Stamps

One of my favourite blogs is Vlijtig, and amongst other neat things, Kristel makes the most gorgeous personalised stamps. I'd always promised myself that I'd get around to ordering one for Hazel, so I got an awful fright when she announced last year that she'd closed her online shop and wouldn't be making them anymore! Luckily she also said that if people wanted one she would be doing one last batch in the new year. Saved! I sent this photo of Hazel. Well actually the one on the left, not sure we need the righthand expression immortalised ;)

The stamp arrived last month and I would have posted about it then except Hazel tucked it away in one of her little treasure stashes and then, squirrel-like, promptly forgot where it was. Last week she and a couple of her friends got out pretty much every single thing she owns and strewed it around her room, which was intensely annoying on one hand, but it did mean that several lost treasures were unearthed in the process!

It probably goes without saying that the stamp on the right is something Hazel and I made! She drew the panda and I carved it out of some great stamp stuff I got at the Daiso shop on Queen Street. Lovely to work with, and I enjoyed the process a lot, but boy it makes me admire Kristel's work even more! A panda probably isn't the easiest thing to render as a stamp when you're a beginner...

A beginner's exploration of the stamp carving world

I do have to laugh (at myself) for this resurgence of stamping enthusiasm, it's slightly embarrassing to have such obvious things out there in public. I feel like I should be asking if my butt looks big in this post, or maybe if my undies are showing ;)

Anyways, because Nikki asked about carving materials I thought I'd just share a few links from which I've gained most of my very limited stamping knowledge. Yes, I've carved ONE stamp and am now going to share my knowledge with you :) Basically there are two, Geninne's Art Blog and Two Cheese Please but of course there are lots of other resources out there, particularly if you live in the States where materials seem to be a lot more readily available. Gennine is a gold mine of information, she's very generous with her information! Particularly useful was her video of how to carve a stamp which gave me a good idea of how to hold the carving material and just general technique. Yesterday she posted about what she likes to carve and with what - and all of her posts about stamping techniques are found here.

Holly at Two Cheese Please is also a great resource, particularly for us Antipodeans, because I sense that getting the fancy-schmancy carving materials (other than old-fashioned lino) is probably the stumbling block down here - particularly in NZ. Not to mention she makes the cutest stamps evah! She's got a great list of where to buy things here, and sells beginner's sets on etsy here. (I think my fangirl underpants might be peeking out a bit here)

So there we go - the sum total of my stamp carving knowledge. I'll come back and add to it as I explore a bit more, buy a few more supplies etc.

Oooo the excitement!

Today I had a guest lecture to give to a third year class, so I took advantage of being on campus to check out the art supply store there. They had most of what I wanted to make stamps, but a limited choice and no breyer, so I'm not completely set up yet. I got 3 sheets of lino, some carving tools, some fabric paint (black and green) and two Staedtler erasers for trying little stamps.



None of it cost very much, I figure if I like it and prove to be decent enough to satisfy myself, then I can get better supplies and equipment.

These carving tools cost $16, so I'm guessing they're not all that flash but if they can do the trick for awhile there's a nice Speedball with my name on it out there somewhere :) Plus they have squirrels on them so how could I resist?



I certainly don't need this many, but it was the only set with a fine V-shaped one and a broader U-shaped one, plus the squirrel thing. The erasers were a total bust. If I'd been paying attention I'd have seen that they had small flowers embossed all over them so they're utterly useless for stamps. I guess they'll just have to revert to their original purpose!

I've decided that my first larger print will be a squirrel, I just need to come up with something. I'm not particularly gifted in that sense, and I have a strong tendency to inadvertently copy designs because I simply can't get them out of my head. Like these little guys from Kristen Doran!


I will try and do something myself I think, I'd feel prouder of the final product for sure. Speaking of squirrels, I highly recommend this post over at Whoopee, I'm still snickering over it and wanting to do the same here although perhaps I'd need to subsitute 'possum' for 'squirrel' to make it more applicable (and scary).

Pyjama love

Finished the Oliver+S pyjamas a couple of days ago and they were road-tested last night. Overall I'm really pleased with how they turned out although I have a couple of issues with how seams are finished and some potential weak spots in the construction. I hate admitting I don't find them perfect because I wanted to! I love the look of the patterns and their blog and want to support smaller businesses, it seems right to me. The issues are really just niggles that I can easily fix the next time around but for a pattern that seems to be marketing itself as suitable for beginners I have to wonder how satisfied they'd be with the finished article and how much they'd blame themselves for the bits that don't work out so well? Perhaps I'm being too picky, but the instructions for finishing the seams suggest ways that to me are just a bit...half-assed. Whatever, the finished product is still darned cute and I can fix the problems next time around like I said.

Here is Hazel sporting them this morning on the unmade spare bed (oh how I cringe at this because someone once posted a rant about people who post photos with piles of laundry in the background, or filthy floors etc. and it must have hit a nerve!)



I love this flanelette, it was a Trade Me buy a couple years ago and it's deliciously thick and brushed on both sides. No idea how old it is but the quality of the fabric suggests some antiquity! Initially I thought of it as being very Nana-ish but as I sewed it into this kimono style I realised that it's actually quite oriental in design, if not colours! Flanelette or flanel, what's the difference anyways?



I love the white flanel trim I put on, it makes them look so wintery and clearly non-seasonal (see next post). They're too long though, I'll have to take up the pants a bit. They're also good for doing somersaults in :)



This morning, other than model pyjamas, we had a first birthday party to attend (small giraffe glimpsed in above photos was the gift). I've been quite take with this idea of furoshiki, the fabric gift wraps from Japan (I think I've got the right term there) and have done it for a couple of people recently. I thought for Arlo we could stamp some cotton with Hazel's animal stamps to make it more fun. I used some fabric pens to colour in the stamps and Hazel helped stamp the cloth before I heat set it.



It worked very well! I wasn't as pleased with how it looked wrapped though, I think the giraffe was a bit too big for the cloth and the parcel looked a bit small with most of the stamps hidden. If I do it again I'll definitely do a much larger piece of fabric.



Great fun and the beginning of my adventures with creating my own stamped fabrics!