Friday, August 28, 2015

wedding invitation stamp set














my cousin came to me with the idea for this set.
 she is helping a friend make her wedding invitations and they had found an idea that they wanted to go from. a brown craft paper card with a picture of some aged wooden boards (aged blue paint-looked like blue wood grain, nails) then there was a beautiful scroll in each corner, it was tied up with a lace ribbon, and had a purple paper flower and a peacock feather in the middle. 
she said she wasn't quite sure how they were going to do the wooden board picture and then she thought maybe i could make a stamp of it.
i loved the idea. i knew it would be a challenge, but decided to try. i came up with a rough sketch at the beginning of summer and i believe i shared that here. then another busy summer hit and it was very hard to find steady time to work on it. 
... or at least that is what i told myself...
there came a point were i realized i was making excuses because i was really nervous about this project. that was the point were i stopped everything and got to work. because we can't let fear get in the way of our creativity, right? right.
once i got started i was so happy with the way it came together. i am also so thankful that my cousin brought me this challenge... this idea... something i never would have come up with on my own. this is also the first stamp that i accepted a monetary exchange for and that felt like a nice change (although, i think that is where some of the nerves came in). i also realized that doing a proper monetary exchange for a project of this size seems somewhat unrealistic. i spent $30 myself between materials and shipping. then there were so many hours logged designing, scaling, and carving. to get a honest exchange for my time i feel i would need to charge anywhere from $80-$100 for a project like this... but that just seems crazy... they're stamps. anyway, that aspect makes me very glad that i am still at an experimental point. 
my big project is complete, i am very happy with it, and that feels wonderful.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

the great fence extension project

the first post... 




wooden posts in... placing small metal posts (stakes?)...
.... and adorable children playing on the marsh...






















new fence is up... only the wooden posts of old fence remain...







old fence completely out... tilling and leveling our new yard...
... and some sort of a scrap wood fort... hmmm...





as you can see... the amount of pictures in this post should probably have been spread out between three posts. since i have been such a negligent blogger though... you get it all in one. well, maybe not all in one. i'm sure there will probably be at least one more post on this topic.

i am so excited about this project.
i have wanted to do this since we moved into this house (about eight years ago now).  the old fence was in sad shape and needed replaced. matt and i wanted to make the yard a little larger and include some old trees (hello tree fort). this is also a big step towards having chickens again. we plan for a future coop in the field and this new fence will help keep them out of our space.

it will be so amazing next spring when it's all filled in with fresh grass! for now though, we have a giant yard of loose dirt which pretty much ensures that my children come in filthy each night.

this summer... it has been so full and so good.