What can you make in fifteen minutes?

It’s May 1.

This month I’m dedicating myself to the art of the stamp cutter, my sketchbook, and a found image. Fifteen minutes, maximum. One tiny stamp a day for 31 days.

Come and join me ( here’s the full instructions ) or just follow along and see what transforms.

I’ll be documenting the journey right here as the month unfolds.

31 days of stamp cuts in my sketchbook. Let’s go.

Here’s what I know so far: I’m already obsessed with the stamp punch. I’m stamping everything in sight. It’s just so satisfying… that perforated edge, the way it turns any scrap of paper into something worth keeping.

I’m noticing things differently already. Actually looking at magazines, catalogues, old books and hunting for the perfect image, the right colour, the fragment that catches my eye. It’s the experiment within the experiment: training your eye to find beauty in what already exists.

I’ve also built up a little box of stamps ready to go, and it’s already giving me an idea for paid subscribers: a surprise in the post. More on that soon.

A few things I’m doing that you might want to try:

→ Conducting tiny experiments within the experiment - this week I tried a blue theme, and restricting myself to a handful of stamps as my limit for one page. Constraints are surprisingly freeing.

→ Batching. Life happens. On creative days when I’m on a roll, I’ll make a few days’ worth of stamps at once so I’ve always got one in my back pocket. I’m not rigid about this. If I’m inspired, I let it flow.

→ Selling. I’m starting to think about selling some of these beauties. We’ll see.

One thing I’ll do differently next time: one page per day, not using both sides of the page. My sketchbook is getting wonderfully, gloriously thick.

I’m halfway through this tiny experiment and it’s already changing me.

Fifteen minutes of daily creativity. That’s all it is. And yet it’s giving me something to come back to every day. Something that’s just mine. I’m learning, I’m growing, and I’m noticing that the days I sit down to make a stamp are different from the days I don’t.

The pages are building into something I didn’t plan. A collection. A visual diary of May.

Nearly at the end. Here’s a few more days of stamps to see.

The body of work is real now. I can see it. Twenty-nine pages. Twenty-nine tiny decisions about what’s beautiful.

Thirty-one days. Thirty-one pages. One month of showing up for fifteen minutes, just for me.

I’ve thoroughly loved this experiment. It gave me a small creative act every single day. It gave me focus when everything else in life felt noisy. It gave me a growing collection of tiny, beautiful things that I made.

The feedback from some of you along the way has been genuinely moving. You tried it too. You sent me your pages. You told me it gave you something to hold onto in a busy month. That means everything.

Here’s what I’m taking forward:

🎨 I won’t do this every day forever, but this practice isn’t going anywhere. It’s become part of how I see. And it’s a joyful moment to add to any day.

🎨 The next experiment is already forming. I want to send stamps out in the post and share my found images with others so they can include them in their own art. A real exchange. A physical thing landing on your doormat. That idea is growing.

🎨 I’m thinking about Etsy. And about what a paid subscription to Joy Experiments could look like - something tactile, something in an envelope, something that surprises you.

*this stamp cutter idea was inspired by Pam Vale. Thank you!

If this experiment has given you anything (a moment of joy, an idea, a reason to dig out your own sketchbook) I’d love to keep going together.

Subscribe to Joy Experiments (free) to follow along as the next experiment takes shape. You’ll be the first to know when I launch the stamps-in-the-post idea, and the first invited to whatever creative challenge comes next.

If you want to go deeper, a paid subscription is coming and yes, it will involve something arriving in your actual postbox. 📮

And if you tried your own stamps this month: drop them in the comments. I want to see what you made.

xo, Louise 🫶