Day 22 of Make Madness – Carving Stamps

I first have to say that this book, Carve Stamp Play is excellent.  Julie does a wonderful job of describing all aspects of stamp carving from what materials to purchase, how to assemble the tools and how to stamp.

She describes a variety of methods to transfer your image as well as provides you with images to try.  The book is full of tutorials ranging from beginner to more complex only in terms of the image.  Carving the stamps requires patience and time, but is relatively easy.

I started by carving a heart shape.  Julie does a fantastic job of describing how to use the lino cutter and if you follow her directions, you’ll end up with a good looking stamp.  I kept my stamp designs simple, but I definitely see myself doing more of this.  I’m very interested in carving an alphabet to use with my art journals and Project Life album.

Predictably I carved a dog paw and, a little less predictably, I carved a lowercase “g”.  I learned a valuable lesson while carving the letter “g”.  All stamps are a mirror-image meaning that the carved image is a mirror image of the stamped image.  When I drew the “g”, I drew it as I would stamp it except that was wrong.  Luckily, I was still able to use the stamp by applying ink to the reverse side.  I’ll definitely have to keep an eye on that in the future.

In Julie’s book, she turns many of her doodle illustrations into stamps.  I have a long way to go before I’m able to carve something that intricate, but it’s a great way to turn some of my doodles into stamps.  Looks like I’m going to keep carving!

Until tomorrow,

I bet a whole bowl of kibble that my mom would carve a paw, so I just have one question.  Where’s my kibble?