Celebrating Carve December 2025: Wrap Up & Reflections

Carve December 2025 was my 4th year participating in this daily carving challenge hosteed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. (You can revisit these and my other block-printed creations on my Block Print & Play gallery) Having crossed the finish line, here are a few of my reflections on this year's challenge:

Prompts:

In November, Julie posts a promp list which are totally optional for participation. I enjoy using the prompts as they certainly stretch my creativity and usually lead to an interesting mix of carved creations and I always marvel at how my fellow carving participants interpret the prompts. 

Before December 1st arrives, I start brainstorming potential ideas for the prompts--and oftentimes with family and friends. 

Earlier in the Fall, I started a To-Carve list of ideas that would be fun additions to my carving collection:

• television set
• gumball machine
• snow globe
• crystal ball
• seeds
• pair of glasses

I tried to plug these into any dates where the prompt would relate ie. gumball machine for Day 8 Candy add crystal ball for Day 27 Curved.

Some prompts are fairly open-ended and evoke lots of ideas. I jot them all down without censoring myself. When I get to that date, I look over the possibilitites, oftentimes brainstorming and researching several more before choosing a design idea that meets one or more of my own personal criteria:

1. A bit unexpected from the prompt. In Comedy Improv, we refer to this as A to B to C brainstorming--where A leads you to think of B and B leads to you to C--which may not as be as clearly connected to the original A prompt. 
2. Motifs that I am likely to actually use in my art: art quilts, mixed-media, and/or Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) 
3. Something that I can actually visualize into a print. There were certainly some fun abstract ideas that I considered but had to keep looking when I struggled to find a visual representation that could be carved and printed.

Whenever I got stuck on ideas (which is frequent!), I turned to a few different sources:

• Searching for idioms/sayings that use that word or phrase. 
• Rhyme Zone will search for phases with the word you type
• The Free Dictionary by Farlex which also allows you to search for idioms using a particular word
• My library of books, especially Sourcebooks by Graham Leslie McCullom which contain thousands of copyright free motifs: Pattern Motifs, 4000 Flower & Plant Motifs, and 4000 Animal, Bird and Fish Motifs.
• And of course, Google and Pinterest--while being mindful of copyright.

Carving:

This December, I carved 71 individual blocks. There were certainly multiple days yielding a single carve. However, some days involved a base layered with a more intricate design (Day 2's leaf and Day 3's arches). Other days, I broke the design up into modular components (ie. Day 8's Gumball machine, Day 14's mushrooms and Day 26's snail) allowing me to use different color inks to create the design. Other days involved using scraps to create Day 6's marbles and Day 7's buttons. Most of these multi-block days usually required a bit of engineering but they were so rewarding to achieve!

I tackled some of my most intricate carving this year including:

• Day 4's mitten
• Day 9's hand
• Day 11's fish
• Day 12's snowflake

Thankfully my Pfeil 11/0.5 carving gouge helped me to carefully outline tiny details before following with my larger gouges. I also noticed how much my carving improved with these daily carving sessions. On day 24, I carved a winter hat to coordinate with Day 4's mitten. The motifs and scale were almost identical, but I noticed that the hat was significantly easier to carve (of course I opted to carve one row of tiny hearts instead of 3!!) And I've noticed how much smoother my carving is in the evenings when I am not under the influence of caffeine. My evening carving sessions were a lovely way to end the day on a creative yet relaxing note. 

However, smaller text continues to challenge me as evidenced by Day 7's attempt at a 2" homemade label which was set aside before turning my attention to carving a set of marbles.

 Here are my carving tools:

• Pfeil carving gouges in these sizes: L11/0.5*, L12/1*, L9/2, L11/2*, and L7/6 (the stars represent which gouges I use the most--although there were certainly days where I used all 5 for one block)
• My craft knife
• And a mechanical pencil with a metal cylinder tip for punching tiny holes (especially on the snail body for Day 26) 

Printing:

Once the carving is complete, the real play begins as I explore the print potential of each new design. My explorations usually included one or more experiments:

• Inkpads - including layering different inks within a print
• Different layouts
• Printing onto different papers including book papers, maps, wallpaper samples, Printmaking paper, and a gradient papers (shown below).
• And playing with my new Woodzilla tabletop printing press--which not only yielded crisp prints but also got smoother with each day of printing and made for some fun reveal videos!

A few of the modular carves (especially Day 10's Square Knots and Day 26's snails) required a bit of finetuning to align the elements. Once I found the sweet spot, I used a pencil to mark the edges to show where the patterns would intersect.

You can watch a time-lapsed video of my binder containing all my prints as well as library of index cards documenting each day's block here in my IG post. 

Artist Trading Cards:

Many of this year's blocks were designed for use with 2.5" x 3.5" ATCs.

Over the course of the month, I printed nearly 284 prints for ATCs. Of course, many of these prints still need to be mounted, trimmed, and labeled before they are ready to go out in the mail. I've been noting requests via Instagram and Facebook messengers and happy to take new requests via DMs or my Contact Me page. In the meantime, I will be working to get these prints ready to post onto my ATC trading page in the upcoming weeks.  

Special Thanks!

Many thanks to Julie Fei-Fan Balzer for hosting yet another fun Carve December. It continues to be one of my favorite challenges of the year! Special thanks to my fellow carvers for inspiring me with your creative takes on the prompts and beautiful block prints that both delighted and inspired me each day! Last but not least, a big thank you to everyone for your encouragement and support. 

And now I must wait 11 more months until Carve December 2026 kicks off.