Mostly making stamps

We got two stamp orders yesterday. That was once a frequent occurrence, but the art stamp industry has almost vanished in the last several years and particularly this year, when no crafts fairs have been going on. At any rate, Arlene and I had to do some stamp making. We had received an order of cushion recently, but used up the first half a sheet, so I needed to put adhesive on half a sheet. The adhesive we use is double-sided tape twelve inches wide. Cushion is sponge rubber 1/8 of an inch thick which we buy in sheets 36 by 44 inches. That works out well for twelve inch tape. I also needed to cut wood for mounting the stamps on. I use a hollow ground planer blade on a seven inch table saw to cut 18 inch lengths of maple to the right length. The blade leaves a cut cleaner than I get with 100 grit sandpaper. I’m more than half done now with stamping the images of twelve stamps on (mostly) four to six blocks of each image.

I got a couple of mail order packages today, a pack of 4 rechargable AA batteries for my computer mouse and a pack of 100 sets of magnetic snaps for making bags. The snaps are things I could get at a fabric store, but they were so much less expensive in quantity that I think four packs of two at a fabric store would have cost about the same as I paid for the whole lot.