Monday, June 4, 2012

Stamps

Yesterday I carved a couple of stamps with my linocut tools and used them to make stationary for my friend's birthday. The main stamp has her dog, Breezy, a Bernese Mountain Dog smelling a flower.


In addition to stamping some pages and coloring them with colored pencil, I gave her both stamps so that she can use them herself on anything. I think she really liked her stationary!

The stamps themselves are made from Speedball Speedy-Carve. It's soft and rubbery but holds detail really well. And it works beautifully with a stamp pad. Linoleum doesn't work very well at all with a stamp pad. It's too stiff and doesn't seem to hold the ink from the pad that well. There are different versions of "speedy-cut" but I like this pink Speedy-Carve best because it isn't crumbly and it's tough to hold up to lots of printing.

I've actually used this stuff to make the blocks for lots of my small prints that I still call "linocuts" because I don't know what to call them exactly. Speedy-Carve-Cuts? Here's a photo of some of the blocks, some stamp pads including some fun small ones from Aladine and a sheet of Speedy-Carve.


I used that pink stuff to make this whole series of Colorado images! You can see the blocks above for the Horse and Skis prints.




7 comments:

  1. Lip-smackin' great works of art. I adore them. :D

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  2. Thank you for all this info, Jill. It's not easy to get that "pink stuff" in our little town, but I think I've found a source in the city.

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  3. Thanks for the comments, Ladies! Dinah, we don't have an art supply store in my town at all. I just have to mail-order everything. It's kind of frustrating, but I probably spend way less on spur of the moment purchases!

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  4. These are so great, Jill! I'm a big rubber-stamp fan myself.
    And I bet your friend will use Breezy over and over.

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  5. Thanks you guys! Stamping is fun, eh?

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