Homemade Stamps and Paulo Coehlo

New Year's Eve was spent cutting fun foam into various shapes and gluing them on corrugated cardboard to make stamps. Can you tell how much of a homebody I am? I didn't even watch the ball drop or anything. When the clock struck midnight, everything erupted outside my apartment. People screaming and fireworks going off. I was hoping I could see the fireworks that come off the top of the Space Needle every year, but nope. There is a giant condo that blocks it all. If it were shorter, we would have a wonderful view from the hallway in my apartment building.  I could only see the occasional puff of smoke and glow of light coming from the fireworks. Oh well. If we could see the Space Needle, my rent would probably be $400 more each month.

The View of the Space Needle from two block away, parallel to the needle.

This afternoon, I decided to play with the stamps I made last night. They were completely dry, so I wouldn't ruin them. After gessoing a bunch of pages in a couple of old books, I had a go. I even cut a lime in half that was past its prime and stamped with that on some scrap paper.

When I stamped on the pages in my book, I got to thinking about a movie I watched this weekend, Veronika Decides to Die. It was a wonderful movie about a woman who tried to kill herself only to be revived. She wakes up in a mental institution, learning the the overdose she took caused such severe heart damage, she would die in the near future. I know, it doesn't sound like an uplifting movie, but it is.  Not to give away anything, but point of the book was that knowing you could die at any moment makes you want to go out and actually live the way you were always scared to before. I now have a strong urge to read the book, by Paulo Coelho. I have had difficulty reading over the past decade or so. I think my migraines did something to my vision that interrupts my being able to focus on a page. I used to be a voracious reader, now not so much. It makes me sad. I am loading the book on my Kindle and I am going to give it a go. My migraines are not as frequent as they were, cross my fingers, and being able to enlarge the print is helpful. Now, I just need to get back into the habit. Two books per month to start: one fiction, 1 nonfiction. I will get back into it this year!

But back to Mr. Coehlo. There was a great quote from the movie, that I really hope is also in the book: "These days most people have replaced almost all their emotions with fear, and everyone has dreams, but only a few realize them - makes cowards of us all." It felt like the right one for the page.

I used everything in this page: my beloved Inktense pencils, acrylic craft paint, Pan Pastels, a white paint pen, a technical pen, and cheap watercolor from Daiso The green was craft paint and the red orange was watercolors. I did a little filling in of holes with yellow pastel.

Speaking of cheap supplies from Daiso, I finally gave the clear stamps a try. I stamped them all on the back of a large index card. They look awesome! I am going to enjoy these. It makes me want to get more, but I really do have to control myself. I noticed one thing. The first time I took them off the plastic, they were incredibly difficult try pry off. After that, they are a breeze. Is this normal? Or is this just part of the cheap quality?