Here's a nice little video showing how you can use some of these antique wood stamps to create your own plaster stamps.

While doing a bit of organizing in the studio earlier, I took a photo of my own collection of these antique stamps. The square ones are my favorites and they're the hardest to find. You can find a lot of them on ebay and probably Etsy as well. Years ago, when I bought so many of these, you could find them in a lot of antique shops and may still be able to do that. Some stores that sell Indian gifts would also be a good place to search these out.

It took two days of working between intermittent showers but I finally got all my planters planted and fed. Jim celebrated Mothers day early by bringing me flowers and taking me to my favorite restaurant in the valley - Sammy's Cowboy bistro, last night. The name does not match the great food this lady chef cooks. They have their own gardens where they grow a lot of their own vegetables and flowers. She is to my mind, the most creative chef here in the valley.

I picked our first snow peas two day agos which I'll use tonight in tonight's yaki soba noodle stir fry dinner  . Most of my raised beds are planted except for one square. I've got a bunch of "no name" tomatoes which are too small to identify, so I'm holding off on planting that square. Our son and daughter-in-laws garden is well planted, except for the cold tender things which I'll plant Tuesday. Right now all those tender herbs and veggies are covered for the next cold evenings.

By mid or late week, I'll be done planting at my son and daughter-in-laws garden. Warmer days and more importantly, warmer nights are coming which will allow me to finish all this planting and get most of the remay put away till next spring.

I spent time during the rainy spells to cut out red plastic squares to put at the base of the tomato plants and I got those installed on all my tomatoes and have enough cut out for our sons garden. It's said that putting this red plastic down increases the tomato yield by 20%. Hope it's true. You can never have enough vine ripened tomatoes!