Stamping

I haven’t inked a rubber stamp in nearly a decade, but I felt moved by whimsy this morning and dug out my rubber stamp collection to decorate some holiday packages.
Indianapolis News co-worker Jane Judkins and I got heavily into rubber stamp art back in the 1970s and amassed an enormous collection. It had lots of stuff from All Night Media, one of the premiere stamp design outfits. Jane even invested more than $100 (which was serious money back then) in a set of All Night Media Alphabeasts – an alphabet featuring a different cartoon animal for each letter. We divided the collection up when she got married and changed her name to Stegemiller.
I was able to jam my collection of stamps, ink pads and inks into an old American Tourister suitcase and it sat in a variety of closets over the intervening years, most recently in the guest bedroom closet in our home here in Arkansas. I needed a pair of vise grips to unscrew the cap on the blue ink vial today and found it had turned into blue goo. Fortunately, the rollerball applicators of red and green inks were still good and, since this is the Christmas season, I contented myself to work in those colors.
I was also chagrined to find that the rubber has hardened on several of my favorite stamps. Most of the packages were bubble pack-lined, which made it tricky to get a good clean impression, especially with the larger stamps, so the recipients are going to get something that falls short of my best work. I need flat plain envelopes for that.
One of my favorite stamps is a custom-made job that features an arrow and tiny type saying, “The microfilm is hidden under the stamp.” I decided the humor might be lost on the folks at the post office, given today’s general paranoia and misplaced areas of security concern.