My Rubber Stamping Addiction

I had a vision. I would make personalized cards for my family, friends and loved ones. I could invite my girlfriends over to the house for rubber stamping parties. I had fantasies of baking little tarts, sipping Chardonnay and recounting each other with failed tails of our love life while we stamped away our troubles. Sadly, none of that came to fruition. But, I now own 5,000 rubber stamps and their assorted, evil little accessories.

I loved looking at the catalogs. I would say to myself, “I must have that crimper. Oh the things I could do with that crimper.” It started out innocently enough. I would purchase about $50 per month while at stamping parties. These are the only “parties” I went to in my brief sojourn into rubber stamping. I bought and bought until my addiction became a full fledged, $50 buck-a-week habit. “That set is so cute,” we would all rave and check the box next to the item on our order forms. We all had to have it. None of us used it. The companies that manufactured rubber stamps and their cute little accessories were on to us. Each month, they would introduce a new, must-have set or a clever new technique requiring the purchase of new stamping accessories. I now own a crimper, deluxe paper cutter, embossing blow dryer, paint brushes, crayons, markers, 50 pairs of special scissors and 900 ink sets.

But it doesn’t stop there. You have to have some place to put your booty and the companies are more than willing to oblige. They have cute little carts with wheels, shelves of the perfect height, portable storage kits, engravers to mark your name on your purchases and locks to keep them safe. “That’s so clever,” we would all say. What we failed to consider, however, is that none of us were very talented in the arts and crafts department.

While I cannot speak for the other gals, I have some basic hand-eye coordination problems that make rubber stamping impossible. I cannot cut a straight line. My crimped edges look like a child accidentally ripped at the paper. I cannot color inside the lines. What the magazine featured as vibrant, realistic looking landscapes, look like rectangles and circles for me — on my best drawing days. I cannot line up things to angle, despite purchasing a square especially made to help you get everything placed correctly on your cards. But that isn’t the worst of it.

I obsess over perfection. That was truly my downfall in the rubber stamping world. One card took me five hours to complete. It became a nightmare. Just when I thought I had it aligned perfectly, I would notice one slightly askew edge and take that part off, attempting to realign it. In taking off that piece, I ripped the outer edge of the card and had to start again. And on and on it went. Five hours later, I was drunk, exhausted and feeling like a failure. I packed my cute little rubber stamps, ink pads, assorted scissors and accessories into their cute little storage containers and shoved the whole kit-and-caboodle into a discrete corner of the basement where, I’ve no doubt, it is still collecting dust.

I now buy shoes.