Our Holiday Special Offer

Buy three accent stamps and get the fourth free! Perfect for stocking stuffers, secret santas and Hanukkah. And they ship immediately! Pick out all four stamps and enter ACCENT at check out at either our website or Etsy site.

Mix and match accent stamps for different people or make a grouping for one lucky recipient. Kids will love having a little collection to have as a part of their crafting supplies.

For the busy bee...

For the space fanatic...

For a great tea party...

For the ocean bound...

For the baker...

And because we ship USPS Priority mail within the United States you can order as late as Dec 20th to insure delivery by Christmas.

The Universal Wish List

Were you hounded on Thanksgiving for your holiday lists by family members? Or maybe you were the eager beaver asking for lists. Either way Amazon.com has a wonderful new button that allows you to add items from all over the web to your Amazon.com Wish List.

Go to the Universal Wish List page and drag the Add to Wish List icon into your browser. When you are at any website and see something you'd like simply click on the icon and a window will pop up asking if you wish to add the item to your Amazon.com Wish List.

Take a look over your Etsy favorites, add a few to your Wish List and support the handmade community. Have a nephew into vinyl figures or an aunt who collects vintage china? Send them the Universal Wish List link and get that list back without any need to drive or Google. And if you have a favorite rubber stamp, there's even a place in the pop up window to place your personalized text.

Happy listing making!

The Pumpkin Fairy

This idea comes courtesy of Laura Donkel, a Chicago Waldforf teacher, and is a wonderful solution to the mountain of Halloween candy in your house.

Set your excess candy in a bowl outside by your jack-o-lanterns at night for the Pumpkin Fairy. During the night the Pumpkin Fairy will take the candy to help grow next year’s pumpkins. Pumpkins love sugar! In the morning the candy will be gone and she will have left a small thank you gift in its place, such as a book, a stuffed animal or some arts and craft supplies.

The Pumpkin Fairy could continue with the theme of their Halloween costume. If they haven’t had enough of being a pirate, a cowgirl or robot, then the Pumpkin Fairy could leave a small telescope, a stuffed pony or a book about planets. 

It’s a lovely and healthy way to celebrate Halloween. 

Thank you Laura! 

Making Halloween Stickers

Creating an adorable detail is not always a time consuming thought out in advanced process. Making your own stamps is one of the quickest and easiest ways to add a detail to all sorts of items- treats bags, gift bags and quick notes.

With a roll of plain white stickers from an office supply store and an accent stamp or two, you'll always be ready to quickly create a tiny detail that can make your presentation all the more sweet. Also, making stickers to hand out instead of candy is a great alternative if you live on a block where candy looked down upon (by mom's of course, not kids!) 


Happy stamping and have a happy and safe Halloween.

Pre-Halloween Party and Invitation

On the day of Halloween there’s always a strange time when the kids want to get dressed up and collect their goods but have to wait until it’s ‘time’ to go trick-or-treating. And nobody ever seems to know when that ‘time’ starts. A great way to fill this waiting period is to throw a party.

Invite over the neighborhood kids and parents for a pre trick-or-treating bash. Keep the food simple- order a few sandwich and veggie trays. A small treat bag or simple cookie with a great gift tag allows both parents to go trick-or-treating later since everyone on the block will have already gotten a goodie.

Try some classic games like bobbing for apples or pass the apple or pumpkin (be sure the stem is removed.) Decorate some small pumpkins with paint or markers. A game of musical chairs is always fun and has no clean up. Good scary music options are; Night on Bald Mountain, The Monster Mash, or Thriller.

If the weather permits have the party outside or in your garage. There’s always lots of excitement when costumes are involved. This way the kids get to hang out longer in their costume and best of all, when the party breaks up- everyone will know that’s it officially time to trick or treat!

Here is an invitation idea for a pre-Halloween party using stamps from our Halloween collection. 

We started with a flat notecard, cobblestone ink and our spider web accent stamp. We simply rotated the stamp around to create a handcrafted pattern.

Then we printed the text on a piece of yellow vellum that we found at an office supply store, and trimmed to the same size as our flat notecard. This is a great trick if you don't have a fancy color printer that prints on a range of papers easily. Most black ink jet printers can easily print on vellum.

Next we folded a sheet of our juicy orange paper to make a jacket and our boo! accent stamp to create another pattern. We used orange ink as the majority of the pattern and one cobblestone stamping for a little extra fun.

For the cute tie around the jacket we use Divine Twine. As you can see from our other Halloween ideas it worked great for everything. It was always the right amount of color and playfulness, without any extra bulk.

Finally, we end where your guest begins- at the envelope. The boo! accent stamp is sold on its own but is also part of our ghost stamp set. It's always wonderful to be able to set the tone of the party with the first glance of the envelope.

Remember to use your stamps to decorate game prize bags, treat bags or gift tags. And have a fun and safe Halloween.

A Month of Halloween

What used to be a single night of spookiness and sugar highs has turned in to a month long celebration of treats, decorations and parties. What would you do with a personalized Halloween stamp? More than you realize.

Fall is an amazing time to bake and share. Welcome crisp, cooler air by turning the oven on again. Filling your house with delicious smells can make packing away your cute sandals feel ok. The fall harvest lets you bake in quantities to share, whether it’s from your own garden or the farmers’ market. Zucchini bread for your neighbors, pumpkin cookies for the play group and an apple pie as a hostess gift. Give all of them a finishing touch with a personalized rubber stamp on a gift tag.

Then there are the parties. Children’s parties, adult parties and pre trick-or-treating parties. If you throw a Halloween party then a personalized Halloween stamp will cover all kinds of usages. Invitations, prize bags, treat bags, gift tags and thank you notes. And the best part of using a rubber stamp is you can reuse it every year and create a new look by changing the paper, ink and layout. If you have friends that host a Halloween party every year- a personalized Halloween stamp makes a great hostess gift.

If you have a special treat for your favorite neighborhood kids or know a child that is forbidden to have sugar, then the stamps work great to create packaging for a unique little gift. A simple stamp can transform even a brown paper bag.

If you send a store bought Halloween card, then a stamp on the back can give it more personality. If you scrapbook, try creating your own line of Halloween cards and finish them off with a stamping on the back of the card. And if you are a crazed mother with no time to make a card, let alone stand in an isle and pick a card, then get out the art supplies and your stamp and let your kids make some Halloween cards. This should give you a half hour to figure our where you put their trick-or-treating baskets.

Halloween Collection

Our Halloween collection of personalized rubber stamps and accent stamps is now available in our Etsy shop.

This is a great time of year for baking, crafting, parties and gift giving. A personalized rubber stamp is a wonderful way to give everything you do this fall, a personal touch. We have so many great usage ideas to come in future posts please check back soon!

Sock and Underwear Party

This party was technically a 40th birthday party, but you could easily throw a Socks and Underwear Party anytime for no particular reason. What is a Socks and Underwear Party you ask? Instead of guests bringing gifts, flowers or a bottle of wine, they bring new socks, underwear, t-shirts, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, razors and anything else that a local shelter might be in need of. This party was to benefit REST, a Chicago organization that helps transition the homeless to being housed.

The socks and underwear idea made for a fun theme. Here is a free download of the invitation art without text.  It is sized to work with an A2 envelope.

A clothesline banner was hung around the fence along the garden. Tabs were added to the artwork from the invitations and enlarged, then printed onto heavy white cardstock. A free download of the banner art is available here. Thick string from the hardware store makes a great clothesline and is inexpensive.

For the children’s table there were goodies to go with the theme. Bubbles had their own special washtub wrap, which is also available in a free download. Cookies, sock puppets and crayons all sat on a table covered with a plain paper canvas.

The cookies were a party gift for kids and adults alike. We made two separate stamps for the gift tag, so that they could be used in different ways throughout the party. Interested in having your own clothesline stamp? Please convo us at our Etsy site so that we can create a custom listing for you at a discounted rate. The cookies were a simple sugar cookie made with a fun t-shirt cookie cutter. The forty artwork is completely edible. You can put just about anything on an edible sticker- but don’t keep your finished product sitting out in the sun all day.

The sock puppets were from Puppets by Margie. We kept the puppets simple and unisex, but Margie also offers different hair options and embellishments. For older children, decorating and customizing their own puppet would be a great party activity.

Once you have a rubber stamp the possibilities are endless. Food descriptors are a nice addition but they also help people with allergies or food restrictions navigate a buffet easily. The clothespins were a fun touch and also came in handy to keep the tablecloth weighted down.

The cake could have been prettier, but it could not have tasted better. It’s a simple yellow cake with butter cream frosting using recipes from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook. Given a little extra time the clothes would have looked great cut out of a thin fondant or piped with royal icing for a smoother look. Somehow there were no complaints. 

We’re a fan of the plain big box here at Butterfly Fly. This one was decorated with a few blue clothing cutouts to create a place for guests to put their ‘gifts.’  

And finally we used the stamp a few more times for thank you notes on both the flat notecard and the envelope. The stamp could also be used for the invitations- but even a rubber stamp company doesn’t always plan that far ahead!

Hope this inspires you to look around your community and find an organization that might be in need of some very basic supplies. With a fun idea and a few simple, inexpensive decorations, you can help others while having a great time with friends.

Back to School in Handmade Style

Stacks of back to school supplies have filled every corner of just about every store. A box of crayons for 25 cents can be such a thrill, but try looking outside of the big box stores for some of your items. There are so many fabulous handmade artists creating one of a kind products to make your little ones feel extra special. Here are just a few ideas to get you started.

Child Owl Backpack by Little Sprout Baby, Sky Fun Little Boys Messenger Bag by Mee a Bee, Little Explorer's Bag by Gypsy Forest, Alphabet Crayons by burlap + blue, In Touch Clutch by Downstairs Designs, Elephant Pouch by a. e. wilder, Eco Friendly Ladybird Lunch bag by JB world, Reusable Snack Baggies by BananaSaurus Rex, Reusable Sandwich Eco Bag by Zummi

For teachers looking for their own back to school goodies, be sure to check out our personalized teacher and bookplate stamps and start the school year with handmade style.

Confessions of a Rubber Stamp Designer.

I make rubber stamps. And as much as I love combining stamps and inks and papers, the one that I secretly love is black ink on a plain brown box. It makes me feel like I have a personalized pre-printed shipping box like amazon.com. I know the ink bleeds a lot on this porous, uneven surface, but I love how it becomes part of the imperfect box that will tumble through the mail system.

I don’t normally write this blog from the first person. I just think there are so many great blogs that do. Blogs with clever and creative posts everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. And it’s not that I don’t have something to say as a mom or handmade artist, I just want this blog to be about sharing simple ideas a few times a month. It won’t clog up your google reader, and hopefully it gives you the occasional piece of inspiration. Or in this case a reminder that a simple usage of a stamp can sometimes be a favorite.

Dawn

Butterfly Fly