A stamp too far: When does possession become an obsession?

Is insanity taking hold of  Penelope Goldstream as she stamps her way to married bliss?

I like to think that I’m naturally a very creative and resourceful person.  At school I excelled in Art & Design and I progressed with my talents through College, creating many masterpieces which are still displayed to this day; assuming that my Mum’s kitchen counts as a public place!

It is my creative side that encouraged me to be as active and involved with the decorative side of the wedding plans as possible.  I truly want my wedding to have a personal stamp to it.

When I first got engaged my head was bombarded with ideas of colour schemes and decorations but I’d be so excited that the next day I’d forgotten what I wanted or I kept changing my mind.  It was at this point that I decided to create a wedding scrapbook, filling it with colours and ideas to get more of a precise picture as to what I was looking to achieve.

I forced myself to create a suitable but personal colour scheme and stick to it otherwise my wedding really would end up looking like something from Pat Sharpe’s Fun House – I loved that show.  I did actually contemplate a game show element to the evening do’ but my ‘boring’ future H2B kindly reminded me that not everybody appreciates games as I do therefore it might not be the best idea. Needless to say that idea was soon quashed before it had time to evolve into the serious planning stages.

I have become somewhat of an obsessed bride-to-be (B2B) over the last few months, insisting that I do ‘everything’ myself and as cheaply as possible as I’m fully aware that the costs can mount up incredibly quickly.  In my mind receiving any help from anybody else would simply be an outrage and failure to my creative friend inside of me.

I want to design and create the invitations, the place names, the centerpieces, the favours, the table art and the extra special surprise planned for the evening reception.  N.B – as readers you do understand that I can’t tell you about the extra special evening surprise as my guests could well be reading this too and then the surprise won’t be a surprise! (Mum, you already know about it so don’t panic that I’m keeping things from you)

After many many hours trawling eBay for cheap and chic supplies, I have begun my creative adventures.  Night after night spending hours cutting, pasting, gluing and sticking paper, fabrics and ink stamping personalised name place tags and creating special additions wherever possible.  I came across this fantastic idea to ink stamp personalised napkins, bottle tags and name places so I bought myself an a-z individual rubber letter stamp set at a mere £4.99 from eBay, which included 3 free ink pads – bonus!

Since receiving these rubber stamps my evenings and weekends have been fun filled extravaganzas.  In my artistic brainwave I thought it would be nice to stamp mine and my husband’s full names plus the wedding date on all of our wedding stationary.  It was a fun task at first but after stamping each individual letter for the 198th time (and I’m not exaggerating), gaining blisters, turning my living room into a bomb site and staining the cream carpet with lime green paint, I quickly changed my mind.  With well over 568 individual letters left to stamp, it became apparent that I’ve been a bit of a fool.  What I should’ve done was purchase a single stamp made to order with our names ready printed.  I would then only have to stamp each stationary item once rather than 29 times – genius or what!

It is worth remembering that there are people selling their services and gadgets for a reason.  It doesn’t make me less creative if I purchase things but it does allow me extra time to enjoy other things going on in life.  It took me 3 full evenings to name stamp just 60 pieces of paper.  At this rate it would have taken 18 months to achieve what I wanted.  I am pleased to report that I have since taken my own advice and purchased a made to order rubber stamp.  I have now stamped everything in my house (literally) in a fraction of the time it was taking me with the individual stamps.

So, for anybody interested I have a complete a-z stamp set going to a good home?