I Hope You Miss Rubberstamp Story

I know I still owe some stamps and stickers. I want to apologize for being silent for quite some time. The truth is, all my ideas stucked in the form of sketches and doodles in my sketch book. Life has been quite hectic and I barely have time to sit and concentrate on drawing. There should not be any problem if you just order stamps as I can carve the stamps according to my sketches or images that you send to me, but for stickers and business cards, I have to depend on hand-drawn piece of work. The disadvantage of hand-drawing are, it is almost impossible to undo any mistake and without a good photo editor, it is difficult to produce a satisfying outcome. It is possible, hence there is a long list of limitations.

Believe it or not, I only have Picasa, Microsoft Office Picture Manager and Microsoft Office Publisher to edit my photos and design my stamps and sticker and whatever my customer request me. I have PC and notebook but both need to be upgraded before I can install whatever software that I might need. I am really into these kind of things these days but my hubby do not agree with the idea of investing in new PC or laptop. Well, I hate to argue, but it is also hard to avoid from complaining. Both my PC and laptop's current RAM is only 256MB. Can you believe that? Can you believe that?! Even surfing the net or bloghopping cause me plenty of time staring blankly at the monitor, trying to be patient with this "tortoise". And my handphone...my handphone...I am still using my 4 years old Nokia 1110 but I never complaint about the phone because of its sentimental value. Yeah, eventhough I am way out of date.

So during the fasting month, I made few attempts to draw cakes and cupcakes and tarts and biscuits, as most of the pending orders are for home-bakery. Unfortunately, I am a bit dismotivated, again and again I made mistakes that cannot be undone so everytime I fail to produce a pleasant drawing, I quit.

Recently, somehow I felt an urge to challenge my creativity using whatever limited resources I have. With zero expectations in mind, I began doodling, copying and pasting in Microsoft Office Publisher and mouse. I spend almost 6-7 hours sitting in front of the computer in the office. The colorful cake is still pending for Ita's approval. The finished stamps later should look like the black and white picture on the right.

Meanwhile, photos below are the stamps that I finished just before Ramadhan. These stamps are not designed by me. The image of girl wearing scarf/tudung is a famous character of an Islamic children's comic, Ana Muslim as requested by Kak Sha; one for her and one for her best buddy, Kak Lina. They both are teachers, scrappers and papercrafters. I purposely place the 2ocent coins in the picture for size comparison.

The Panda stamps was ordered by Soulie. Guess what, remember Bem69? The first runner-up in We are All Geeks card design contest organized by Foldees? He is the one who design this Panda for Soulie. My job was just adding the words on the left side of the panda. Unfortunately, according to Soulie the Panda stamp has already been damaged by...suspected nephew and niece before she is able to test the stamp. She requested me to carve another one before Raya, but sorry Soulie....seems like your new panda need to wait Raya holiday to end before I can send it off k.

Last but not least, here are the tags made from my ATC paper leftovers created using their stamps' image.