Something About Nothing

This is the end of the  31 Days of Blogging Challenge .  I am grateful to Cheryl Sleboda for the kick in the pants!  I needed it.  I am pleased with myself for having completed the challenge, as well as the Carve December challenge.  Carve December helped me make sure I had something to blog about everyday!  I hope you aren't tired of stamp posts because I have a few more to share here and in future posts.  I haven't been able to stop carving!  I'll also do a post on the materials I have been using as well as some great resources for learning more about stamp carving.  I promise I will be blogging about things other than stamp carving in 2016.  2016 is a big year in my family as well as in my career.  Family wise, my son is getting married and graduating with his PhD all in the same weekend and to top things off, he and his fiancé will make my husband and I grandparents!!!  Career wise, I will have a couple of appearances ...

My friend Shannon asked me if I could make a stamp that was "quilty." Perhaps this simple repeat stamp fits the bill? I want to make a larger version of this stamp and create a whole cloth quilt with it!   \ It has been added to the project list! Day 29 of Carve December.

The house has been NOISY this holiday season.  I realize this is a good thing because it means I have family who still wants to be at home. As the kids move out, our lives are changing and sadly this noisiness might not always be the case.  That said, I needed some alone time today!  How do you find alone time when the house is full? I decided to take to the after Christmas sales, because nothing says alone like shopping, am I right?!  I can be in my own little world and look at pretty things.  If I hear someone yelling for Mom, I don't need to respond.  Not my circus, not my monkeys! However there is a great danger in hitting the after Christmas sales alone.  It's a fine balance because while there is no one there to beg you to buy something, there is also no one there to reign you in! Now before you start judging -  It was all on sale at least half off, with most of it 70% off. It will all be used - some year. And believe it ...

Pattern stamps are so fascinating. This felt busy, and a bit heavy.  I really liked the open spaces on the stamp so I decided to do something a little dangerous.  There was a strong possibility I wouldn't like the change. Whew! I like it!

A few days ago I tried to create a positive and negative stamp.  I failed. I eyeballed the images and my eyeballing isn't very exact.  Try number two was much more successful because I traced the negative stamp and transferred the image on to the Eco Karve .  They are still a little off but I really like the look. Each hearts is approximately 1 3/4" square. They are quite small.  I would like to make some larger images like this but I am now out of sheets of Eco Karve.  I guess it's time to make another order to Dharma Trading .

My daughter wanted a stamp to put her name in her books. I played with different ideas earlier this month before my other daughter helped me come up with an idea.  I went with the musical instruments because she enjoys music of all kinds but I really didn't like the lettering. I cleaned it up a bit before I gave it to her. But honestly, books are really more her thing.   She is getting her PhD in English Literature and so I went this direction with the new stamp. She likes it! But I still think I need to make a new one. I also need to buy her a stamp pad. It might be helpful for her to have ink to use with the stamp!

I really want to make Christmas cards.   Great time to think about them, huh?   Since it's Christmas day and all. Let's just say I'm a year early. I've come up with an idea for cards that involve Gelli® prints and . . .surprise, surprise. . . hand carved STAMPS.  The first part is a heart inside a star. I was pretty upset with myself when I slipped with the gouge and broke into the line of the star the first time.  But what are you going to do at that point?  Start over?  I think not.  Then I did it AGAIN!   Good grief.   I kept carving.   UGH I did it a THIRD time!!!  Good thing I was done carving by then.   I stamped the star and found I LOVE the breaks in the lines!  So lets just forget all I just told you about it being a mistake and pretend I planned on cutting into the lines in the first place. It will be our little secret. While playing with the stamp I found they made a cute little ...

I am finding that I really making something look like it is in front of a background. Day 24 of Carve December Once Carve December is complete, I will share what I have learned through this experience as well as all the materials I have used.  I look forward to sharing it all with you!

A little break from the Heart carving. I have a friend who loves Octopi and I promised her a stamp almost a year ago.  I decided it was time to try drawing something and carve away. I find her pretty funny.   Hopefully my friend likes her.

Here is the negative carving of the Flower Heart from yesterday. I like it. And rather than do an exact transfer,  I eyeballed the two flower hearts. This is what happens when you eyeball. Oops.   Oh well.   This just means I will need to make each of them a mate!

Don't you just love when you are enjoying your work so much that you lose track of time?   This has been the case lately while carving stamps.   And when I finally tell myself to head to bed, I find myself dreaming about stamps designs.   This design came to me the other night.  When I imagined the design I imagined it with the background being the positive space.   After some thought I decided I needed to try it both ways. I could have cleaned the background up a bit more but I liked the lines. Day 21 of Carve December.

I'm still on a heart kick.  I've also started playing around with positive and negative spaces. I'm loving concentrating on the same thing everyday. I honestly have other work I need to do but there are some stresses in my life right now (besides the usual holiday stuff) and I just want to play.  So play I do. It is very therapeutic and I feel like I am learning a lot too. Day 20 of Carve December.

Trying to decide what to put inside a heart isn't much of a challenge, as there are so many possibilities.  However, I don't feel confident enough to carve everything I draw yet.  But I won't get better unless I try - so here goes: Today's heart is a woven pattern. Day 19 of #carvedecember

I love hearts. I draw them when I sign my name and when I doodle. I have a friend that also loves hearts and she finds them everywhere.  She takes photos of the hearts she finds and posts them online.  I decided to make her a heart stamp.     I loved making this heart stamp, and I need to make more. I think I've found a new obsession. Day 18 of #carvedecember

When I was too brain dead to draw anything to carve the other day my daughter drew a cartoon of our cat, Mister, whom she affectionately calls "Fatty". (He weighs 21 lbs) I asked her if she wanted the word carved into his stomach and she said "yes!"  So I humored her.   Awww, poor kitty is very angry at being called Fat!  I don't blame him. She decided I needed to make a stamp of our other cat, Keiko, whom she calls "fluff." One of Keiko's ears is wonky and she captured it perfectly in the drawing. Once they were both done, I stamped them together. I think Keiko should be very worried right now because it looks like Mister is about to pounce! Days 16 & 17 of #carvedecember

I've played with the background of my blog for quite awhile. Snow dyes? This one is very bright!  Maybe too exciting and distracting. Blue Snow Dye? More calming at least but the design was odd in a back ground. I've actually spent hours changing the photos for the background and always ended up going back to this green, purple and blue ice dyed fabric. A few weeks ago I started playing with other art. . . Zentangle?  Um, not so much.   Too hard to see in the background and it didn't tile well. That was the problem with a lot of the art I tried. Gear sun print? . . . Maybe. I gave it a couple weeks on the blog, but every time I went to my page I found myself distracted from the post by the background. Today I went back to find something new.  Finally, in frustration, I threw it all away and went with white. I swear I have previewed white before, and I NEVER liked it,  but today, I LOVE it! ...

I am in the middle of #carvedecember.  Thirty one days of carving a stamp (or two) everyday of the month.  I decided I wanted to carve my own alphabet.  I lost track of time the other night drawing a very simple alphabet.   When I started thinking about how I would transfer the letters onto the Speedy Carve I immediately wondered if I could use the Bunny Paper from Mistyfuse to do the job. I scanned the alphabet into the computer and printed it onto the shiny side of the Bunny Paper.  I used the fast mode on my Brother Ink Jet printer so there wasn't much ink.  I worried that maybe it wouldn't work. But it did! All I had to do was lay the Bunny Paper on top of the Speedy Carve and rub! The biggest issue I had was in getting the lettering lined up so that I didn't waste any of the Speedy Carve.  I was able to remove the transfer from the Speedy Carve, as well as the Bunny Paper with a wet paper towel.  I was als...