Stamp Carving

Posted by Delia:

Today we worked on making stamps that we could use in our designs.
The steps to making a stamp are relatively easy:
1. Choose an image.
2. Use tracing paper over the image and color over image with black pencil on the tracing paper.
3. Transfer the image to the block by turning over the tracing paper and burnishing the image.
4. Once you lift off the tracing paper, you will see the areas that need to be removed or carved to create your stamp.

We gathered our supplies:
Carving tools and blocks. The pink carving block is Speedball brand and the white is Utrecht. The Speedball brand was more flexible and easier to work with. The Utrecht brand crumbed very easily.

Speedball hand press.

Here's Leslie making a stamp with a linoleum block. As you can see from the stamped image, it came out pretty good.

This is the stamp that I made from the Utrecht block. This was my first attempt to make a stamp. I probably should of started out with a less detailed image but I learned a lot and am definitely going to try it again.