Stamp carving and a little pattern on a rainy Sunday afternoon

Even if I haven't done it very much, I love carving stamps. It's such a nice process. Drawing your design first, either directly on to your stamp block or first on a piece of paper and then transfering it on to the block, and then slowly carving off all the excess linoleum, until your design emerges. And then the first test stamp to see how it all turns out. Some more refinements, until you're happy. And what a joy when it turned out quite well.

I really like how this one turned out. It was just a quick one, drawing the leaf directly on to the (inked) block, and the carving didn't take more than 10 minutes. Of course the time depens on whether you want just the lines to stand out and the rest white (like I did with my Christmas card stamp, which took a lot longer), or the other way round, like here, which is a lot quicker. The first option allows you to colour your desin in with, for example watercolours, while with the second option, the colours comes from the ink you stamp with, and gives the whole a much more printy look.

And of course the good thing with having carved a stamp is, that you can use it again and again and again. And also create some nice patterns too.

I definitely want to spend more time making my own stamps. I'm thinking of doing a little series of different leaves. Which I think means another lunch time trip to the art shop, as I've only got very few stamp blocks left. Yay!