If you get the Gauche Alchemy newsletter, The Dirt, then you may have already had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Fishie, but if not, why don’t y’all get acquainted.

This canvas started out as a way to use some postcard images shared by fellow Alchemist Marilyn, but then took a turn towards art therapy when I suffered a creative disappointment (no worries, I’m over it now) and was feeling a little down. I needed a fish image that was basically “giving the fin” to the others, and there was nothing else to do but draw her myself.

I could have stopped there, but I’ve been having fun with the concept of digital stamps, so decided to go through the scanning and cleaning-up she’d require to make her usable by me and others. You can now find Ms. Fish in my etsy store, along with some other digital stamp designs just in time for Easter.

Easter Lily has a bit of an Alice in Wonderland vibe to it.

While March Hare and Bottoms Up are much more playful (I can never resist a good pun!).

If you’ve never played with digital stamps before, they’re a bit of a cross between clip art and rubber stamps. They work the same as a rubber stamp in that you can print them out, color them, and use them on cards, scrapbook layouts, tags, and for other personal, decorative items; but since they’re digital you can resize them and flip them around–things I’ve always wished you could easily do with rubber stamps. The files you’ll receive are all hi-res jpeg and png files made from my original drawings that I’ve scanned, that you can open in any word processing or photo software (like Open Office Writer, Word, Photoshop Elements, even Paint).

(Clicking any of the stamp images above should take you right to my etsy page.)

Any questions, just ask!