Making stamps and more Autumnly Entangled

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Stamp Carving

I woke up the other morning, Thursday I think it was, and had the overwhelming desire to try my hand at carving stamps from rubber blocks again.

I enjoyed doing lino cuts when I was doing my A level in art over a decade ago, well apart from the way my finger and wrist joints would hurt after doing this.  So, I thought I’d have a go with soft rubber, and above you can see the first of my efforts.

The weird flower was the first, and I’m not happy with it, though I think it would be fine as a background stamp in mixed media work, maybe.

The other circular stamps followed fairly quickly after that one, but the stylised thistle was one I did this morning. The white rubber discs are made by Essdee, and I used lino and stamp carving tools by the same company.

The leaf, heart and geometric patterns I carved this morning from a different kind of pink rubber: Speedy Carve from Speedball.

Both kinds of carving material were easy to work with, perhaps a little too soft for my liking, but only time will tell.  The only other tools I used were a pencil to draw the designs on the stamp carving material and a craft knife to cut the Speedy Carve.  Oh, and some sepia Archival Ink from Ranger, and an acrylic stamp block for the circular discs to adhere to while I stamped with them.

Autumnly Entangled

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Two more, drawn on paper coloured with Distress Oxide inks, with highlights of white gel pen and metallic gel pens added.  Also, the bottom one has had colour added using Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens from Kuretake and also some Prismacolour pencils.

I still have two more 10cm x 14cm sheets of coloured paper to draw on… so at least two more to come!

Mixed media cards – shells and fish

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Over the past few days I’ve been drawing shells, flowers, fish and fungi and sorting them out to be digi-stamps, work all done on my Microsoft Surface Book.  Some have been printed, coloured using my Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops pens, cut out and mounted on mixed media backgrounds.  The photos above show the fruits of my labours.

Apart from the Chameleon markers, the media I have used are:

  • Distress and Distress Oxide inks
  • Iridescent and metallic paints from Liquitex and Pebeo.
  • Perfect pearls sprays
  • Stencils
  • Stamps
  • Black Archival Ink
  • Inktense pencils
  • 3D Crystal Lacquer
  • Alchemy Wax

I think that’s the complete list of media.  I used mixed media paper for the backgrounds, and the paper was cut out using rectangular dies.  Behind the backgrounds, I used silver mirriboard as a mat.

I’m quite pleased with them.  No so sure about the kraft card bases (which are 5¾” x 4″ in size), but they were what I had.

Now, all I have to do is work out a price for them and pop them into my Etsy shop, though I think I will have to take better photos for that!

Mixed media index cards – 5 June 2017; my own library of digital drawings

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Mixed media index cards

Two index cards worked on over the last day or two.  The focal points are shells I drew, first on paper, then the image was worked on on my Surface book with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and my Surface Pen,

I had to use scissors to cut out the shells (not my favourite task as I’m not good with scissors) after I’d coloured them using the Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops marker pens.  I’m really pleased with the colouring.

Lots of different techniques/media were used on the index cards – stamping, stenciling, inktense pencils, distress inks and distress oxide inks, pebeo dyna paints, perfect pearls sprays, gesso, clear holographic embossing powder from WOW!

I’m happy with them, though I’m not sure they’re quite finished, especially the little one.

Digital drawing library

I’m beginning to build up a library of my own digital drawings – fungi, flowers, shells at the moment, oh and one angler fish skeleton that I’ve not used yet (but that’s an idea for later or tomorrow maybe).

I have to decide if I put these images together as packs of ‘digi-stamps’ for sale…I’m really pleased with my shells here, but the fungi have worked out fine too.  With my limited scissor skills, I’m keeping it in mind I need to keep the outlines relatively simple, but the inside of the design can be rather detailed, which is fun.

Mixed media index cards – 3 June 2016

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Two more index card done!

I drew the fungi then coloured them with the Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops pens.  Cogs have appeared in the background once again – gotta have a lil bit of steampunkishness!

I’ve used 3D Crystal Lacquer on the fungi caps and on the stars in the background.

I’m liking the slightly bigger format of the index cards compared to ATCs.

Mixed Media ACEOs/ATCs of today

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This morning, I woke way too early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to do some more ACEOs/ATCs – two sets of four this time!