Block Printing & Stamp Pads: Lowering the Intimidation Factor

 I've been interested in block printing for a little over a year now, though I did have some experience with carving stamps for letterboxing when my kids were younger. I realized recently though that I wasn't experimenting or playing around with it much. The last time I carved a block was about half a year ago. 

It occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons I wasn't practicing and playing around with this artform was that I was intimidated by the inking process. I have and have used water soluble block printing ink to make prints. It comes in a tube and has the consistency of acrylic paint. I find it difficult to get the ink on the block in just the right manner. I tend to either have too much or too little. Or, maybe I apply too much or too little pressure when I'm placing the paper to the block or the block to the paper. Of course it's something that requires practice to finesse and get a good feel for, but it seems like the frustrations surrounding my lack of expertise here are keeping me from playing around with it at all.

So I decided to back off from that a bit and just focus on making prints with a stamp inkpad. There's a mental block I need to get over that tells me that carving stamps or blocks and then using an inkpad to make prints of the image is somehow "less than" using the "real" ink, with a brayer and a baren and whatnot. Is it easier? For sure. Am I still interested in learning to finesse the more complex method? Yes, absolutely. But this lowering of the intimidation factor has allowed me to apply a carving tool to some carving material again that's all I really want. To play. To experiment. To learn and to have fun.

So, these two little stamps (weird flower and acorn) are my two most recent weekly creations. They, and the last picture here, of a wool felt ornament (pattern from mmmcrafts) I made for my oldest for Christmas and which I can finally share because they got it, make me caught up with my weekly creations for the first four weeks of 2026.

Week 3 - Acorn Stamp

Week 4 - Flower Stamp

Week One - Goose A-laying (mmmcrafts pattern)

And then, for last week's Ordinary Beauty photo, I have just this one, no runners-up. I didn't really take enough photos to have a bank to choose from, which is a reminder to myself that in order to do this challenge I need to be mindful and intentional about it.

Moods

Attending College in my Fifties

 Hey there! It's Friday which means it's time for my weekly blog post. Look, I'm as amazed as anyone that I'm here doing this on a Friday afternoon for the fourth time in a row considering I only posted two times in 2025 and once in 2024. The only way I can keep this up is by keeping it loose and keeping the pressure levels low, low, low. Therefore, despite the fact that my brain is yelling at me that this is supposed to be a blog about creativity and art, I am going to tell you about my experience with being a returning student.

I am attending Arizona State University Online. I transferred all of my previous college credits from two different institutions to ASU in 2023 and I'm about to graduate (in May) with a degree in English. 

I went back to school at an advanced age once before, in 2015 and graduated with an Associates Degree (English with a Creative Writing Emphasis). That experience was actually really great. I was 41-43 then and I took maybe 3/4 of my classes online and the rest in person. I was nervous about being the oldest person in the classroom, but that wasn't even the case every time. I stretched myself and pushed myself beyond my boundaries during that experience and I still think back to my time there fondly. My creative writing classes and my art class, in particular, were so much fun, as they were both done workshop-style. I loved sharing my work and hearing everyone's critiques of it, as well as offering my opinions on their stuff. It felt like the best kind of community. I even kind of miss just the overall environment of the place. The little cafe and the library and that one quiet corner where I could just sit and read for a bit while waiting for my class to start.

This time, though, is not quite the same. Firstly, I'm a decade older. And while I am by no means alone in being an older student, I can not fully shake the feeling of being a bit out of place. It might be the fact that I do not see my classmates or professors in person. It feels ironic because I would think that my classes being online would have the opposite effect. Without really seeing anyone else, everyone becomes somewhat anonymous despite our tiny profile pictures and having our names attached to our words and that should, in theory, ease the feeling of being "too old." I think being able to see the actual people I'm learning with and from on a semi-regular basis, face-to-face, would ground me better, though. It would give me more of a chance to settle into the situation and shake off some of my discomfort with being so much older than the typical college age. In other words, I would be able to acclimatize myself better if I were more fully immersed in the experience, rather than virtually.

The anonymity and virtual-ness contribute to a sense of distance. I mean, obviously, I am geographically distant from the campus and from my fellow students and my professors. But, there's just something about being there physically that I feel like I'm missing out on, especially having experienced that before, both as a fresh-out-of-high-school student and as a returning, older student. 

All that said, I have had plenty of good experiences in attending ASU Online. I've been exposed to a lot of work and knowledge that I probably wouldn't have come across on my own. I've read books and watched films I never would have chosen. I've participated in interesting discussions, worked on challenging projects, and I've had to put my writing and communication skills into more practice than I usually do. All in all, I'm glad I decided to do it, but I will be relieved when it's finished. Of course, the question then becomes, keep going? Or, nah?

I have nothing to share for my creation of the week, as I am behind and I still can't share the one thing I talked about last week because the person for whom I made it still hasn't received it. As for my Ordinary Beauty photo, here is my top one from last week:

Late Leaf

And a runner-up:

Pointy

52 Creations for 52 Weeks

 I decided this year to keep my creative goals as simple as possible. I slotted it right into the whole 52 for 52 structure I'm doing for so many other things. I decided I would make one creation per week and that I would leave interpretation pretty open as to what counts as a "creation." It could be a finished embroidery hoop art piece, or a carved stamp for block-printing, or, as it is for this week, a sketchbook spread. I figured I would know what counted and what didn't as I went along. For instance, this week I found myself already behind on this challenge due to not being finished with what I had planned on for the first week, and I knew I would need something non-taxing to get caught up. But I also knew a simple one-off sketch wasn't going to cut it, so I told myself I needed to fill up the whole spread for it to count. I did that, had fun, kept it loose, and I'm perfectly pleased with its imperfection. 

As for what I did for the first week, it's a gift, so I'll show it off when it reaches its recipient. The only other guidelines I have for this challenge are that the "creation" needs to be finished within the week in question (or I'll need to catch up, which I have already had to do). It doesn't need to be started and finished within the week.

Here's last week's Ordinary Beauty photo:

Frost Patterns on the Sidewalk

And here's a runner-up:

Neighborhood Rose

Not a very long one today, but I've fulfilled my weekly blogging quota, so I'm happy. :)

How Pikmin Are Running My Business

 How can I carry on with the ridiculous blog topic I had planned to write for today when the world is in such a painful, chaotic, desperate place right now? Today is my social media day (M, W, F only (might talk about that more later, might not)) and already I have nearly been brought to tears twice. But I feel like I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said better by someone else. I don't really want to add to the cacophony of voices (legitimately) shouting out in anger and sorrow and despair and fear. I'm not sure that would be helpful to anyone. But maybe my little bit of nonsense will bring a smile to someone during an otherwise trying day, so... I'll stick with it as planned.

Last week I talked about one of my 2026 challenges and this week I'm going to tell you about another one, but it requires a little bit of backstory. Somewhere around August I discovered a little app called Pikmin Bloom. It's a Nintendo/Niantic game that's built on the same engine as Pokemon Go. Essentially, it gamifies walking. 

When it comes to exercise, there's basically one form of it that I like: walking. I started taking long walks sometime in 2019, but I had fallen off dramatically in my walk-taking frequency over the past couple of years. In August I stumbled across a mention of Pikmin Bloom somewhere on the internet (probably Reddit) and whoever was talking about it said it helped them to get more active via taking daily walks and so I decided to check it out. As I leveled up and learned how the game works, I became a tad obsessed with it. I roped Pat (husband, if you're just meeting me) into playing it with me, and then Saren (oldest adult child) and their boyfriend. I wrote this poem about it on my fridge.

I won't bore you with all the mechanics of gameplay. All you really need to know is that taking more steps means getting more stuff and some of the stuff that you get comes in the form of little guys called pikmin, who walk around with you (in your phone). The more they walk with you, the more your friendship with them grows and when it gets to a certain point, they will go off to get a gift and that gift is a little something or other that they will decorate themselves with, dependent on where you found them. For instance, a pikmin with a decor type of "grocery" which you originally found in a grocery store, might one day like you enough to put a bit of banana on his head. Sounds amazing, right?!

Anyway, given my obsession with this game, I decided to tie it in to some of my challenges for the year. One of them concerns my art business, HaikuCat Creations. The amount of sales I make is pretty modest and that's totally fine for me right now, but I do want to grow somewhat. It just so happens that there's a pikmin decor that pikmin found near a post office can get. Soooo... I decided to make my art business goal that I would get at least one of each type of post office decor (there are 7 total) only from making a sale in my shop and then going to the post office to drop off the package. No trying to get a post office pikmin in any other way. 7 sales might seem very, very modest indeed, but it might take more trips than that because I might get repeats and I need to get at least one of each kind. Also, for the first part of this year, I will be finishing up my last semester at ASU Online, so I don't know how much energy I will have to devote to making art and putting it up in my shop during that time.

Anyway, all that said, I got my first one yesterday!

(You have to walk 1000 steps with the seedling to make the pikmin grow enough to pluck it out.)

I also wanted to share some more runners-up for my weekly Ordinary Beauty photo of the week for last week. From now on, I'll share the winner plus runners up from the previous week at the end of each blog post (the plan is to blog every Friday), but for this week, I'm still in the middle of it, so it's last week I'm still focused on here. Honorable Mentions:

Lemon Tree in the Sky

Sidewalk Colors

Gambling

Artsy School

52 [insert thing here]s for 52 Years

 Hello! Here is my obligatory acknowledgement that I haven't blogged in a very long time! 

With that out of the way, let's get on with it. Happy New Year! Welcome to 2026, or as Pat calls it, Twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-six. No one knows why!

It's the beginning of a new year and you know what that means! My brain is filled to the brim with ideas for CHALLENGES!! I've long ago given up on trying to keep myself from getting excited about the feeling of possibility that pops up at the beginning of every year (and every month too, but to a lesser extent). It doesn't matter that half of my plans and goals and expectations come to naught. I still love coming up with new things to challenge myself with and even if they do sometimes get abandoned (and sometimes they don't!) they always push me a little, help me learn, and usually give me at least some productive (and oftentimes creative) output. 

I am turning 52 this year and guess what? There are 52 weeks in a year! Oh what perfection for creating challenges! 

I'm resisting the urge to tell you about every single challenge I've come up with for my life this year because a) some of them aren't relevant to this blog and b) I'm trying to keep my blog entries loose and somewhat shorter because, you guessed it! One of my challenges is 52 blog entries.

So, I'll start with this. I want to take 52 photos of Ordinary Beauty. Here's the story behind that: When I was in my early twenties I hated the city I lived in. (I still live in it. It is Las Vegas, Nevada.) I thought it was ugly and brown and uninspiring and blah. I've softened on that, especially toward the desert, but also (somewhat) toward the city herself. But back then, despite this feeling of being stuck in a place I detested, I also had a streak of idealism and romanticism. One day, while looking at a colorful mural painted on the side of a school, I made the observation that even though I thought that Las Vegas was ugly, I was willing to acknowledge that there were bits and pieces and pockets of beauty here and there and I decided I was going to seek them out and photograph them. I told my friend and he replied, "There isn't any beauty here." And that was the end of that because what he said killed all my enthusiasm for the project.

Now I don't want to overinflate the significance of what he said on my attitude and feeling toward my city or my ability over the years to recognize beauty in ordinary things. I have learned to appreciate where I live to the extent that I am able and my eye has always sought out beautiful details and made note of them. But it was significant enough to dampen that small piece of optimism I was carrying in the midst of all the negativity and despair I was mentally surrounding my geographical location with. But, if it hadn't made some sort of impact, I wouldn't have remembered it for all these years. I want to reach back over the years and give a little bit of healing to the girl-becoming-woman I was then. I want to tell her, "It was worth doing. The idea you had was a good one--a wholesome, light, sweet project that was definitely worth doing."

At first I was worried that I was going to forget about this challenge and thus fall off on keeping up with it, but at some point yesterday I realized I already had a contender for my photo of the week in my phone. I took it during my morning walk. Noticing beauty comes naturally to me. I just need to turn that dial up a little bit and follow through more when the urge to pull out my phone and take a picture of [whatever] arises. At the moment I had that realization, I did just that and pulled out my phone to take another photo of what I was noticing right then. Thus I give you my first official photo for this challenge, as well as a bonus photo because why not? 

The clouds and mist were so low and widespread when I woke up on the 1st, I couldn't see the mountains behind our house or the desert over which this metal mammoth presides. It made for a great morning walk to kick off the year. I probably should have gone in past the gate to get a clearer shot, but oh well.

And, streetlights and raindrops.