New Catherine Moore Stamps

I belong to a Yahoo group, Character Constructions, that showcases artists' work created with Catherine Moore's Character Constructions line of stamps. Well, I receive regular updates to the group, but because I haven't been very active since joining it several years ago, I usually just delete the notices as I cruise through checking my email. But a few weeks ago something caught my eye- her new stamp line, She Sells Seashells, and it was on!

They were being released for shipping on the day after I happened to see them, and from the minute I saw them, I just couldn't stop thinking about them! I am not kidding, they literally would not leave me alone! Anyway, after looking, and drooling, and yes, lusting after these stamps for a couple of days, I just did it! I ordered ten of the fourteen plates. I still would like to have the other four plates, but I will wait to order them because now she has drawn me back in, I may be going back for some of the other years' releases that I didn't buy.

The back story is that I purchased her first line, Inner Child, when it was first released in red rubber, before she changed her line to using Clearly Constructed clear acrylic stamps. I love them so much and have used them for tons of different projects and dolls. I have used those old red rubber stamps to death, and in fact, they are what I used to make my paper doll flip book, La Livre Des Femmes Papier, which had a couple of the dolls in it published in Somerset Gallery Summer 2010. I posted a little about my disappointment that Stampington kept the book so long and that I was afraid they had lost it, but the book did make its way back to me, so I am happy . Well, mostly. The only other thing to complain about that event is that the photos of the dolls that were published were credited to someone named Norma Skogland, not to me! Oh well (big sigh) . . . So anyway, I did not purchase any of the intervening years' releases although I liked them very much. To get all the plates for one line is rather pricey, and I had been working on making my own doll patterns and parts and was making mermaid paper dolls and fairy paper dolls and Matryoshka paper dolls - you get the picture. When I saw these mermaid stamps in the She Sells line, though, I just had to have them, and now I am revisiting her catalog often, looking at the things other people are doing with her stamps, and now I have the bug again. But in the meantime, I've been busy with these mermaids, and have a ton of other ideas in mind. Today is a snow day for me, so right after I get this leedle update added to my much-neglected blog, I am off to execute a couple of those ideas.