It was so simple then . . .

It was supposed to be a simple swap. All I had to do was take three rubber stamps and make four impressions of each stamp. I was supposed to do this for two separate people. All in all, I had to make 24 stamped images to send. It looked so easy on paper. In reality, it was stamper’s hell.

The first problem was that I had to choose the stamps. I thought that I had a lot of stamps to choose from. In reality, unless I have misplaced some of my stamps (which could have happened in the moving of the studio), I only had a few Christmas stamps to choose from. The stamped image was supposed to take up the majority of a 4” by 5” piece of white cardstock. So, I finally chose three stamps.

The second problem was the inking of the stamps. So, of all of the ink pads in my possession (I have a complete set of all Stampin Up craft ink pads and many of the Color Box ink pads), the swap required that the images be stamped in black ink. Of course, the three Black ink pads in my possession all required re-inking. And naturally, I had no black pigment ink to re-ink the pads. A trip to three stores (who happened to be open on Sunday) solved this particular dilemma.

The third problem was the actually stamping. I never realized how difficult it is to get 8 solid and good impressions of a single image. Some were smudged, some were too dark, some were too light and finally some turned out just right. After 53 attempts to get 24 stamped images, I called it quits.

And finally, the second guessing started. Did I choose the right stamps? Will my partner like the images that I chose? What happens if my partner has the same stamps that I do? What if they aren’t good enough? I worried so much that I ended up eating some ice cream to calm myself.

Actually, I was looking for a good excuse to eat some ice cream (Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch).

So, today I will mail out my packages and hope that I get a good rating. Oh, the drama of it all.