Carve December December Wrap Up Celebration

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Wow! Time flies when you are having fun and #CarveDecember was an absolute blast! Let's celebrate as I share a few highlights and takeaways from these 31 carving and printing sessions.

Crossing the Finish Line:

Not only did I have fun carving/printing all 31 days, but I managed to carve 68 blocks and fill a 2" binder with block printed patterns! Most of these sessions took place in the evening which made for a lovely way to wrap up each day. On a few occasions I completed my carving early in the day and wasn't sure what to do with myself for the rest of the day!?!

Design Inspiration
There were several sources of design inspiration that factored into my carving/printing sessions including:
  • The daily prompts definitely stretched my creativity! Some were a bit tricky at first, such as Baroque (#14), Artificial (#27) and Naive (#29). but they definitely helped me to explore new design ideas. Plus I really enjoyed seeing how other #CarveDecember participants were interpreting the daily prompts. While I tried to find new takes on the designs, there were a few where I had similar takes as others including my Spock Live Long and Prosper for Long (#7).
  • In addition to the daily prompts, the seasonal holidays certainly influenced many of my carving and printing sessions. It was fun to celebrate these holiday memories through these festive prints.
  • There were several days that I used a mostly neutral color palette which is pretty rare for me and my love of vibrant color. I suspect some of my palette choices may have been influenced by all the winter rainy season here in San Jose, CA.
  • A treasure trove of block printing design inspiration was found at my local library in the children's drawing section. Several of these books were so amazing that I added them to my Christmas wish list for Santa!

Honing My Carving/Printing Skills
Last December I was just diving into block printing, so this series helped me to appreciate how far my carving/printing skills had grown over the past year while still exploring new techniques, many of which I picked up from my fellow printmakers:

  • Besides ombre prints, I tried using a white acrylic ink pad to print onto black which creates amazing prints

I especially enjoyed the challenge of using layers using a variety of techniques:
  • Using paper masks during the printing process for layering the various motifs without overlapping.
  • Engineering modular blocks that could be layered using a variety of colors and/or ghost prints.
  • Playing with layered prints to create depth and new patterns.
  • And adding whimsical pen doodles.

Here are all 31 index cards with their respective block prints. What a fun collection!

You can read more about each of these block designs and inspiration in my weekly blog posts:

A big THANK YOU to everyone who joined me on this creative journey. Special thanks to Julie Fei-Fan Balzer for hosting #CarveDecember. Many thanks to my fellow #CarveDecember participants. Whether you carved a few or all 31 days, I so enjoyed seeing your carving and printing this past month while picking up new tips and tricks for future carving fun! I'll be counting down the days to participate again next December!



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