Keys and houses

I’m in the middle of a stamp carving lark – again. I knew I’d need a key. And not a stylish and decorative old-fashioned one but your box-standard kind of key. I tested it with an ATC and while I was at it, I tested some older house stamps too.

The pending summer is proving to be almost like a thriller. In excitement I wait for a new day to see if it will end up being a little warmer as forecasted, or will it continue to be cold. It’s like the summer is mocking me. It gives me half a day of nice warmth with some sunshine and then the rain and cold wind arrives again. It’s *supposed* to get warmer tomorrow, but in anticipation I bought a nice, colourful ball of thick woolly yarn today. My new motto should be something like: If you’re too cold in shorts, knit a warm hat. Kind of goes without saying. Doh.

Carved stamps

I have carved some more stamps. These will make good backgrounds. I had a little play with them on ATCs. There’s something about hand-carved stamps. Something about their wobbly lines and imperfect curves…

Letters and numbers

I’ve been planning on carving a whole alphabet set and finally I did it. I used very large erasers which I cut into smaller pieces. The letters and numbers are all about 17mm high. This is the font I used. I really like them. They are not tiny but not huge either, and they are all nicely wobbly. Just what I wanted.

Little ladies

The hand carved stamps just keep on coming. More ATCs made using them.

Carved flowers

Well, what can I say? I keep carving stamps. This time I made simple flowers from round and rugby ball shaped erasers.

And then I made ATCs with them.

Foxes and stuff

More ATCs. This fox of a sort was also carved by yours truly. Looking at all three now, I think the last one should say ‘pass me the cheese’ instead.

Flying and free falling

Just a couple more new ATCs. Done with my carved stamps, of course.

More carving

I can’t stop carving stamps. Here are two new ones.

And then some ATCs I made using those stamps.

New stamps

For a long time I’ve wanted to carve my own stamps and at long last I’ve bought myself a lino cutter. Now I’ve been carving stamps like it’s going out of fashion. I love it. And I love the stamps. They are wobbly and imperfect and that’s the reason I like them so much.

I can never have too many suns and sun-like images.

Arrows come in handy, I’m sure. Offcuts of erasers are good for arrows, too.

Need some more flowers yet, methinks.

I’ve also tried to carve on a plastic carving plate (the green one). It’s more difficult than an erasers but easier than lino. It’s bigger than any eraser I have so it should come in handy.

Some erasers are difficult to carve (like the orange one – what a pain). Some erasers are already a nice shape and only need a little decoration, like the little heart. The funky little ‘Made by Sari’ is one of my favourites. I know, it looks like a 5-year-old did it. It was another offcut and I did it in the middle of the night too, I should add. Still, I think it should go with all the other wobbly stuff. Click the image for a bigger version.

Some of the erasers are double sided, like the one with 3 squares. It has 3 circles on the other side. Again, click the image for a bigger version.