Time for another weekly wrap up blog post to celebrate 7 new days of hand-carved stamps! This week generated a total of 16 new stamps--several of which were cut from scraps of soft carving blocks! Read on to learn more about the inspiration and printing process for each of these carved designs!
but then it gain even more interest when layered with two colors!
Celebrating 40 days of hand carving stamps with 5 small stamps carved from leftover scraps! It was fun to move the arms up and down and add different flowers to give these cacti character!
I printed the plain clam shells and packed everything up for the night. But then I thought about my small 7/100 stamp and brought it all back out for a bit more printing play!
36/100: Skinny/Rectangle + Pattern/Repetition
"Your life moves in patterns toward things, and things that we achieve finally are part of this mosaic. I just think that we create our own fate."-Arne Glimcher, American Dealer, Gallerist, and Film Producer/Director
Turning a long skinny scrap into a mosaic of half hexagons, patterns, and textures. I have fun using the ghost prints to create dimension and was especially surprised by how many ghost prints I was able to get from one inking: 9!!
37/100: Square + Lines
"If there's a goal, you can't stop me. I'll put my head down. I'll have tunnel vision and I'll go until I get it."-Dennis DeYoung, American Musician
This simple-to-carve design has a lot to offer: depth/dimension and secondary patterns...
38/100: Artist's Choice + Nature
"The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today."-Lewis Carroll, English author
Thinking of my mother's homemade strawberry jam...and luckily I have some to enjoy! Mmmm!!
39/100: Leaf Shape + Repeat Patterns
"You have to kind of embrace the duality of every moment."-Spencer Dinwiddie, American professional basketball player
Playing with duality today: two halves, two stripes, two colors...for lots of great prints!
40/100: Skinny + Nature
“Throw your hands up in the air and celebrate life.”-Steven Tyler, American Singer/Songwriter
41/100: Circles/Arcs + Pattern/Repetition
"You learn a lot more from those bumps than from when things are going great."
-Wes Craven, American Film Director, Screenwriter, and Producer
There were a few bumps before I found my groove on printing these clam shell designs that I teach in my Modern Free-Motion Fillers & Fun! workshops. With free-motion quilting, there is lots of opportunities to adapt as you go, whereas with carving, a bit of engineering is required to get everything to align. The long, skinny arc needed to be trimmed multiple times before it all fit together. Even the larger arc needed a bit of clean up carving for a crisp print.
But once I got there, it looked amazing in print!
42/100: No Dice Roll-Inspired by Nautical and SeaLife Inspired Class
"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever."-Jacques Yves Cousteau, French naval officer, explorer, and researcher
No dice roll as I kicked off the weekend with a Nautical & Sealife Inspired Block Prints online class with Ali Baecker of 3 Dotted Penguins. After a feast of inspiration provided by Ali, I started carving a jellyfish with interchangeable tentacles and lots of dots (which were super fun and easy to add using a mechanical pencil tip!) Stamp #17/100 even came out for a bit of print & play, although it appears to be looking for an exit plan to escape the swarm of tentacles!
After class, I visited the local library to pick out a few more books for inspiration and refined my stamps a bit for printing and pattern play!
I really look forward to these daily carving sessions. I just love the challenge of designing a pattern in my head, using my hands to carve out the design, hear my heart race as I see it in print, and use my mind again to play with all new pattern configurations!
Follow me on Instagram for daily postings and check back again for more weekly progress reports on my 100 Days of Hand Carved Stamps!!
These are wonderful!!
ReplyDeleteThank you! They were lots of fun to design, carve, and stamp!
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