MelissaEsplin.com

A Little Stamp Crazy

January 18, 2011
For Alt & BlogHer last year, I spent countless hours hand calligraphing the front of my business cards with "<3 Melissa". I really liked how it turned out, adding a little handmade personal touch, but doing 100 at a time really flares up the wrist issues I got in 9th grade. I hate hand cramping. Instead of inflicting more discomfort (who needs more when you've got a giant wiggle worm in your belly?!), I decided to go an easier route. I made stamps. Can you tell I'm a little obsessed? I hand wrote my name & the heart, scanned it in & sent the graphics off. I separated the heart from my name for a couple of reasons; it was cheaper and I'll get more use out of them! Instead of taking 2-3 hours hand writing on the exterior of 100+ biz card envelopes, it took about 15 minutes to stamp it all out. It was so wonderful to get that finished quickly AND without any hand pain. Ohh geez, I'm feeling old. I love how they turned out. I was pretty excited about alternating colors within my blog scheme, so I sorta went to town. I love the girly rainbow of color, they match the colorful stickers I put inside. Funny story: when I went to pick up my stamps, the guy helping me out was having a SUPER hard time finding my order. I had no idea what other names to give him, other than my email address & my first & last name. I said it's for an order of two small stamps. One's a heart & one has my name on it!! After about 5 minutes of searching he exclaimed, "Oh, it's the gigantic order! Why didn't you say so?" Imagine a huge question mark above my head at that point. What? I had two small stamps made. I had no idea that was a big order. He pulled the stamps out for my approval & unveiled a 6" heart. WHAT?? I told him the stamp was supposed to be 0.6 inches tall, not 6 inches tall! He retrieved my email of instructions & saw that the technicians had totally skipped over the "." in my instructions. So now I have a 6 inch stamp and a 0.6 inch stamp. It's pretty handy that Valentine's day is coming up soon! I'm sure I'll find a use for it besides decorating my belly bump. What would you do with a 6 inch heart stamp?