Carved Stamp fun

Ended up holding a Carved Stamp session at the April Society for Calligraphy & Handwriting (SCH) meeting. Nan Robkin and Sue Gruhn helped me put on this last minute session. They were terrific!

For those who don't know what carved stamps are, they are carved eraser's and eraser material used to make stamps for printing designs on paper and such. It was found out by calligraphers and artists a while back that the white erasers like those made by Mars-Stadtler can be carved very easily with linoleum carving tools. They turn out wonderful little carved stamps.


So Nan, Sue and myself gathered together our carving tools and carving material and showed our ladies how to carve them. We had some great results.

I ended up redoing one stamp of mine because the original is hiding (still haven't found it). It is of a lion form I found on the margins of a page in the Robert de Bello Bible (British Library Burney 3 f.2). He was wonderful to carve. The night before the meeting I also carved a stamp of one of my favorite kind of owls - a Northern Saw Whet owl. They are so cute!

The Northern Saw Whet owl and the Robert de Bello Bible Lion images from the carved stamps

The Robert de Bello Bible Lion and Northern Saw Whet owl carved stamps

I have had a lot of fun with carving stamps over the years. I made a dragon label stamp a while back that I love. Just recently I did a little unicorn stamp. Was inspired after the meeting to carve this little unicorn. Here are the dragon and the unicorn.

Dragon and unicorn images - these are on the cover containers used to store these stamps.

The unicorn and dragon carved stamps.

These are a fun art form that can be used to stamp images on paper or fabric or whatever you can think to stamp on. For those of you who would like to try this here is a good tutorial:

http://www.atlasquest.com/tutorials/carving/

You can also search on the we using the terms "carved stamp tutorial" and find several other tutorials. Go check them out and have some fun!