Custom Name Stamps

After making my first stamp and being pretty pleased with it I decided to try something a little more detailed. I'm thinking these will make great gifts for any creative friend, carving out the persons name and including a personal image or design specific to that person. This one I made for my friend Mark Porcina who makes pottery mugs. 

Carving My Own Stamps

For Christmas this year I received a stamp making kit. This kit included Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's book Carve Stamp Play, and a block printing kit by Speedball. 

Following the basic instructions in the chapter "How to Carve a Rubber Stamp" I attempted to make my own little creation. For my first stamp I made sure to pick a very simple design with only strait lines, no curves. This is mostly because, knowing my ambitious self, I have often picked first projects in a new art form that are too difficult. I have found it is important to have success at the start, this insures that I will not get frustrated and throw that project into a bag in the closet never to be seen again!

 

After carving out my "arrow" stamp I obviously needed to try it out! I found i needed to stamp it a few times to find "imperfections" that I need to go back and tidy up. You can best see this on the red paper.