How to make a stamp by yourself?

Here is a nice tutorial how you can make a stamp for your card or cloth, or whatever using the wine cork.
It's very simple, and cheap :)

Although the info is in Russian, the pictures are very clear to understand.

Enjoy!

http://handmadeidea.com.ua/veshchitsy/sobstvennye-pechati-iz-vinnyx-probok.html#.UFmZy41y70c&post=-41295925_6

Believe the unbelievable :)

I took my time to search for some interesting information about holidays and greetings. Now I share with you what I found:

1) 19 million other people share a birthday on the same day as you (except, maybe for those born on February 29)

2) Close to 2 billion Birthday Cards are sent each year in the U.S. alone, accounting for nearly 58% of all cards sent (that's why there's such a huge demand for handmade cards)

3) Paul McCartney's Birth Certificate was auctioned in March 1997, for US $84,146. It is believed to be the world's most expensive Birth Certificate (I wonder who the next record keeper might be...)

4) 14th November - the Birthday of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India is celebrated as Children's Day in India in memory of his love of children

5) For those of you who know Hershey's, this company started wrapping its Kisses in red, green, and silver foil for the first time in 1962. The success of the holiday-wrapped Kisses led Hershey's to dress up their little chocolates for the Easter, Valentine's Day, and Fall Harvest seasons.

Can you imagine that Hershey's now wraps up to 1,300 Hershey's Kisses a minute. That gives them the capacity to make approximately 33 million Hershey's Kisses a day, or more than 12 billion a year.

6) Did you know (because I had no idea) that the first Christmas card, created by a London businessman, was printed in England in 1843. Three years later, the first commercial Christmas cards were available to the public. One thousand cards in all were produced and they were an instant success.

7)  Germany made the first artificial Christmas trees. They were made of goose feathers and dyed green.

8) Hallmark Company produced its first Valentine’s card in 1913. In 2000, Hallmark offered 1,330 different Valentine’s cards.

9) The Löschner family of Neuhausen, Germany, owns the biggest nutcracker collection: 4,334. It is said that German craftsmen made the first decorative nutcrackers around 1800 as a way of mocking authority figures, leading to the phrase “a hard nut to crack.”

P.S.  In Mexico, wearing red underwear on New Year's Eve is said to bring new love in the upcoming year. Will you do it this year?

Another Plea for Glee!

Probably a lot of us know that the traditions of greeting people with cards are known since ancient times, when China and Egypt were the pioneers in this craft.  Those days they used papyrus and wood as a form of card, and the process was actually quite expensive at the time.

Through the years of human development, when printing machine was invented, the card-making process has also become more convenient, cheaper, and as a result, admass.

Nowadays, we can see the trend going backwards: cards made by handy tools are becoming more and more popular, and what’s nice, people don’t run out of imagination, and one can find a lot of second-to-none cards. Of course, this trend applies not only to greeting cards:)

And what I wanted to say with this note, is that exactly in a month the world is celebrating The World Card Making Day!

It means that on the first Saturday in October (on the 6^th) we have one more reason for the glee!

P.S. For those of you who would like to start making cards, or are already doing so, there’s a competition organized by the initiators of The World Card Making Day. Details are here: http://www.worldcardmakingday.com/contests/2012-world-card-making-day.html