cute factory

Somewhere in that holiday fair mayhem, I managed to squeeze in a workshop at Home Ec, which was so so fun. Home Ec, if you have not been there, is a super dangerous place, and basically my version of a candy shop. Jenny has amazingly reliably amazing taste, and everything in the store--fabric, buttons, books, craft kits, aprons, cards, etc--is beautiful and tempting. PLUS she has room/facilities for after-hours workshops, and I was lucky enough to land a spot in the roster.

I wanted to do a printing workshop, but cooking one up that will produce solid results in a mere few hours was a challenge. My solution was to do a class in 'hand carved stamps'. I'd picked up a number of stamping books in Japan last year (wait: two years ago. jeez.) and had been chomping at the bit to make more stamps, plus, it seemed like a quicker/more portable version of the relief printing that I do at Krank.

The class went blazingly well, and as Alex observed when he dropped by, it was a "cute factory." I supplied a sheet of ideas, as well as a number of pre-carved stamps, but everyone rocked a shocking amount of splendid looking stamps in a super short amount of time. Here are a selection of shots--my apologies for the dim lighting, but it was late in the evening...







I'll be teaching the class again at the end of the month--we printed gift wrap (simple folded japanese bags, tags, wrapping paper) and will use the same materials again this time, but now with an emphasis on valentine's day.