hand-carved eraser stamp

For my first creative endeavour of the year, I thought I'd complete one of GPP Street Team Crusades. This one involves carving your own stamp.

Nothing too elaborate for my first attempt - just a heart on an eraser (note: I just remembered that I've carved a linoleum plate back in high school... wonder whether it's still lying around somewhere... will have to look for it). For once I refrained from going out and buying all the tools and supplies required for printmaking (like I did with art journaling, *cough* *cough*) and found stuff in around the apartment instead.

There was some head scratching when deciding what pattern I would carve. The design would need to fit on the stamp and need to be something that I'd actually use. The heart was chosen in the end, because I really love the heart stamp designs I've seen.

Now come the carving; it was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. Using the blade I had from my metal clay endeavour (should post up pictures of the ring I made) I carved a rough heart out of the eraser. That was the easy part. The hard part came from actually trying to make the sides smooth. The eraser was soft, meaning the eraser depresses and bends when I put the knife on it. This makes it very easy to over-cut, and you can see evidence of this in the nicks along the edge of the heart. I guess the slight roughness makes it look more personal.

The softness of the eraser means that I couldn't do more intricate designs within the heart - I guess I'll just need to find a harder eraser next time... or buy printmaking supplies ;P

Regardless, the stamp came out pretty good. When I use normal felt-tip pens to ink the stamp I ended up with a slightly textured image.

I would hope to use it in one of my pages soon.