Carved Stamp Collection

Back in December, I share the results of my first foray into stamp carving.  I used Geninne Zlatkis's book Making an Impression:  Designing and Creating Artful Stamps to instruct me on the basic technique and to provide my first few designs.  Then I branched out to some designs from other books, as well as some freehand efforts.

I've picked up my lino cutter and some Speedball Speedy Cut carving block several times over the past few months, and I want to take you through a little "Gallery Walk" of the carved stamps I've added to my collection.

You can see the carved stamp at the top, and the rubber stamp impression using black Staz On ink on card stock on the bottom.  I love the little cupcake.  At first I was going to carve out all the marks on it, but then thought it looked like sprinkled frosting, so I kept them!  And I saw the idea for the rain cloud with different facial expression online.  I've only carved the happy face option, so far.  The two letter stamps in the middle are perfect for mail art, of course!

To create a hand stamp, I printed an image from the internet, reduced its size on my printer, and used the smaller size as my template.  I think it looks like a hand waving "hello," so it's fun for mail art, too.

I have really fallen in love with carving silhouettes.  So far, I have used images that I have printed from the internet.  Usually I shrink them to a more "rubber stamp-appropriate" size.  I think they look so amazing!

I used an actual tag (shown on the left) to create the tag stamp shown here.

And here, I used actual objects--two tags and a mini-clipboard--to design these simple but useful stamps.

I was super-excited to use an old-fashioned Dennison label (my favorite!) to create the stamp on the left.  The red Staz On ink makes all the difference to the effect!  And the "hello" stamp is my first word, and I was really pleased with how it came out.  (Geninne's technique makes word stamps really easy to create--no need to write backwards on your rubber!)

I wasn't so excited about how my handwritten name stamp came out, but it was a first try!

I was kind of proud of the "houses on a hill" stamp, above, because I completely designed and drew the image myself--no relying on internet images!  And it's kind of cute.  The butterfly was made from an image off the internet.

I was going to cut away the background so this was just a hand with a heart inside, but I kind of like how the background looks along with it.  I can always carve it away later if I change my mind!

I carved this stamp to look like the journaling lines that Traci Bunkers uses in her book, The Art Journal Workshop.  I think these could use a little work, too, but they could work on a certain style page.

I made these three little houses using the design I found on A Beautiful Mess.  Then I created a little house with an interchangeable roof.  I think it needs some work (I was just using up my scraps to create the roof options), but I love the idea!

I think that about covers the stamps I've carved so far.  You can see some postcards I created with my hand carved stamps in an earlier blog post.

And you can check out my ever-growing bank of ideas for stamp carving designs on my Pinterest board.  I have loaded up on Speedy Carve blocks, so there will be plenty more hand-carved stamps in my collection soon!