Making a Good Impression

I am so excited to share the news that I have finally begun carving my own rubber stamps!

I purchased the materials to carve stamps over a year ago at Dick Blick--a Blick Lino Cutter Set with six blades, one piece of Speedball Speedy-Cut carving block, and one piece of Speedball Speedy-Carve carving block.  I also have a variety of erasers from the dollar store and office supply store, which work pretty well, too.

It wasn't until I purchased Making an Impression by Geninne Zlatkis that I finally sat down to make the first cut.

I have had so much fun over the past couple of days carving stamps, using images from Geninne's book, as well as images from my daughter's Hello Kitty sticker book and The Rubber Stamp Album by Joni K. Miller and Lowry Thompson.  Let me take you on a little gallery walk through my new stamps:

This tree is a modified version of an image in Geninne's book.  I don't have a small enough blade to cut the kind of detail she has, but I have that smallest size blade on my Christmas list, so check back for some more detail in January!

These flowers are another design from Geninne's book, again modified (fewer flowers) for my larger blade.  To make the little dots, you just have to stick an Xacto knife straight down into the rubber and turn it a couple of times.

This mushroom, also based on Geninne's book, is one of my favorites.  I had no idea how that underside was going to look until I inked it, and I was pleased with the results.

I tried leaves from Geninne's book a couple different ways.  I think I'll return to try leaves again when I'm more experienced with the process.

I got this umbrella design from a book of Hello Kitty stickers.  Who knew?  It's also one of my favorites.

This heart key, as well as the crayon, hat, mustache, and footstep images below all came from the same sticker book. 

On scrap rubber from the larger stamps, I carved my initials:

On another piece of scrap rubber, I used an Xacto knife to dig out three little holes to create a brick impression, while I used a dollar store eraser to practice carving a grid at the beginning of this whole stamp-carving adventure:

These pages contain the practice impressions of my stamps:

I carved a heart, as well as some little legs that can be added to other images, but I guess I forgot to photograph them.  You can see them on the practice page above, though.

 

And here are all my newly-carved stamps nestled in their rubber stamp home:

I store my stamps in plastic box photo frames that you can find at most craft stores.  Since that's where I keep my store-bought stamps, I thought my hand-carved stamps deserved a similar home!

 

I'll probably never know why it took me so long to finally try carving my own stamps, when it has been on my Creative To Do list for such a long time.  Hopefully I won't let that kind of procrastination to keep me from any further creative fun!