or third week in September.  Then I’m going to sleep for a week.

On Wednesday afternoon I decided to take an hour break and just go do something fun.  Or at the very least, distracting.  There is a shop in Sunnyvale, CA called Cranberry Mercantile that sells a hodge podge of things – home made crafts and the like.  They also have an entire corner of the store devoted to rubber stamps.  I wanted to get started on the Halloween invitations so that was my destination.

I had a coworker back in the 90’s that introduced me to rubber stamping.  When I thought of rubber stamping I thought of the cutsie ones that teachers would use when grading papers.  I had no idea of the vast and artistic world of stamping.   Her work is really amazing – beautiful collage works with different papers and embellishments. 

I was hooked.  My collection could never rival hers – she has thousands of stamps but I do have a decent assortment.  I just need to carve out some time to get back into it.

Of course it’s hard to be artsy with Halloween stamps but the cards above were still fun to put together.  They are my prototypes.  The skeleton has a silvery embossing on it which it why it looks kind of fuzzy.  I was inspired by a Halloween themed tag on Jill’s blog.

The store in Sunnyvale didn’t have a cat stamp so I went to another stamp store in Roseville called The Stamp Art Shoppe  that is really a lovely store.  I find that rubber stamps are generally relegated to a small corner of a scrap booking shop so it’s nice to find an entire store devoted to the art.

There was a class just about to start so the store was filled with women milling about picking up last minute supplies.  I love a store that has interesting completed projects on display and this one had plenty.  One that really caught my eye was a small shadow box.  It had an old apothecary type feel to it.  Really detailed.  Hmmmm – I feel a new hobby coming on.

Okay – now I have to get back to work and start packing.  Posting will still be sporadic but should start picking up soon.