Carve Your Own Zodiac Stamps with Briana
Howdy and Happy New Year, everyone!
For today’s tutorial, I’d like to share an idea for carving your own stamps.
I happen to be taking two online classes that deal with astrology, so I chose to carve a set of zodiac signs, planets, and moon phase stamps to use in my art journals.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- A simple design of whatever you’d like to carve, printed or drawn on paper
- A pencil
- Carving material-Speedball Speedycarve
- Carving tool-Speedball Lino Cutter
- An ink pad-Archival Ink by Ranger
- (The previous three are sold as a Stamp Carving Kit on artistcellar at 10%+ discount)
- A cutting mat
- Copy Paper or Art Journal-Strathmore or Canson
Steps 1-6:
- Print out your designs.
- Color in an image with your pencil.
- Flip the paper face down onto your carving material.
- Rub the back of the paper with your pencil.
- Take a peek to be sure the image is transferring.
- If so, remove the paper and get ready to carve!
Carve Your Stamps:
Using a Speedball Lino Cutter or other stamp carving tool, carve around the dark areas you traced and rubbed onto the carving material. You cut away the white space, and keep the dark areas. (This can be tricky for my brain to process, so be patient. I recommend starting with a simple design, until you get the hang of it.
Make a print of your stamp, using the Archival black ink pad.
Cut away any miscellaneous areas that you missed.
Keep going until you need a break.
TIP: ALWAYS CUT AWAY FROM YOURSELF WHEN CARVING STAMPS. Cutting toward yourself will likely get you a bloody finger or worse! Those blades are sharp!
Enjoy your collection of hand-carved stamps!
Additional Tips:
Stay hydrated.
Use good lighting.
Get up and do some yoga stretches or shoulder rolls to keep your back and neck healthy.
Blessings to you,
Briana of OrangeSpiralArts.com
Leave a comment
Comments will be approved before showing up.
