wanna join in?

sooo…. i don’t know what got into me, but last week, i got a message from my blogland friend sarah day of small fox in a big world and i usually refuse to respond to these types of messages on pure principle alone, but…. i was intrigued.  yep, it’s a chain-letter thingy, this one’s called the art exchange.  the idea is that you create (or pull from your stash) some piece of art–a sketch, a photograph, some 24k gold ring you made, whatever you made that you’re willing to part with and that you consider to be art and you send it to “the first person on the list” and then (wait for it….) you ask 6 of your artsy friends to do the same thing.  i know, the thought just makes you cringe, doesn’t it?  i mean, i tried this once in college with a kitchen towel exchange and ended up receiving maybe 2 of the 36 promised towels and both of them were kind of ugly.  so why would i even consider this?  especially when i’ve got a brand new baby at home?  maybe because the “first person on the list” that sarah sent me was none other than tricia tharp of frizzlestix that i’ve admired for a long time.  and when i took two minutes to consider what i could possibly send her as art, i fell in love with the idea of sending her a hand-carved stamp.  so i made her this:

and decided that i could also justify this as research for my shop–i wanted to know what it would cost to mail a stamp and what the best way to package it might be and whether e6000 is a good glue to use to connect the wood to the rubber.  i’m thinking that someday i might sell these in my etsy shop.  what do you think?  (and do you have a better glue suggestion?)

so anyway, back to my story.  it turns out that sending the art to one person isn’t the difficult part of this equation.  it’s finding 6 friends who are as crazy as you and are willing to participate.  i have a few spots open still, so if any of you dear artsy readers is interested in trying this sort of activity out, leave me a comment and i’ll send you the details.  first two (or possibly three) responders win!