Motivation can come from the strangest places. On Monday – a public holiday here in Melbourne – I spent the day in the Emergency department of our local hospital with my mum, who had what we think was a really severe bout of food poisoning. While I waited, I crocheted – keeping my hands busy so that my mind wasn’t.

As a result, the little amigurumi ninja has been finished and put together, though she is still waiting for her face…

When I finally got to take Mum home (tired and unwell, but safe) and came back to my own home, I couldn’t settle. I found myself sitting at my sewing machine at 1.30 in the morning, making pincushions from left over squares that had been cut for a quilt I made Meg a couple of years ago.

My frenzied activities continued all day yesterday, too. I cooked, wrote, sewed and crocheted, and shopped for supplies so that I can do more ‘making’. Does everyone else do this, too, or is it just me who makes things when I’m stressed?

Actually, I only bought one more supply yesterday, and that was some textile medium so that Meg and I can get on with stamping some material with the rubber stamps we made last week. Imagine my delight when, in one of the quiet moments last night, I found (by way of LoobyLu) a fantastic tutorial for hand-carved rubber stamps. These were also made from erasers.

You can see the Hand-Carved Rubber Stamp tutorial here on Geninne’s Art Blog.

Hello. Welcome to the first post of Whatsername & Thingummybob!

Meg, miserable with a cold, stayed home again today for the fourth or fifth time in the last three weeks. Everyone seems to have this virus – first you have it for a week, then you start to feel better and crow at the improvement, only to be struck down even more violently two or three days later. It was rotten for her, so to cheer her up, she and I spent the morning making stamps from plastic erasers.

I did a few on my own, but then Meg designed a couple of characters for them, which I then cut out.

You’ll see in the image above, we’ve got quite a good collection made already, but I definitely like Meg’s bear and elephant the best.

Our plan is to print some cotton yardage with these little animals, so I’m off to the art supply store tomorrow to buy some fabric medium to use with our acrylic paints.

Before I do, I’m going to use contact cement to glue them to little blocks of wood so that they are more durable. Will post some pictures of the finished result when they’re done!