Stamping: Am I Back?

Once upon a time I was a lonely woman home all day with two little baby boys whom I loved dearly and took care of daily.  I was a tired house wife and in dire need of social interaction with humans over the age of two so I began exploring things that a weary mommy could do while at home with her babies.  Magically scrapbooking somehow popped up and even though I do not have a shred of artistic talent in my body despite having extremely artistic parents and a sister that can draw anything something about scrapbooking intrigued me.

I remember going to Michael's for the first time and really looking at each item on the scrapbooking isles.  I could do this!  How amazing would it be to have scrapbooks to give to my boys wives one day?!  Could I have finally found my artistic side?

That was the beginning for me.  After that scrapbooking became a daily obsession.  As soon as I would put the boys down for their nap I would turn on my laptop, sit at my dining room table, find some ideas that I liked and try to mimic them.  I soon learned several things about scrapbooking.

#1 Scrapbooking is expensive and...
#2 I sucked at it!  

I loved doing it but the finished product was awful in my eyes so I decided to try a smaller scale paper craft and that's where card making came in.  I still wasn't great at it either but as weeks turned into months I really got into the whole stamping world and found exactly what I was looking for.  I made many online friends and even designed for several different companies.  It was amazing.  AND everyone that I gave a card to gushed about how awesome it was.  Maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought I was!

July 2010 my whole world changed.  I left the life I knew in hopes for a better life.  I left everything including my stamping.  I realized that a huge part of my stamping obsession came from me being able to escape the terrors of my life during that time.  Raising the boys was such a blessing and something I will forever cherish but there was another darkness that loomed daily that I needed to get me and my boys away from.  So I ran.

As you know, in the past five years I have found my better life.  I love it so much but lately I have felt that something is missing.  I have let go of so many dreams in my life so I went to each one wondering if there was still something there.  Several of my dreams I cannot get back.  I will never be the professional dancer I aspired to be and I can never give birth to another child.  Those will forever hurt but are there other dreams that I could reach?

When I was in my stamping prime there was one company that I fell in love with from the beginning: Verve Stamps.  I still have every single set I've ever bought from them and even though its been almost five years since I've inked any of them up this past Saturday I finally did.  It felt incredible!

I always wanted to design for Verve and I realized that is still a dream I could do if I got back into stamping.  Not that Julee would ever want me but even if I never get to actually design for them I think I need stamping back in my life.  This time its because there is a passion and excitement inside of me and not because I'm trying to escape from anything.  I truly feel like God has given me a gift and I need to use it.

My mom has kept a lot of my stamping stuff (thank you Mom!!) but I think if I get back into it again I'm going to pretty much start from scratch.  What's so crazy is how much everything has changed!  I went back to some of my old standby websites like Stampin' Up! and Papertreyink and almost all the colors I used to design with are gone!  Verve still looks amazing and is still doing their awesome Mojo Monday and Viva la Verve challenges so I am definitely going to start participating in those as much as I can.  I also want to purchase every single stamp set, dye, and embellishment they have on their site much to my husband's dismay! ;)  With money being extremely tight I told him I would settle for a gift card to get glue and cardstock and plan on using as much of my old pattern paper and stamp sets as possible. I guess now it'll all be considered vintage?

For those of you that did not know me in my stamping years I used to have a stamping blog but because of some very unkind people I chose to take it down.  You can still see all of my creations at Splitcoaststampers but those are all in my past.  I'm all about my future.

Want to see the card I made this past Saturday?

Not too shabby for being out for almost five years huh?

I'm not sure if I'm going to go back to card making or if I should try to do scrapbooking again.  I think if I do I will still stay in the smaller scale.  Those 12x12 pages still scare me! LOL  All I know is I am going to get my fingers inky!  Today I'm going to start figuring out a good stamping space in my office and hopefully later I can make something else.  :)

So don't be surprised if you start seeing more Christi creations here on the blog along with my other crazy Christi ramblings in 2016.  I'm excited and thankful that I have another dream to aspire to accomplish.