DYNAMIC DECORATOR ALSO SUCCESSFUL AS AN INVENTOR.

Byline: VICTORIA GIRAUD

Ruth Mayberry is so creative and realistic with her decorating that one design managed to alarm a neighbor who called in the Sheriff's Department.

Not long ago, Ruth and her husband, Michael, had just gone to bed in their Santa Clarita condominium, when they heard someone at the door. There stood two sheriff's deputies.

``They wanted to know if anything unusual had happened that night. Were there any noises?'' Ruth explained. ``They wanted to know if we were married, and wanted to speak to me alone.''

When Ruth refused a private conference, the deputies reluctantly admitted that someone had called from the complex, worried that Michael was planning to commit suicide. As they talked, Ruth discovered that the person who called had been looking through the bathroom window to see Michael at the sink staring at a hanging noose.

She took the deputies to the bathroom, dubbed the ``John Wayne john'' because of its western decor. There's a cowboy boot border along the ceiling, a branding iron to hold the towels, an Old West gun hanging as a decoration, a toilet seat painted with cactuses and a sunset and the offending noose hanging from the shower rod.

The deputies were satisfied, especially when they saw that flimsy noose wasn't even knotted; it had been pasted together. Despite their temporary irritation at their peeping Tom neighbor, Ruth and Michael now laugh heartily at the genuine mistake.

``I've been into crafts and arts all my life,'' Ruth declared. ``It's not my thing to be an office person.''

Beside decorating her home using her active imagination, Ruth loves using artistic rubber stamps in creative ways. Her stamping hobby led her to a creative invention that she sold to Stampendous, one of the largest stamp companies.

``I didn't think stamps were creative at first,'' Ruth said. ``After I got into it, I could see it was creative, and I could use it in innovative ways.''

She used the stamps initially to make cards for her mother, who was terminally ill. One day, as she was trying to manipulate a stamp with an ivy pattern, she realized the wooden base created limitations that were frustrating.

``The ivy curved one way, and it was driving me nuts. What can I do to make it flow in either direction?'' Ruth asked herself.

Playing around with the idea, she went to a stamp manufacturer and asked that they make her just the rubber part with the ivy design. Then she played around with materials for the base, and discovered that a rubber base could be manipulated. Taking the idea a step further, she decided to call a stamp company to see if they were interested.

The owner of Stampendous in Anaheim was intrigued enough to schedule a brief appointment with Ruth. The meeting lasted over two hours, with Stampendous eventually buying the concept.

Looking back, Ruth reflected, ``They were lovely people.'' Ruth's idea has since become ``StampaFlex,'' with Stampendous manufacturing the decorative stamps in various sizes, some of them large enough to use in decorating walls.

One of Ruth's many innovative ideas is the creation, along with partner Judy Petersen, of unique decorative dolls. Measuring about 28 inches, the dolls are designed as seasonal and holiday decorations. Only doing it for about a year, Ruth and Judy have garnered a blue ribbon at the Anaheim doll show.

``I sculpt the heads,'' Ruth explains. ``Judy paints the heads, and we make the armature ourselves. It isn't until she paints the head that we know what it will be.''

They've made a spring doll with birds in her hand and hair, and pussy willows the other hand. The doll has moss for hair and twigs for eyelashes. The fall doll has a head full of leaves, with a small pumpkin on top.

A resident of Santa Clarita for the past 12 years, Ruth's decorative talents have been used over the years for her volunteer work with Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. She was president of the Home Tour League in 1990, and also did the decorations for Footlite Follies. She's helped design big events for the Canyon Questers, and designed two quilt blocks for the community quilt that hangs in the Valencia Town Center.

Ruth's dolls and what she calls ``Vintage Ephemera,'' are on display at her space in the Country Antique Fair Mall on Soledad Canyon Road.

Asked what new ideas she's developing, Ruth thinks a moment and answers, ``Whatever comes up. I never know what's going to come out of my head.''

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Photo

Photo: Ruth Mayberry shows her rubber stamping technique using tools she designed herself. At right is a seasonal doll she helped create.

John Lazar/Special to the Daily News