On Mondays from 12:30 to 4:00 or so I have a babysitter to watch the kids so I can hide in my art room. Here’s what I did today:

I’ve filled up all the journals I didn’t sell last year (last year?! that long ago? yikes!), so I need a new one. I drew up a design on graph paper and used my little gocco printing press and stamp kit to print my big sheets of paper.

I’ve been thinking and thinking about how to get patterns to repeat right, how exactly I’d go about stamping designs without smearing ink, what kind of jig I’d need to get things lined up right for a long, long, time.  I have printed this paper a gazillion times in my head.  I used mat board strips with marks that had corresponding marks on my stamp screen, then held everything in place with pretty blue masking tape.  It worked like a charm!  I just barely mis-marked everything for the vertical repeats, but oh well.  It’ll all be totally perfect next time I try it.  And it looks hand made, right?  That’s my mantra.  Perfectionism is out the window.

Not bad for a days work! This certainly makes for a happy mama.