Mother's Little Helper

I'm Totally Full of Sheep...

... as if you didn't know that already!
Do you ever make the same card over and over again, but with different stamps?  The Diana Sweater is definitely a leitmotif in my stamping.  If I have a stamp of a little lamb -- and I love me a lamb stamp, so if I see a cute one, chances are I will eventually have to have it (dang that Anna Wight and her adorable new Bo Peep set!) -- it will eventually end up stamped multiple times, and on a field of red there will be one black or gray among the white.   

So why do I call this persistent image "The Diana Sweater"?  Well, see for yourself...

When the late Princess wore this sweater to a polo match in 1983, she caused a fashion sensation.  I was 12 at the time.  I remember thinking that was the coolest sweater ever, and wanting a knock-off so badly.  I loved Princess Diana; she was so beautiful and glamorous, and her favorite band was Duran Duran (see?! We had so much in common!  Well, except I had glasses and braces and was in the middle of what had to be one of the most painfully awkward adolescences known to girlkind).  Never got one, but now I make one for myself every so often out of cardstock and ink.

The above card is the latest incarnation, using what has to be the most quirky-but-cute little lamb in my whole collection, Basel by DoodleFactory, available from Starving Artistamps.  The background is SA's Ornate Tooled Leather background, which is one of my very favorite backgrounds because it adds a lot of depth and has a lot of detail without distracting from the main image or taking away from the cardstock color.  (<-- does that make sense? I hope so.  To explain further -- skip this if you've already got what I'm saying -- I use this bg now instead of my SU! paisley bg.  The SU! paisley bg covers up most of the underlying cardstock with ink because it's such a solid image, but this SA one gives the same paisley-ish effect but is much more 'open' and thus you retain more of the color of the original cardstock.  Another benefit of this background?  It looks AWESOME with the western-style stamps that are all the rage these days.) 

{Buy/By the way: through Feb. 27, SA is having a special where if you buy full sheet of stamps -- like say all of the DoodleFactory animals, which includes Basel -- you get a free sheet of EZ-Mount.  And, if you add in my special discount code -- caroledis -- you'll get 10% off your entire order!  I'm always looking out for you, dear reader, trying to save you money any way I can... I'm a giver -- I give!}

Okay.  Done with the puffery.  Here are a couple more examples of my Di impression.  This first one was done as a project for my stint as Gina K.'s Guest Designer for February (stamps from her Down on the Farm set):

  And here's one I made for an ATC swap last summer (image by Heather/JudithI even added a pic in the background to let gallery browsers on Splitcoast know where I was coming from.  Pre-blog I had to do stuff like that.  Now I can pontificate at my leisure...):

  Anyway, the odds are that I'm not done exploring this theme.  Now that I think about it, I haven't done this yet with the lamb from MFT's Punny Farm.  Hmmm....

Piggies!

Is there a toddler in this world who doesn't enjoy playing Piggies?! By the end of the day, when it's time to take a bath and finally take off his shoes, orthotics, and socks, Carter stretches out his little legs and demands that we go through the Piggy ritual on both feet. After his bath, we do it once more, and every time, Carter acts like it's the funniest thing ever. Great big belly laughs -- is there a sweeter sound in all the world than one's own child's laughter? I don't think so. So, when I saw this stamp by Global Solutions on the River City Rubberworks website, I just had to have it as a momento of these precious Piggy days. I know they won't last forever, so I'm going to enjoy the heck out of 'em while I can.

The layout is from today's Sketch Challenge. The image was stamped in Brilliance Archival Graphite Black on Nena Crest Solar White, and colored in with Copic Sketch Markers (I bought everything in that sentence from Ellen Hutson's online store, in case you're interested. She has the most awesome service, and every item she sells has undergone her thorough research and is competitively priced. In other words, she does most of the work for her customers!). The image was then mounted on Certainly Celery and popped up on 3-D Dots before mounting on Ruby Red. The base cardstock is Garden Green -- a color I love but don't use often enough, and the cute veggie patterned paper is by Karen Foster.

Supplies used -- Stamps: Piggy at Market by Global Solutions; Ink: Brilliance Archival Graphite Black; Paper (all SU! unless otherwise noted): Garden Green, Certainly Celery, Ruby Red, Nena Crest Solar White, Karen Foster patterned paper; Accessories: 3-D Dots, paper piercer, CTMH photo hanger, ribbon, Copic Sketch markers.

Introducing: Freaky Friday!

Okay, I get that I'm a little bit late with this (isn't that the story of my life?), but this is idea o' mine is just too genius to sit on it a week. Some blogs bring you sketch challenges, others bring you guest designers, and blog candy is ubiquitous (though I never seem to win any. What's up with that?). But I'll bet this is the only stamping blog to bring you a weekly entry devoted to the peculiar, deviant, and downright bizarre. Yes, dear readers, I make the bold prediction that Freaky Friday will be Mother's Little Helper's claim to fame! You never know -- and right now, neither do I -- what form the strangeness may take, but every Friday you'll see something here to make you wonder a wee bit about my sanity and/or character. Fun, fun, fun!

For example, take this card I made for Friday's Limited Supply Challenge on SCS. The challenge was to use non-traditional embellishments; no buttons, ribbon, designer paper, or anything else you might find at a stamping/scrapbooking store were allowed as enhancements. So, I began massaging my wee little brain for something unique to build a card around. My little brain recalled that Thursday's Ways to Use It Challenge was to use something spiral-ish on a card, which then led to the free association that I had just placed a spiral bound cookbook in my Goodwill basket (aka the Home of Misfit, Rejected, and Unloved Items; if Santa had one of these, that's where Hermie-the-dentist-elf and Rudolph would have met).

Knowing I would finally get a chance to use the weird little chicken head stamp I picked up in NYC, I searched for a chicken recipe. "Mexican Chicken" looked promising, and made me long for A Muse's sombrero stamp. Eventually, I settled for Bar-B-Q Chicken once I consider the fiendish option of perching Mr. ChickenHead on the grill stamp. A chicken wire background stamp and a few twist-ties in the corner and here you have a truly twisted card!

Supplies Used: Stamps -- chicken head by Catslife Press, grill by Creative Mode, distributed by Gina K., skinny oval by A Muse, sentiment by Rubber Soul, steam/smoke from Like It a Latte by Stampin' Up!, chicken wire background by JudiKins; Paper (SU! unless otherwise noted) -- Cool Carribean, Real Red, So Saffron, Georgia Pacific White; Ink -- Palette Hybrid Noir Black, Real Red (SU!); Accessories -- cannibalized -- freaky! -- recipe book page, twist-ties, piercing tool.

And now, here's some non-stamping related* strangeness for you to ponder...

Foot Binding
My book club's selection for this month is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. It's a historical novel set in nineteenth century rural China, so naturally, the practice of foot binding is prominently featured. Which, when I heard about what we were reading, made me squeal, "Foot binding?! Oh, good!" I have to admit to a longstanding fascination with this peculiar tradition. (Freaky!)

Here's a little primer on foot binding in case it hasn't been one of your areas of interest: way back when, there was a Chinese prince who had a concubine who he claimed walked as if "skimming over golden lilies," whatever that means. As a result, it became very fashionable and sought after for women to have tiny feet. The smaller the feet, the better a girl's marriage prospects. At around age five or six, girls had smaller toes broken and their feet wrapped with wet bandages which would constrict further as they dried. They were re-bandaged every couple of days, for two years. After this time, the girls/women would have to wrap their feet each day in dry bandages so that their feet would maintain their tiny shape. Ideally, a foot would be about the same length as a thumb.

While this may seem unthinkable to us now, is it really so different from other forms of physical mutilation that we take for granted? Historically, people (most often women) have deformed themselves in any number of ways to seem more attractive to the other gender. Whether it's making a tiny waist via corseting, lengthening the neck with brass rings, stretching lips and earlobes with plates, or the scarification common in many African tribes, is it really so different from piercings and tattoos? We think we're far more progressive and wonder who could possibly think itty bitty hobbled feet are desirable; could it be that future generations will look back and say "Why on earth did all of those women get breast implants? What's so great about big boobs?"

What do you think?

* = I mentioned in my last post that I was going to a birthday lunch with my friends Kayla and Joan. They are thus far the only two 'civilians' (except for DH) to view my blog. One of their first comments: "It sure is... crafty." :)