Flying the Coop

For quite awhile I've wanted to try stamp carving.  My daughter's graduation from high school seemed like the perfect opportunity because we wanted something handmade for her announcements.  I started by designing the basic layout in photoshop…
The school mascot is Steller's Jay bird…both the bird, the school and the sea lion in my last post are named after George Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist who traveled with Vitus Bering on his voyage of exploration to Alaska, in 1741.  Bit o' trivia for you there.  🙂

Anyway, from there I transferred the image onto a Speedball Speedy-Carve block, which I had heard was very "beginner friendly".  To transfer it, I just printed it out and went over the image with a pencil.  Then turned it pencil-side down onto the carving surface and went over it with a warm iron.
The hard part was keeping in mind which areas I wanted in relief and which I wanted to stand out.
The whole 4×6" image didn't take long to carve. 
I really wasn't sure it was going to work, but we both loved how they turned out!  This is the first print…
After that I went into assembly line mode…
Each one came out just a tiny bit different, which was exactly what I was hoping for. 
To finish them off, I used pages from a blank book I had with thick handmade paper pages.  We used double-sided tape to stick the image to the pages.

~ k