(Paperless) Towels

I don’t have a super long post for you today, because Krystopf and Atlas finally (after being fogged out and stuck in Halifax for a day) made it to Newfoundland this weekend and we only just got rid of them — I mean, bid them a fond farewell.

But I would like to know how you folks feel about paper towels.  Have you managed to eradicate them completely from your lives?  Do you know the trick to drying your hands in public using only one piece of paper towel?

We haven’t yet successfully eliminated paper towels from our household, but we’re working on it.  I bought a pack of 8 rolls of these recycled unbleached eco-friendly suckers  from Costco about four years ago, though, and we still have three rolls left.  So that’s something.  Currently we save our paper towel usage for draining bacon (though we could do that on a rack) and cleaning up dog vomit at 4:00 AM (though we could use cloths for that).

If you do a bit of poking around on the internet you’ll see a lot of people who come up with nifty solutions to the paper towel problem.  Most of them involve using nice absorbent flannel sheets.  In some cases, they’ve cut and hemmed the sheets to be the same size as a standard sheet of paper towel.  And if you want to get really fancy, you can attach snaps or velcro to the corners and have them all attach to each other so it fits on the paper towel roll.

But that seems complicated. What I have are just plain flannel sheets, which my mother lovingly serged for me and gave to me when the Pie and I moved in together.  That’s all you need.  Makes a great housewarming gift, and you can use them for anything, including a makeshift receiving blanket for babies (depending on the size, of course).

I’m not really sure who came up with this particular pattern, but it doesn’t really matter when  you’re wiping up spills.  You can even pick up old flannel sheets at thrift stores and cut them up for this purpose.  The best part of that is they’ve been washed so many times they’re already super-absorbent. The older it is the better!

Zucchini Muffin Cakes

The Pie says believes that the difference between a cupcake and a muffin is the icing, and this is never more true than in this particular recipe from Martha Stewart.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and line a muffin tray with cupcake liners.  Take a 10oz zucchini and grate it up.  You want about 1 1/2 cups grated zucchini.

In a large bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup packed brown sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.

Stir in 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts.

In another smaller bowl, crack 2 eggs and beat them up slightly.

Add in the zucchini, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/3 cup vegetable oil and mix that all together.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  You don’t want to overmix muffins, or they go flat.

This will be a very dry batter but don’t fret.

Scoop the batter into the cupcake liners and shove the tray in the oven for 40-45 minutes, until the centre cupcake/muffin tests clean with a toothpick.

Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before turning them out to cool completely.  While that’s going on you can make your frosting.

Having read the unfavourable reviews for Martha’s cream cheese frosting, I decided to go with our tried-and-true ratio instead.  In a bowl, mix together 1 250g package softened plain cream cheese, 1 cup butter, and 2 teaspoons vanilla until creamy.

Add in 1 1/2 – 3 cups icing sugar, until the texture and taste are to your liking.  If you find it too thick, thin it a bit with some milk.

Spread on the cooled cupcakes and eat them all up.  Best if eaten the day you make them.

Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

Remember when I made that lovely rigatoni casserole and I forgot the ricotta?  Well I still have it, and so I’m trying to figure out what to do with it, other than slap together the regular ol’ lasagna or cannelloni.  How about something sweeter?  How about breakfast?  Sold!  This recipe is adapted from Canadian Living.

So.  In a large bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups flour, 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder.

Melt 1/4 cup butter, and chuck that in a smaller bowl together with 1 egg, 1 cup milk, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, and 3/4 cup extra smooth ricotta cheese.  The recipe also called for lemon rind, but we don’t have such fancy things here in Newfoundland. Well, we do — I just don’t have any at the moment.

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir it up.

Stir in 1 cup fresh blueberries.  If you use frozen ones (I did), just keep in mind that the the ice is going to make your pancakes a little runnier.

Heat a frying pan on medium and dollop in some pancake batter.  Because the pan is still heating our first pancakes never come out as well as we planned so we always make them a bit on the small side.

Cook your pancake until the bubbles that form on the top pop but don’t disappear, leaving little craters in your batter.

Then flip and cook for another minute or so.  Not long.

And that’s it, really.  Serve with whatever you like.  We kept it simple with butter and maple syrup, and that was good.

Pseudo-Peonies

While the weather might be warmer than it was before, and while I pulled these lovely daffodils out of my garden last week …

… my garden still looks like this.  Which means that my peonies haven’t bloomed yet.  If they’re going to bloom at all.  And I like peonies.  They’re one of my favourites.

So I’m going to make my own here.  It’s not that hard.  I found a quick tutorial at Two Shades of Pink and had at it.

Start with a bunch of coffee filters.  I don’t know how many.  A bunch.

And some warm water.  And some food colouring.  Or watercolour paint.

Dissolve some of your paint/dye in the water. This is some Crayola stuff I broke off and stirred in.

I tried this craft paint but it wasn’t water soluble, not really.

Then dip your filters into the coloured water.  You can do a bunch at once. And they don’t need to sit in the water for more than a few seconds.

Experiment with the outer edges.

Versus the inside. Or the whole thing.

Squeeze out the excess dye with your hands.

I totally dyed my hand pink.

Spread out the filters to dry completely.

Mine took a few hours, less when I fully separated the layers and put them in a place with lots of air flow.

This is the full stack next day.

Now, in addition to the filters, you will need scissors, a stapler (with staples), and then some tape or wire (I have floral wire here).

Grab between 6 and 8 of the filters and stack them up.  Flatten them a bit with your hands.

Fold the filters in half, then half again so you have a little cone.

Take your scissors and scallop the rounded edge of the cone — don’t worry about perfection, it’s all good.

Now unfold the thing and ruffle it up a bit.  Pinch that spot at the very centre where you made your folds.

Flip the filters over and you can see what I mean by that pinch.

Staple over that pinched spot to hold things in place.

Now flip it back over and smooth it out a bit.

Pull up the edges of the topmost (innermost) filter and, working from the bottom, squish the filter in on itself, leaving a nice fluffy gathering on top.

Keep going with each successive layer.

Make sure to keep the top nice and fluffy, while still jamming the paper against itself.

Gather up the bottom layer and push it upwards, squeezing into the little handle you’ve created for yourself.

The paper will hold its shape for a short time, but you want to fix it more permanently.  You can use tape around the little nub here or floral wire, which is what I used.

I attached one flower to one end of the wire and another to the bottom.  What am I going to do with it?  I’m getting to that.

Because of the variation in the way I dyed the filters, you can see different colour gradations in the finished flowers.

On this one I put the darker filters in the middle.

This was the resulting bloom.

I used 8 filters per bloom and ended up with 18 flowers finished, which means I had 144 filters dyed.

When I was finished I gathered some of the blossoms that were tied together and I used an additional piece of floral wire to wind their stems together.

And it made two lovely little bouquets of 9 flowers each.

I don’t even want to talk about that horrible plaster job in the background.  The landlord took our chimney away and now I have no place to display my work.

So until I figure out how to compensate for my lack of a fireplace, I’ve put my pseudo peonies flanking my television.  Because I’m classy like that.

The things we do for love: Learning to Silk Screen at Home

Beware: this is a very long post!

Because I love my husband and because I support his weird video game addiction (I did make him a cake after all), I agreed to make up some t-shirts for an upcoming tournament in my hometown of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in May.

Screen printing in a studio is awesome and you can do all sorts of fun stuff.  And fortunately nowadays (unlike when my mother was an arts student), the materials you use won’t kill you.  Which means you can do this stuff at home, too!

DESIGN

First you need a design.  For our first attempts, we decided to work with something simple: a giant squid for myself.  Because I love giant squid.

After several attempts, I had something I liked.  I didn’t notice, however, that I’d put an extra tentacle on the thing.

But after photoshopping it looked pretty good.  Pick something simple with high contrast.

Then copy it onto a transparency — this way you won’t have to cut it out.  If you have a strongly black and white design you could just print it out in black on white paper and cut it out.

Now, the first time we tried this it didn’t work (I will show you that later), because the transparency printings weren’t as opaque as they should have been.

Having learned from that, we printed our images in triplicate, and lined them up.  You can see in the photos below how the opacity increases with each layer.

After carefully lining them up, tape them together with a bit of clear tape.

PREPARING YOUR SCREENS

And now for your screen.  We ended up buying a kit from Urchin downtown to get us started, but we also made a few of our own screens.

This is the Speedball screen that came with the kit.  This is the squeegee side, where you will burn your image and spread your ink.

Here is the print side, which will be going flush against your fabric.

To make your own screen, you need frames and screening.  Here I have some sheer polyester that I picked up from Value Village.  It’s denser than, say, pantyhose, which means that the details will come out much more finely, but it’s also hole-y enough that you can squeegee paint through it, which is kind of key.

And I have these picture frames, also from Value Village.  Take out the glass and the picture and everything and you can staple your fabric onto your frame using a staple gun.

Pull it relatively tight — not so much that it buckles or tears around the staples, but tight enough that there are no wrinkles and you could run a squeegee up and down it with no worries.

Give your finished screen a scrub with warm water and a bit of dish soap and leave it to dry.

Use tape to line around the outside of the frame on the screen so paint won’t go all over everything and make a mess.  I used hockey tape because it’s pretty waterproof and sticks well to fabric, but I’m sure there’s some specific tape you should really be using.

Do it again on the inside of the frame as well.

Oh yeah, and you need a squeegee.  If you don’t have one, you can get away with using a piece of stiff cardboard.  Who came up with the word SQUEEGEE anyway?  It’s fantastic.

Okay so we’re almost set here.  Do you have photoemulsion?  You should get some — it’s kind of key.  It’s a weird greenish stuff that will turn hard and waterproof under UV light.  I got the Speedball stuff that comes with the kit.  Make sure you follow the instructions on the back, as they’re all different.  Normally it comes in two parts: the dark green Diazo sensitizer, which comes in a wee bottle and you add water to it:

And the blue photo emulsion base, to which you add the Diazo sensitizer.  Once this is mixed, you can keep it in your fridge for several months.  So you see here that it is green, indicating its mixedness.

Spread the emulsion carefully and in a thin, even layer all over your screen, on the FRONT side, and the back side.  Use the squeegee to get a nice thin layer all over.  The first time we did it we spread it on too thick and as it dried it dripped.  Gross.

Quickly place the emulsified frame in a completely dark room.  Lay it horizontally to dry for a few hours.  Don’t let any light touch it.  A nice big closet or a well-sealed box is a good place.  Ideally you should set the screen bottom side down while you dry (not what is shown in this picture, because we did it wrong the first time), so you will need to prop the screen up so the wet side doesn’t touch your closet.

EXPOSING YOUR IMAGE

When you’re ready to burn the image onto your screen, you have to work quickly.  Some people like to expose their images inside, under high-wattage light bulbs, but we did ours on the cheap and exposed them outside on a sunny day.  Worked like a charm.

You’ll need your image (cut out from opaque paper or printed on transparency) and a sheet of glass that will fit inside the confines of your screen.  And a dark towel or thick piece of dark fabric for wrapping your frame in while in transport.

In the dark (we shut the curtains to our bedroom and I stood almost IN the closet while the Pie held the door mostly shut), lay your image on the inside of your frame (on the squeegee side, and orient it the way you want it to look when it’s printed (as in, you don’t need to mirror this).  Lay the sheet of glass on top so the image is fully covered and flattened down.

Now wrap the frame up in your dark towel so that the print side of the screen is resting on the towel, face down, and the rest is wrapped up around it.  Take it out in the sun and lay it in a flat, sunny spot.  Unwrap the towel so that the frame is resting completely on the dark surface (you want it flush so that there’s no chance of any reflection hitting the photo emulsion on the bottom and exposing it by accident).  You can see that the dried photo emulsion starts out green.

And then in a few minutes turns a nice bluish.  We left ours out for about ten minutes.  Then you need to wrap it back up in the towel like a burrito and take it back inside.

Now you need a source of high pressure warm water, like a sink sprayer or a shower head, and a nylon scrubbing brush (like a dish brush).

Working quickly, remove the wrapping, glass, and image from your frame and put it under the spray.  Use the scrub brush on the parts where your image is to get the unexposed photo emulsion off.  Scrub both sides vigorously until it comes clean.

If you exposed it correctly, the contrast between the blue exposed photo emulsion and the stuff you hid under your image will be quite good and the unexposed stuff will come right off. If you didn’t have an opaque enough image, then the contrast will not be good and the photo emulsion will not come off, and will in fact continue to expose as you work.

You can see this failed attempt only had a few spots that were truly opaque and so that was all that came off.

But this one worked pretty well, save for a bit around one tentacle that didn’t expose properly.  But I can live with that.

After you’ve gotten all the unexposed photo emulsion off, let the screen dry in the sun for a bit (this will also cure the remaining photo emulsion).

And here’s one that the Pie did for his video games.  He is using drawing fluid to fill in some pinholes in his exposed screen.

PRINTING

Make sure that you’ve washed and dried any fabric you are planning to print on first, to get rid of sizing and make sure that it has shrunk all it’s going to shrink.  I picked up this handful of t-shirts at Old Navy and Michaels for cheap.

Protect your work surface and wear an apron — fabric ink is permanent, after all.  If you’re printing clothing, put a piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt so that if ink comes through the fabric it won’t stain the other side.

Lay out your shirt flat and place the screen where you want it to go.  For our initial test we used a piece of scrap cotton.  Pour a line of ink on one side of the screen, on top of the emulsion.

Hold your squeegee at a 45° angle and using even pressure, pull the ink across the surface of your screen.  It helps if you have another pair of hands holding down the screen frame while you do this.  Do a second pass in the other direction.  Experiment with the pressure you put on and the number of passes you do until you are satisfied with how the ink looks on your fabric.

Ease the frame off the fabric on an angle (so that one side is still touching the surface if you need to put it back down) and set the fabric to dry.

On our second pass I tried a blend of two different colours.

I tried to repaint the missing tentacle. It didn’t go well.

My two shirts, one in greenish-gray and the other in silver.

The silver wasn’t as opaque as I’d like it, but it’s still nice.

And the Pie’s two shirts.

When we did the yellow one we forgot to re-fill the pinholes and you can see they came out onto the fabric.

When the paint is fully dry (give it an hour or two), place your shirt on an ironing board and, with a sheet of paper between your design and the iron (no steam!), run the iron on hot over the design for a few minutes.  This will “fix” the image and protect it from frequent washings.

Modeling.  Sorry for the selfies.

 

Silver on blue …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gray on orange …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tada!

SCREEN CLEANUP

Unless you want to use those screens again, you’ll need to get the photo emulsion off as soon as possible.  I used the ScreenClean stuff that came with my kit, but you can also use 1 cup of washing soda dissolved in a gallon of warm water.

Use a paint brush to apply the cleaner to both sides of the screen and scrub briskly with a nylon brush.

Apply the cleaner again with the paintbrush to both sides and leave it to sit for about 5 minutes.

Run under a forceful stream of hot water and scrub again until all the emulsion and cleaner has washed away.

Wow, that was a lot to take in.  I hope it was easy enough to follow.  If not, please let me know!

PEOPLE WHO DID IT DIFFERENTLY:

Here are some of the links to the other sites I checked out to learn how do this stuff:

How to Screen Print! Silkscreening at home - The Art of Doing Stuff

Screen Printing: Cheap, Dirty, and at Home - Instructables

Top Ten Worst Screen Printing Mistakes - Adventures in DIY Screen Printing

DIY Screen Printing - I Love to Create

Cheap screenprinting tutorial - Craftgrrl

How to Silk Screen Posters and Shirts - No Media Kings

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

So my washing machine has been broken for about a month now.  My landlord didn’t like the first repair quote we got so we had to get a second opinion and now it turns out that the part we need is pretty much not available anymore.  While we wait, I do some laundry by hand in the bathtub (so not as fun as it sounds) and some I do downstairs in Fussellette’s machine (which is identical to and yet works so much better than ours).  So in recompense for being a pain in her butt while I wash my unmentionables in her house, I made her some cookies yesterday.  These puppies (adapted from this recipe) are soft and chewy and you can’t even tell that they are gluten-free.  I asked the Pie how many cookies he wanted and all he did was extend his arms to their fullest, which I took to mean “this many,” so I doubled my batch, but a single batch here makes 18-24 large cookies.

Preheat your oven to 375°F and line several baking sheets with parchment paper.

If you can find oat flour for this then you’re gold.  If you can’t, take a heaping cup of rolled oats and plop it in your food processor.  Give that a go for a few minutes until you have fine crumbs.

Plop that in a bowl together with 1 cup brown rice flour, 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon corn starch, 1 teaspoon xanthan gum, 1 teaspoon fine salt, and 1 teaspoon baking soda and stir that up.

In the bowl of a mixer, add together 1/4 cup granulated sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar.  Pour 1 cup melted butter on top and mix it up.

While that’s on the go, add in 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Now slowly add in your bowl’s worth of dry ingredients and mix until fully incorporated.  Looks kind of runny but don’t fret.

Now slowly mix in 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips.  That looks more like it, eh?

I used a soup spoon to scoop plops of dough onto the baking sheets.

Bake for 10-13 minutes, rotating your sheets halfway through, until the edges of the cookie turn a nice brown.  The centre will not look set, but again, don’t fret.  Let the cookies set on the pan for another 2-3 minutes after removing them from the oven.

Then you can put them on a rack to cool completely.  Or you can eat them right away.  I think the choice is obvious.

You can see how well my lettuce is doing, too.

Sewing so easy even I can do it: Nursing Shawl

Okay so it’s official: I’m going to be an aunt (again).  This time, though, unlike my lovely instant nieces Tego and HG I get to meet this niece or nephew at birth!  Krystopf and Atlas, the expectant parents, are coming to visit at the end of May.  It’s my big brother’s first time in Newfoundland, though Atlas was here back around the time of Doodle’s Newfoundland Express.  And neither Atlas nor I will let Krystopf forget the fact that SHE bravely came to visit us (by herself!) when she was a just brand new girlfriend, and HE (my own eldest brother) can’t organize himself enough to book a flight.  But for reals now they are coming and I couldn’t be more excited!  It’s a very brief trip but we’ll be sure to cram it with all sorts of fun stuff.

While I fully plan to have their wedding present (from last July) finished before they get here,  I thought I would also get cracking on some baby-related things they might find useful in the near future (the baby is due in October).  Now we know that if you put me in front of a sewing machine I am likely to break it.  Like for real.  But this one I think I can handle, because it involves sewing precisely one line.  Even I can do that.  I hope.  Anyway, this post also kicks off my new Kidlet category here at Ali Does It.  Who says you can’t do it yourself when there’s children involved?

What we’re going to make today is a nursing shawl, and it’s so simple it’s almost stupid.  But the great thing about this shawl (I think) is that it’s an easy (and fashionable) alternative to nursing bibs and trying to gather blankets around your shoulders and whatever.  And it covers your back, too, like a stylish poncho.  And it’s small enough you can just jam it anywhere in your bag.  And it doesn’t wrinkle.

Start off with some fabric, a nice jersey knit.  I found two that I liked, this pink cotton and then a silky gray polyester blend.  They were $2.99 a metre, which struck me as a good deal.

After washing and drying the fabric (to remove sizing and get any shrinkage out of the way), fold the fabric right-side-in along its width (which should be about 60 inches (or about a metre and a half).  This will leave you with something about 30 inches wide.

Because fabric stores cut this stuff very quickly, the edges are not exact.  I lined mine up as best I could and then used some sharp sewing scissors to cut along the outer edge to make it more square.

Next, use a measuring tape to measure 25″ from the outer edge and pin several times to mark your place. This will run perpendicular to the folded edge.

Cut along your markings so you are left with a rectangle that is about 25″ x 30″ (or 25″ x 60″ if you unfolded it).

Now you’ve got one folded edge and three open edges, right?  From one corner of your folded edge, measure 13″ along an open edge and pin to mark it.  This will be the head hole for your shawl.  Pin along the rest of the fabric to hold it in place.

Now all you have to do is sew along that line, from the edge of the head-hole to the end of the fabric.  It’s only 17″ of sewing.  Of course, my sewing machine and I don’t get along.  And so rather than throw it across the room I just did these by hand with a needle and matching thread and it took no time at all.

Then you just flip them right side out and they’re done.  Jersey knit doesn’t fray so you don’t have to worry about hemming the other sides (though you can if you want to, or embellish them with ribbons or whatever you would like).

It’s a nice comfortable, breezy fit!

At this point, Fussellette laughed and said, “I’m not fit yet for motherhood.”

Thanks to Fussellette and Teddy Two for being my models!

A Little Lettuce Trick

I’m sure you all knew this, but I didn’t.  I missed out the day that they taught life hacks in class. So I thought this one was nifty.

For some reason the Pie and I don’t really eat a lot of lettuce.  We need one or two leaves of it every once in a while, but if we buy a whole head, no matter how many different ways we try to preserve it, it goes bad.  I mean, this is Newfoundland, after all.

But I learned, from the internet, that you can re-plant your lettuce stubs and grow new leaves.  Novel.

So I have a lettuce stub here, which I’ve left to sit in a bowl of water on my windowsill for a week.

You can see that already a new baby leaf is growing out of the stub.

And on the bottom it’s all swollen and weird.  I suspect these will become roots.

So now you plant it. Stick it nicely in potting soil with good drainage. And set it somewhere sunny.

And wait for your lettuce to grow.  Again. And it will!

Baked Spinach and Mushroom Rigatoni

It’s been a cold start to spring here and we were craving a nice hot casserole.  I found a recipe that intrigued me in a magazine, but about an hour before dinner time I realized that this “baked” casserole was actually cooked in a slow cooker and took 4 hours.  PAH.  So I winged it.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and find yourself a large 9 x 13″ baking dish.

Quarter a red onion and slice it up.

Wrangle yourself about 1lb mixed mushrooms and slice them.  I found these handy mixed packages at the grocery store.

Crack open a 28oz can of diced tomatoes.

Defrost 2 10oz blocks of frozen spinach.

Also, grate up about 1 cup mozzarella cheese.

Boil up a pot of salted water and cook 1lb rigatoni.  When it’s cooked (it can be on the al dente side), drain it and set it aside.

Now, haul out a frying pan, add some oil and butter to it, and sauté your onions until softened and starting to brown. Mix that with a few teaspoons minced garlic.

Dip those out and do the same for your mushrooms.

Now you line up your ingredients.

Mix them all up, except for the cheese.

Now here’s the thing.  This recipe actually called for you to add about 4 cups ricotta cheese at this point.  I even bought the ricotta.  But I forgot.  So there wasn’t any.  So I leave it up to you whether you want to add it or not.  But you probably should.  Mine ended up feeling like it needed more sauce.

Plop your pasta mix in your casserole dish and sprinkle the top with mozzarella.

Bake for 30 minutes, until cheese is melted and everything is bubbly.  Serve with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese.

STAMPS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMA!

My mother, if you didn’t know, is an artist.  So when I was a kid, instead of playing around with construction paper and crayons (well, I still did that), I also got to experiment with India ink, French curves, and etching plates.  Let’s just say that for someone with little artistic skill I know my way around an arts supply store.

My mum and I tend to go off on artistic tangents when we’re together, and on a recent Skype conversation we got stuck onto stamps.  I have been collecting champagne corks for a few years now with the intention of turning them into nice little rubber stamps, so I figured, what better occasion than my mother’s birthday to try them out?

Generally when you make your own rubber stamps you use a special set of wee chisels that make your life so much easier.  Since I am incapable of doing anything that logical, I have a specialty set of craft blades instead. You also tend to use rubber, which has a more uniform consistency and is easier to cut. But what the hey.

So first you draw a design on your cork. I’m going with an A (for my name, natch). The bonus is it’s a symmetrical letter so I don’t have to worry about putting it on backwards or anything. Conveniently the Pie’s name also starts with an A so I’m killing two birds with one stone here. I will consider doing our last initials, B and F … some other time …

After I finalized the design I sent it to management for approval. Fortunately management was sitting on the arm of the couch while I was doing this so it didn’t take long for the paperwork to go through.

Then I set to with my wee knife, carving away at the negative space. Just remember, if you are using cork, that it’s a conglomeration of natural fibres, so things tend to come off in chunks. Also, please don’t cut off any of your fingers or stab yourselves. Blood does not make for a happy crafting occasion.

The finished A.

Testing it out. The uneven and pocked surface of the cork makes for that texture. If you use rubber (say, a Pink Pearl eraser), then you’ll have a much more solid fill on your stamp. Also now that I have three As in a row it looks like the sound someone makes when they fall off a high surface.

I tried to carve out a corgi. But then I accidentally cut off one of the eyes. The Pie said it just means that this corgi is winking.

So because this made me sad I made another stamp. I wish I’d had this one around when I was teaching and marking the papers of students who had not been paying attention. I like the deep disappointment that this stamp conveys.

I’m going to try this out with real rubber and tools eventually, but this is a good start, and I still have some blank corks left to try!