Stamp Carving Transfer by Ursula Smith

In case you don't know me very well, I am a stamp-a-holic. As such I have carved my share of stamps. Recently on my own personal Blog- Ursula-Smith.com/Blog, I started a series of posts on stamp carving. The first one is my two cents on how to transfer designs to the carving material, and the material I like best (Spoiler alert: SpeedyCarve by Speedball- the pink stuff). If you'd like to check out that post, it is located here. There is another post that shows me actually carving a stamp, which is located here.

For those of you who love to carve like I do, I decided to do another post here on the Cre8ive Klatch and show you a fun way to use your carving material if you have an extra sheet of it laying around. I am going to be using this with a Gelli Arts Printing plate (another of my favs!!! You can read more about it here) and a plastic stencil. You could maybe get away with just rolling paint directly on the stencil (or even using sprays) if you don't have a GelliArt plate. In my world, I have limited time to craft and so I am always looking for ways of getting 2 or more things out of one project. I call them 2-fers or 3-fers etc. This idea gives you multiple prints.

You can follow along with me on my YouTube channel, however I was trying to do this one handed, and my paint was pretty dry so the end result in the video was not the greatest. I am also including instructions here, with pictures, so that you get see a better end result, and  I also pass along a few extra tidbits.

Enjoy!!

The first thing I did was add some paint to the Gelli Arts Printing plate. My plate already had a little bit of paint on it when I started. I placed the stencil down and then rolled paint on top of the entire thing- over the stencil also.

 You could also roll some paint on the plate first, then place the stencil on the plate, then roll more paint over the top of the stencil.

Once the Gelli Arts plate and the stencil are fully "inked" I placed a large sheet of Speedball's SpeedyCarve carving material next to the plate. Then I took the stencil off the Gelli Art plate and flipped it over onto the carving material. So the top of the stencil that was painted is against the material.

 Place paper over the top of the stencil on the carving material and VERY CAREFULLY press the stencil all over to transfer the ink to the carving material. If you put paint on your Gelli Art plate before you put the stencil down, you will get another print on the paper placed over the stencil.

Here is a transfer onto the paper that covered the stencil on the carving material...

Now remove the stencil from the carving material and you should have the reverse print on the material.

Place another piece of paper of the material and again, VERY CAREFULLY, press the paper onto the inked image to pull the image onto the paper from the carving material. If you are careful and go very slowly, you can try to use a brayer to get more contact.

Now carefully pull the paper off the carving material and see your reverse print.

But wait- there's more! You still have the Gelli Art plate with paint and the impression of the stencil. Go ahead and pull that print now.

If you are lucky, and your paint is slow drying, you might even get a second print from the Gelli Art plate directly- a ghost print! That is (let's count them)

1. One print while you rubbed the piece of paper over the stencil trying to transfer the paint to the carving material. This is only if you put paint onto the Gelli Art plate before you placed the stencil onto it.
2. One print from the Carving material transfer.
3. One print from the Gelli Art Plate directly
4. Possibly another print (ghost print) from the Gelli Art Plate directly

Now all these prints take time, so you want to use a paint that dries very slowly. I used Golden's Open Acrylic, but that can be expensive. The other thing I have tried is using other paint mixed with Glazing medium, to slow the drying process.

So now you are left with Carving Material that has paint on it. You can always flip it over and carve the other side if you wish. Or keep using it as a transfer plate. Or you could use paint remover wipes like Soho and try to get the paint off. You can read more about them on the Creative Clearinghouse site under Favorite Supplies.

Thanks for visiting the Cre8ive Klatch. If you wish to see more of my ideas, tips, techniques and experiments, you can find me here:

Ursula-Smith.com/Blog

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Stamp Carving: Easy as 1, 2, 3

I've followed a few artists who do amazing stamp carving. My favorite is Geninne Zlatkis.  Her carvings are detailed and alive and perfect.  I've searched at Blick's repeatedly for the materials she said she uses for her carving, and I've had various carving blocks in my cart more than once. But I'm keen to start small when I'm looking at new interests.   I have a fear of commitment, I think.

So in the interest of being cheap, I did my first stamp carving on pink school erasers.  You can get them in a pack of four or five for close to a buck at any discount store, maybe less if you catch them in a clearance pile after the back-to-school rush.

All you need to do this is a pencil, a pink eraser and a Speedball carving tool. They are super cheap, about $8 if I recall correctly, and come with five different carving tools that are conveniently stored in the handle.

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1.  Draw an image on the eraser.  My drawings are not perfect like Geninne's, but I kind of like them that way.  If you mess up your image, you can, in fact, use an eraser to erase on an eraser....just so you know.  One thing to keep in mind, if you're writing words or letters, you need to draw them backwards so they'll print the right way.  I did an adorable "Love" stamp that just didn't work as well when all the letters are backwards.

2.  Start carving.  The tool is sharper than you think.  You can get really good lines.  Watch the curves, though, and don't make them corners.  Just keep cutting little strips of eraser off until you get a good clearance so there'll be no ink transfer from areas you don't want to leave a mark.

3.  Use your stamp.  If you need to trim any areas, trim 'em up.  It can be as rough or as smooth as you want.

I'll be sharing a fast, fun way to make good use of your stamps over on my blog this week on Wednesday. Please follow my blog so you don't miss it.
  If you carve any pink erasers, we'd love to see them.  Please join our Facebook group!  We'd love to get to know you.

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Hand Carved Stamps Outside the Box by Ursula Smith

Sometimes when you think outside the box, it is literal. In my case I decided this year to forego wrapping presents. I really hate it- in fact my family jokes that I can do anything crafty- except wrap. I am like the guy in that funny Christmas song from years ago yelling as he is "Stringing Up the Lights", except I am cursing out wrapping paper.

While I was playing around with carving stamps the other day, I was looking for some paper to test them on, when I spied a white box. I grabbed it and started stamping away. I loved the look of it, so I grabbed a clean, folded box top from a new package of gift boxes and had a pleasant stamping session  using my new hand carved stamps and acrylic paint.

Here is the result...

The stamps I used weren't really Christmas stamps at all, but in keeping with the "thinking outside the box" theme, I think they work just fine!

Here is a quick companion post for recycling gift bags.

I will have more stamp carving posts and holiday ideas on my own blog- Ursula-Smith.com/blog - in upcoming weeks. Happy Holidays!!

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