Brewer woman’s crafty ways serve as inspiration

We’re into the Christmas and holiday countdown now, and I can feel it breathing icily down my collar. Time to craft a few greeting cards. That’s why I called Teresa Kelly, 70, of Brewer. Kelly is an expert at doing crafts using paper and rubber stamps. She has in her collection more than 2,000 rubbers stamps, so many she had to take the table out of her dining room so she’d have room to store them; so many that she has developed a numbering system, not unlike a library card system, to keep track of them. Plus, she has 76 paper punches and a vast assortment of ink pads and other artsy stuff.

Kelly’s crafting philosophy is as down-to-earth as she is: “If you don’t try it, how do you know you can’t do it?” And there isn’t much in the way of art and craft she hasn’t tried, including watercolor and oil painting, crochet, decoupage, stenciling and needlepoint – all self-taught.

“My son says that if it doesn’t move, I’ll paint it. But what I really love is paper,” Kelly said. The gift boxes she creates reflect her love of the material. One box, done in gold paper and crisscrossed with pale pink organza ribbon, is embellished with a red poinsettia, each petal and leaf cut from paper and so finely shaped it looks like a real flower.

Kelly also makes little “books,” which she makes as mementos for family members’ birthdays or other occasions. One book opens to form the shape of a star.

Kelly and several other women meet at her home once a week to make greeting cards and other paper projects. She shows them how to make cards using stamping, embossing, watercolor, chalk and paperpunch techniques.

“What I learn from Teresa,” said Doris McGuire, who has been crafting with Kelly for five years, “I take with me to Florida in the winters and teach people there.”

On this particular evening, McGuire of Hermon, Mary Margaret Kelly of Bangor, Phyllis Bishop of Lucerne, Betty Keene of East Sullivan, Mary Goody of Brewer and Kelly were making a holiday card with an evergreen tree stamped in white on green paper. That was highlighted with white pastel chalk to give the feeling of drifting snow. The inner part of the card sported a snowman stamped in black outline, which the women embellished with colored pencils. Over that went a piece of green paper with the middle section cut out in the shape of an evergreen tree. That was outlined with a single coat of opalescent and glittery nail polish. Open the card and there was the snowman looking at you through the evergreen tree cutout.

The women said they look forward to the weekly get-together, and in the process of making things of paper, they have become good friends.

For three years Kelly taught evening rubber-stamping classes at Craft World in Bangor until the store no longer stayed open at night. And for 20 years she was a pastry and dessert cook at Cap Morrill’s Restaurant in Brewer.

The tools of Kelly’s paper crafting include, as well as her inventory of stamps and ink pads, a Fiskar’s paper cutter, glue sticks, pastel chalks, colored pencils and scissors. And, of course, her own nimble fingers and creative mind.

She said she buys acid-free paper at Bacon Printing, Craft World and Jo-Ann Fabrics in Bangor, the Yard Goods Center in Waterville and Creative Dimensions in Winslow. Her favorite place to buy stamps is at The Yard Goods Center.

“They have so many stamps,” she said, “that the first time I was in there, I was speechless.”

Kelly adds elegance to her cards with calligraphy, a skill she learned at a Bangor High School adult ed class.

“If I see something,” she said, “I can come home and make it.” But just as often, she comes up with her own ideas, including a greeting card featuring the Pemaquid lighthouse. Open the card and there’s a new Maine quarter, which has the same lighthouse on it, glued inside.

Kelly’s handmade cards are for sale at Tozier’s Market on South Main Street in Brewer and she accepts orders for special-occasion cards.

As for me, I’m so inspired by Kelly’s work, I can’t wait to run out and get one of those Fiskar paper cutters.