Tuesday, January 24, 2006


I was cleaning house and found this stamp I'd carved stuck in a box of office supplies. Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Tips and Techniques

I feel like I get the strongest images when I use a Sharpie Marker to draw directly on the eraser. Bold images are the easiest to carve. The way you improve your drawing skills is to use them.
When I start carving, I may correct less than perfect lines as I cut. I may choose to cut a little inside or outside of a line to make it better. You can also draw in pencil first, and then go over it with the Sharpie. Or, if you really don't trust yourself, you can use carbon paper or graphite paper to put the design on the eraser. Remember the print will be reversed, so you have to write letters, names and numbers backwards. If you draw a dog facing left it will print facing right. Usually it doesn't matter which way animals face, but for your finished piece of art, you may need it facing a specific way. If you want two dogs ...one facing right, one facing left, then carve the first dog. Ink it well and stamp it onto a blank eraser. Then use that stamping as the carving lines for dog #2. And viola, you end up with two dogs that look pretty similiar but not exactly the same. This is also a way to save a design you loved that went wrong somewhere. And a good way to improve.

Vampire Queen in red. Posted by Picasa

Vampire Queen~another stamp I carved today. Posted by Picasa

Paint shop pro 'hot wax' setting and color manipulation. Posted by Picasa

Spiral for background. Posted by Picasa

Negative image. Posted by Picasa

I carved this stamp today. Posted by Picasa

Mermaid and embossing feature on Paint Shop Pro. Posted by Picasa

Mermaid manipulated on Paint Shop Pro. Posted by Picasa

Mermaid. Posted by Picasa

Celtic Knotwork border. Posted by Picasa

Kiss me I'm Irish! Posted by Picasa

Hot Stuff Posted by Picasa

The center image was used for an SCA site favor. They stamped it on wooden disks. I could have cut the background away but I left it because now the hare looks like it is sitting in a burrow. If you only want to print part of a stamp, clean it well, then ink only the part you want printed. Posted by Picasa

It is fun to manipulate the stamp images with computer programs. This is the emboss setting in Paint Shop Pro. Posted by Picasa

Sign made from alphabet stamps. Posted by Picasa

Gold embossed postcard using about five stamps. Posted by Picasa

Bricks for backgrounds. Posted by Picasa

bow (original is about an inch square) Posted by Picasa

Archers and trees. (The trees are all the same stamp but the archers are 4 different stamps). Posted by Picasa

Hand carved alphebet. Posted by Picasa