Craft Hope

Back in February, I entered a Craftster challenge called "Random Acts of Crafty Kindness" (you can read my blog post about it here)--and I won!  The prize was a book called "Craft Hope" by Jade Sims.  Jade is a crafty mommy blogger who wanted to help others, and started with one project to send pillowcase dresses to an orphanage in Mexico.  People who read her blog donated dresses, and she continued to find new places where she could spread hope with crafty kindness.  More about her blog at the end of this post.

The book has directions for 32 really great and relatively easy projects, like this pillowcase skirt...

and these puppy stuffies.

My eyes bugged out of my head when I turned to page 79, and saw that my second-favorite artist had designed a project for the book!  In December I blogged about my favorite planner, which is illustrated by Geninne D. Zlatkis; and very recently I blogged about my first attempt at making hand-carved stamps--so I was unbelievably excited to see that for her project in this book, she shares her art and shows how to turn it into a hand-carved stamp!!!!  There was no question in my mind that I would IMMEDIATELY start to work on that!  In the picture below, you can see Geninne's stamps and the card made from them on the left; on the right is my speedy-carve with the bird and flower images already transferred and ready for carving.  I will show you the results in the near future.

With every project in this book, there is the name and website of a charity which might be able to accept a donation of the finished project.  The thing to keep in mind, though, is that as time passes, the needs of the charities may change, so you can't start crafting the projects in the book with the expectation of immediately sending them to the listed charities.  For me, the book is more of an idea-factory and inspiration-starter. 

If you want to craft things to donate, probably the best idea is to go to the Craft Hope website.  On a regular basis, Jade Sims starts new projects for different charities and solicits donations of finished items--this is up-to-the-minute information that is the perfect outlet for anyone wishing to craft for charity.  At the moment the website is being updated, so Jade is using her Craft Hope Facebook page to keep everyone informed.  Recently she collected hats and bags for children battling cancer; now (if you are interested in helping) the project is handmade aprons for women in Haiti.  You can find apron sewing inspiration, and the address for sending the apron, on that page.

Wendi Gratz of Shiny Happy World is offering her Simple Apron pattern for FREE, and she is offering her other apron patterns at 50% off for the month of May, to encourage all of us to make and send an apron to Haiti. 

I actually have an extra apron hanging in my sewing room right now:

I made this as a sample for the Crafter's Apron Swap on Craftster.  Since I received two aprons from my partners in that swap, I am going to send this one to Haiti. 

I love the whole idea of Craft Hope, so I plan to follow the facebook page and participate in ALL the future projects--and I hope you will too!  I'll be blogging about each new project as it is announced, and I would love to hear from you if you craft any donations for Craft Hope.

My First--and Second--Hand-Carved Stamp

For the longest time I've wanted to make a hand-carved rubber stamp; I've seen them on Craftster ever since I became a member of that site, and I think they are cool!  I bought a set of linoleum-cutting tools about a year ago, and several months ago I picked up two blocks of "Speedy-Carve".

The only thing missing was an ink pad, and that fell into my hands when I attended Fork and Talk in Little Rock, Arkansas, (hosted by Craft Gossip and sponsored by EK Success Brands).  One of the items in the huge bag of products I received that day was this big black ink pad.  Perfect! With all the materials ready to go, I finally had the motivation to give it a try.

Here is an in-progress shot of my SECOND carved stamp; you can see the tool I used at the top of the picture.  I traced the heart and wings from a plastic template I already had made (I use it to make sewn hearts).

And below you can see the finished products:  my first two carved stamps!  Yay!  The one at the top of the picture is actually the first one I made.  I tried to carve the words in the center...and realized what a newbie I was, when I stamped it the first time and the words were BACKWARDS!  AARGGG!  So I just carved them off the stamp and resovled to try again later.  I finished the second stamp last night, in about an hour.

To get the words onto the stamp, I printed them off the computer, then drew over them (on the right side of the paper) with pencil.  Then I put the words face-down in the center of the heart and traced each letter with a pen (I thought it would give firmer pressure than a pencil) to transfer the pencil marks onto the stamp.  It worked great!  (Although I must say, the directions that came with the stamp did NOT work great:  "Use slightly warm iron to transfer images:  pencil drawn, newsprint, freshly printed ink-jet and laser-print images."  My freshly printed ink-jet letters did not transfer at all with the slightly warm iron.)

So, now that I have these awesome new stamps, what am I going to do with them?  I tried stamping the one with words onto a card; hmmm, looks okay, but kind of plain and boring.  So I tried something else.

Oh, yeah, that's better--I glued some randomly-cut pieces of bright paper to the card, then stamped on top of them:

I made a lot of cards!

And I stamped a envelope for each card using the stamp without words.  I intend to use these as inserts with swap packages and etsy sales, and I will write the recipient's name inside the heart on the envelope.  (Hey, if you join a swap I'm in, maybe that will be YOUR name!)

I'm so happy with how this stamp came out; I especially like the all the little lines in the background that make it look hand-made.  The carving was actually much easier than I expected; it just takes patience and a steady hand.

I've ordered more Speedy-Carve...now I just need another good idea...