STAMPEDE

It’s 8:30 on a sunny Saturday morning and hundreds of people lugging empty tote bags are queued up in front of the Carson Community Center. That slabs of rubber affixed to wooden blocks would draw a crowd of 3,200 to a daylong convention seems improbable, but it is only one sign of the mania that’s turning ordinary citizens, mostly women, into stamp-addicted fanatics.

For the uninitiated, stamping is not about slapping “PAID” on an overdue bill. It’s a habit fed by the growing supply of tens of thousands of images, from Victorian damsels to cute bunny rabbits, tilting teapots, winged cherubs and elaborate celestial scenes.

They can adorn greeting cards, invitations, stationery, frames, clothing, glassware, ceramics, jewelry and walls. And while most practitioners approach stamping as a craft, others have elevated it to an art.

In Laguna Hills, Kellene Giloff publishes the Stampers’ Sampler, circulation 20,500.

In Westminster, Santa Barbara and elsewhere in Southern California there are stores filled with nothing but rubber stamps and stamping accessories.

Besides stamps, among myriad tools and materials available are:

* handmade papers ($1 to $10 or more a sheet);

* multicolored stamp pads (about $6 each);

* marker pens (about $2 each);

* embossing powders, which produce raised images, in dozens of colors and metallics (about $3 each);

* hand-held heat tools for embossing (about $30);

* special scissors that cut decorative edges (about $8);

* trims such as raffia, ribbons, twigs and charms;

* memory book accessories such as photo borders.

And, of course, a case to hold it all.

For the truly hooked there are also magazines, books, videos, clubs, classes, theme cruises and Web sites, where stampers chatter about stores and catalogs, new stamping techniques and the latest products.

The rubber stamp rage parallels the nation’s crafts obsession, which, according to Forbes magazine, now amounts to a $14-billion industry. This boom, which shows no sign of slowing, is widely recognized as a backlash against society’s increasing reliance on technology.

Unlike such popular but time-intensive pursuits as quilting, stamping brings almost immediate gratification and doesn’t demand months of practice.

“When I started stamping I realized everyone needs to have this,” says Kat Okamoto, owner of A Stamp in the Hand, a stamp store and catalog company in Carson. “It gives you personal joy and makes other people happy. I realized it was a very easy way to unlock a person’s secret creativity that they don’t know they have, and that makes people more confident as artists.”

Okamoto also runs the Original Rubber Stamp Convention, usually held twice a year in Carson, which she took over from a friend in 1984. Back then, 500 people and 19 companies participated; now, more than 3,000 shoppers and 61 retail companies come together, and still more anxious vendors sit on a waiting list.

She discovered stamping in the early 1980s through calligraphy, wanting images to add to her words. She and her artist friends began carving stamp designs out of erasers, then traded their stamp art. As others discovered stamps, companies slowly sprang up to meet the demand.

Most of the large stamp companies (Personal Stamp Exchange, Hero Arts, Judi-Kins, All Night Media) are based in California, which remains the center of the stamp movement.

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Gary Dorothy was something of a pioneer when he saw the potential of stamps more than a decade ago, opening his first Stampa Barbara in Santa Barbara in 1984. People thought he had been inhaling too many ink fumes when he decided to devote an entire store to nothing but stamps and accessories.

“But I loved rubber stamps,” he says, “and felt they were really wonderful creative tools that had never been showcased in a retail environment.”

Dorothy now has branches on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and in South Coast Plaza’s Crystal Court in Costa Mesa; the Santa Barbara store displays more than 100,000 stamps. It’s common for unsuspecting customers to moan, “Overwhelming!” upon entering.

But it’s the addicts who keep Dorothy in business. He once hand-delivered a stamp to a desperate woman who called him at home on a rainy night. “I just felt like I understood her plight,” he explains.

What qualifies as an addiction? An inability to pass a stamp store without going inside, a constant craving for “just a few more” stamps, and a collection of paraphernalia so massive it threatens to squeeze loved ones out of the house.

There are no support groups--yet--but stamp clubs come close. Members meet regularly to work on individual or group projects, attend demonstrations, swap cards, and even host stamping events at hospitals and nursing homes.

On a recent Monday evening a dozen or so women, most in their 40s, gather at the Stamp-A-Doodle-Do! store in Westminster. They are some of the members of Club-A-Doodle-Do!, a 4-year-old group that makes cards and other things, trades tips and techniques, and just dishes about family, work and life. Some are veteran crafters who are new to stamping, while others have been stamping for more than a decade. All are happily hooked.

President Jane Barnhart is the proud owner of some 3,000 stamps and spends about $300 a month on stamps and accessories--not an unusual amount for a devoted stamper.

Joyce Bustrum, one of the newer members, has already been on a stamping cruise (featuring classes, events and lots of stamping time) and plans to go on another.

After her son died a couple of years ago, she needed “something to keep me busy” and decided to deepen a nodding acquaintance with stamps through a class. In the club she’s discovered a love and talent for stamping and has made some close friends.

Magazines offer still another way to plug in.

Giloff, publisher of Stampers’ Sampler and Somerset Studio from offices in Laguna Hills, was until a few years ago, a happy stamp addict with one complaint: the dearth of how-to publications.

“If I was this hungry for samples [of projects], I knew there were hundreds of people also hungry for samples,” says the former marketing exec.

So she started the bimonthly, ad-free Sampler, filling it with cards and other stamped projects sent in by readers. Her first press run three years ago was 7,000; today, it’s 20,500. To help support the magazine, she simultaneously created a stamp line called Stampington.

Realizing that stampers would crave more artistic pursuits, she recently launched the bimonthly, ad-filled Somerset Studio. It’s dedicated to art stamping, paper arts and letter arts. That includes artist profiles and articles on exotic handmade papers, as well as how-to projects.

Giloff explains the stamping phenomenon this way: “As long as we are in a computer and technological age, an age of disposable items, these are lost arts. These are creations from the heart--people have taken their hands and made something not to be thrown away. No one pushed a button and spit something out.”

She and others doubt that the stamping craze will peak any time soon. The promise of new stamp designs, product innovations and a large pool of potential converts all ensure its longevity.

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Lynne Perrella of Ancram, N.Y., is one of many commercial illustrators and artists who have turned their work into stamps. She introduced her Acey Deucy line of ‘50s-style pop icon stamps 10 years ago, then felt compelled to offer something more personal.

Her Goddess Collection features stylized female nudes and collage designs, some lifted directly from her personal journals. “It’s not a problem for me to see my art reinterpreted,” she says.

“I think of them as an art supply, like a paintbrush. When you put it in the hands of an artist it becomes something unique. . . . The other day a woman sent me five little journals using my stamps on the covers. I was totally thrilled. I think the stamp community just feels like home.”