Self-Portrait

Guess what I'm workin' on today?  *smile*

It's interesting how sometimes sketching over-top of a photo comes out quite cartoon-ish.  Since I wasn't really going for a duplication of a photo-type of a look, I decided to take it all the way to comic book by coloring it.  It doesn't look quite so cartoony when it's stamped with Distress Ink (Faded Jeans) onto printed paper.

This stamp was carved on FirmKut material.  I really like how it holds the fine details due to it being a bit stiffer than PZKut White.

An Inchie Self-Portrait

This is for a postal project hosted by yours truly.  I used to be into postals heavily, but had to back out due to rising postal costs and losing my efforts to black holes.  At the time, LTCs were just coming into being so it was a good time to make a switch.  Now, after creating and receiving literally thousands of 2.5" x 3.5" pieces of artwork, I had an itch to get some padded envelopes in the mail.  With the gray oppressiveness of winter looming in the future, I know that receiving art in the mail always makes my day brighter.

As I thought again about what made me leave postals, I came to a conclusion.  Why couldn't you combine the best of the postal and LTC 'worlds'?  Instead of sending the actual stamps (which, when lost, is such a bummer), why couldn't you send images, cut and colored/embellished along with the logbook?  Would that be considered cheating?  Changing the rules a bit?  Everyone in the ring would still receive the stamped image (with the added bonus of the artist coloring it as it was intended) and get to sign into the logbook, as usual.  But, if the whole package gets eaten by the post office or, G-d forbid, falls into a black hole, it can be easily reproduced and sent back on it's way.  A win-win situation, right? 

In my latest foray back into postals, I posed this question of sending stamped images v. the actual stamp to the participants.  Most expressed that it was fine either way.  I suspect that if the risk of losing your carved artwork was diminished, more may participate in postal letterboxing.

What do you think?  Is sending stamped images instead of the carved stamp in a postal breaking the rules?  Would you still consider that a postal letterbox?