Hello

For this week, I thought I would break this post into two parts.

In part one, I share how I set about carving a stamp so that in part two, I could incorporate the hand-carved stamp into a project.

That's Crafty! stock a Speedball Carve Stamp Kit, making it easy to set about carving a stamp ready to use in your own Mixed Media project and of course, once the bug catches hold, you will need more Carve Block for future designs, simply purchase the Speedball Speedy Carve Block, also available from That's Crafty!

Supplies
That's Crafty! Pearl Inks: Black, Silver, Tree Bark
That's Crafty! Medium - White Gesso
That's Crafty! Multi-purpose Craft Adhesive
That's Crafty! Surfaces MDF Panel 8" x 8" Pack of 3
Speedball Speedy-Carve Stamp Kit
PaperArtsy Eclectica Cling Stamps EAB05 Designed by Alison Bomber
Archival Ink: Jet Black
Extras: re-cycled white packing paper, sewing machine, black sewing thread, torn box packaging, white cotton rag/watercolour paper

Instructions

Within the kit, you have everything to get you started.

The question you might well be asking, why hand-carve a stamp when there are so many stamp designs available to us. I am sure anyone who carves their own stamps will give you different answers but the ones that immediately spring to mind: you can carve the stamp to the size you require, you can personalise the design and for me, there is the flexibility as I under-take the carving, I like to tweak the design (you can see that my finished stamp is not the design I sketched out)
The Speedball Carve Kit has everything needed to get started.
1. draw your design
2. trace the design
3. transfer the design onto the carve block

This is a large stamp, I used the full 6" x 4" carve block.  My end result is quite naive in style. If I wanted, I could have progressed further with the carving and I might well return to this another time as I know it will give a different outcome to the inked up stamp.

The carved stamp was laid aside to then prepare the paper.

Gesso was to white re-cycled packing paper. Once the Gesso was dry, Pearl Inks were applied, using a piece of cloth to apply them provided a textural effect.


Gesso was applied to the 8" x 8" MDF panel in preparation. Gesso was also, randomly applied, to the cotton rag/watercolour paper and when dry, applying the Pearl Inks, leaving them to air dry, also adding splatters.

Once the above panel was dry, the stamped tree along with torn piece of the gesso'd were taken to the sewing machine.

After, torn pieces of re-cycled corrugated cardboard, given a swipe of Gesso before being adhered to the panel.  On one piece of the corrugated cardboard, I layered the stamped text "in the bleak midwinter", taken from the quote from PaperArtsy EAB05.

Thank you for visiting.
Wishes
Lynne