Go. Go now and make something.

Vintage collage from the Rubbermoon archives

On their Facebook page, Rubbermoon owner Debra Valoff has shared the collage, inviting friends/fans/everyone to print it and MAKE SOMETHING. Be sure you return there and post your creation.

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What messages do I take from seeing this piece again?  I assume it did not pop up yesterday devoid of meaning.  It reminds me that order may be over-rated, that color is king (or queen), more may be just the right amount, the hand often knows more than the mind, matching anything is not required and no piece of good can ever be considered too small to be of value.

 AND, because I am having great fun today with red letters, this is my 400th published blog post.  Who knew?  Thank you all for being here.  xo

Just me standing here shouting RUBBERMOON

Over at the Rubbermoon site, the new collections of unmounted stamps are available. From their Facebook post, the following offer:

A very special "Special". The new sheets are up on the website www.rubbermoon.com and can be located under "November 2011" There is one unmounted sheet from Gretchen Ehrsam, one from Daris Judd, and 6 small ones from Marylinn Kelly (four of them are in the photo that Marylinn colored for us) The special is from now till Nov. 30- if you order 5 of Marylinn's new sheets I'll give you the sixth one free! Just type in on the order section for special instructions to merchant "Facebook special."

FYI.

Below are my final two sheets, color versions, obviously. It would be lovely if you took a few minutes to visit and see all the new images, browsed the samples and looked around. I think you'll enjoy the animated home page...the flying, disembodied color pencil captures the spirit of Rubbermoon perfectly.

Copyright M. Kelly for Rubbermoon

Bonus post

From Debra at Rubbermoon, her sample posted to Facebook today.

A slightly rubbery day

M. Kelly for Rubbermoon

Perhaps snowmen attract me for having so little real-life experience of them. The family album has a couple snapshots of my mother and me next to the one snowman we constructed from the one snow that ever fell in recorded history on Baldwin Park, CA. It was in 1949.

While it is no longer part of their on-line catalog, the image above (the coloring will be up to you) does exist as an unmounted stamp. You may learn more by sending an e-mail to owner Debra Valoff at rubbermoonmail@gmail.com in Hayden Lake, Idaho, where they are much more familiar with snow.

To let you know, there will be more rubber stamp talk around here in the coming weeks. I began working with Rubbermoon more than 17 years ago and in early December or sooner, will have my first sheets of unmounted stamps released by them, in company with collections from two other artists, Gretchen Ersham and Daris Judd. I will begin sharing the designs soon, maybe even tomorrow. At the same time, I plan to continue the written posts which I have missed while my head was off somewhere else thinking other thoughts.

Rubbermoon, in black and white

These are two of my 90 designs currently available from Rubbermoon, found here.

The site also features images from dollmaker Jane Cather and Dave Brethauer, founder of Memory Box.

During the time I created samples for Debra Valoff, Rubbermoon's owner and tireless holder of every job, wearer of every hat for the company for more than 16 years, I found that her selection of illustrations from the various designers on her team worked seamlessly together. Something Rubbermoon does extremely well is allow you to tell a wordless story using just their pictures. Their signature look is stamped images, brought to life with colored pencils. At the opening of their website, an animated pencil appears to add color to the page. It is worth visiting. P.S. The row of cats could be inked individually with a brush-tip pen to allow use of each cat as you like, rather than together in a line.