First five

Here are the first five lighthouse rubber stamp designs in what will become octoberpumpkin's annual series in this topic. What you see are the original designs, not stamped images.

By midweek these along with three additional lighthouse images will be shipped away to our manufacturer to make into first-quality cushioned rubber stamps ready for market.

The copyright info will not be incorporated into the stamps themselves, but appears only on the photo illustration here.

The remaining three images will be posted here before the end of this week. Sometime during the next few weeks I will post some cardmaking and other projects using the lighthouse designs.

The lighthouses shown, left to right, represent Cape Hatteras Light NC, Brant Point Light MA, Marblehead Light OH, Yaquina Head Light OR, and Annisquam Harbor light MA.

It was fun for me to study dozens upon dozens of lighthouses and choose the ones I wanted to present first! I hope you like my choices. Feel free to suggest yours in time for our next year's set! Who knows - your fave lighthouse might be among the ones selected to immortalise on rubber stamps!

The lighthouses will be available in sets and singles, available from octoberpumpkin.etsy.com (see link to the right) in 6 or 7 weeks.

Thanks for coming to our preview!

An easy all-purpose card

Another quickie, this card on kraft cardstock features a sand castle image from
october pumpkin ,colored with pencils, edge torn and inked, then affixed to a blue paper panel on a dark brown cardstock panel. There are two wooden buttons on the card, probably discovered while sifting through the sand on the beach, don't you think?

I have to brag for a moment about the quality of october pumpkin rubber stamps. They are not made in vast quantities overseas, but carefully handcrafted in the USA by a wonderful stamp company called Picture My Stamps. They use the best production methods, take their time to do things right, and turn out great stamps that seem to improve with age. Everyone who has used them seems to have very good things to say about the results they get. My daughter Stephanie and I are proud of the quality of stamps made for october pumpkin.

Recurrent themes

I've never made a grey card, since grey isn't one of my favorite colors, but happened to have a couple of grey readymade foldovers and decided to challenge myself. I couldn't just throw them away, you know!

By now it's clear that my favorite topic is sea-related, so I chose seashell stamps from october pumpkin for all of today's projects. This was to discover how many different ideas I could come up with while using the same stamps in basically the same way. I stamped the envelope too, just for fun.

As I worked with the cards it became clear to me that I have some favorite construction themes that I use over and over in my cardmaking! Do you do this too? My faves seem to be
tags, polka dots, and ribbon. Maybe it's a phase I'm going through - who knows!

The shades of green coordinate in reality, but in scanning they somehow didn't come out true and the shades clash. A little frustrating! You'll have to take my word for it that it looks better in person!

Still kinda chilly in Ohio so today was a good day to spend some relaxing time at the craft table.
I hope you were able to find some time to play too, wherever you live!

Have you ever been in a manatee mood? I love these peaceful and gentle creatures. The babies are especially sweet, as is the relationship of the adult manatees to their young. They are so nurturing and protective toward their babies, as are nearly all human parents!

I felt like celebrating baby manatees, which I hope comes through in the any-occasion cards shown above.

The manatee and text stamps are from october pumpkin. Click on the link to the right if you want to know more!

It's a wonderful spring evening in Ohio. Tulips, hyacinths, and a few late daffs are blooming everywhere in our yard and the yards of our neighbors. Lots of you are probably out doing a bit of gardening before night comes on. It's not really dark until around 8:15 where we live. Don't you love springtime's longer days? It seems like we can get so much more done!

Mirror Images

Do you know it's easy to make mirror images with one rubber stamp?

Make 2 identical impressions of the same stamp image. Using a lightbox or taping one image to a window, face down, you can easily trace the image on the blank side. Color and outline in whatever color of ink you used for the original impression.

There are lots of ways you can use mirror images. Today I made the card shown above for our granddaughter Jenna's birthday. The two crabs symbolise Grandpa and Grandma bopping around on the beach celebrating this momentous occasion.

But we aren't old crabs - really!

The crab and castle stamps are from october pumpkin.