She's Crafty (Weekend Arts)

As this year is my first away from family for the holidays, I haven't exactly been in the "spirit" of things. Christmas markets and school festivities, staff parties and even watching "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" (the original, not the Jim Carry version) have kept me busy enough but there was something missing. It's the lack of turkey and tourtiere, the last minute preparations, the anticipation of a blizzard or gathering around the tube to watch the game. It's the late nights, the poker games, the young cousins being allowed to drink and knowing that you are surrounded by people who love you so unconditionally that they forgive you for getting them the same present every year.
For the past couple of years I have made presents ( "you don't gnome me" and "that's the tooth") but I couldn't ship bags and t-shirts to everyone with the outrageous cost of postage here so, to keep everyone close to my heart (cheese alert) I decided to make my own holiday cards this year. This is also the first time I've even sent out cards, so to those that I missed, I apologize. I set up shop in the living room and carved out potatoes, traced stencils and mixed colours. It was a great weekend and it was fun to custom make them for everyone so far away. I think they turned out allllright, in the future I might consider using this technique to make wrapping paper or t-shirts.

A few tips and tricks that I learned while making potato stamps:

1) use a small paring knife to carve the potatoes, i used an exacto knife, which was a bit tricky to manipulate. Of course, simple shapes are easier to carve. When drawing your design on the potato, large wax or coloured pencils worked best.

2)Acrylic paint works fine, but it was more practical to paint on the colour i wanted rather than to dip the potato directly into the paint. the third and fourth stampings are always lovlier than the first ones.

3) The potatoes can be used for up to a week (maybe more) after being carved out, just wipe clean and store in a plastic bag in the fridge (NOTE these do not make tasty mashed potatoes!)