Stamp it up! Swap - wanna play?

Tacha what have you done??  Turns out I love making stamps out of erasers. Who knew!?

Here are some I made at Retreat and since then.  Some are more successful than others I'd say but I have learnt a lot!


These I made at FQ Retreat and were quite easy as the shape was quite boxy and I only had a few details to pick out to make the iconic shapes work.....

I found this a lot harder because of the detail I was trying to get in the face and because of all those curves. If I did it again I think I'd do the cat shape and use a light coloured ink then mark some details in with a pen after stamping....that also means you could print several cats and change their expressions which would be cute!

Here is my latest effort - can you guess who this is meant to be?   Quite a wonderful dog in person!  But I didn't quite get it right as I didn't get it in mirror image.....more important with writing though!  And more of a challenge as I was just leaving the outline!

To sum up it seems easier to me if you stick to straight lines - curves were definitely harder!  Doing just the outline is also a bit harder and you do have to be careful to leave enough so that your line will not break away as you might have to start again!  How do I know??  Yup you guessed!  If doing letters remember you need to flip it round and carve the mirror image of what you want to print!

I do hope you will want to have a go so here are a few tutorials you can try.

One
Two
Three


Just choose a simple shape to make and you will be fine!

I'm giving you a heads up just in case you fancy joining in a little swap that I am proposing.

All you need to do is 


1 Make a stamp, use it on a piece of fabric (using ink which can be fixed to your fabric - we don't want it washing off do we?)

2 Make something small for your partner using your super dooper fabric!  And send off your item - no extras!  Mailing starts on 14th September.

3 Relax and wait for your package to arrive!

More details are on the Flickr site here.  

Sign up starts today and be quick as places are limited!  Go on you know you want to!

My wonderful friend Helen will be helping to match us all up again and keep us all in order!   She has the toughest job!  But she is up to it!

Feel free to encourage friends, Romans and countrymen or women (should I really do that to Shakespeare?) to play along....and if you really cannot cut your own stamp you can use a commercial one but please give it a go first before giving up!


Any questions - just ask!  

I'm sure I've left something out!  Oh yes a button!  [Thanks Helen! Mwah mwah!]

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