Stamping it up!

Nicky of Mrs Sew and Sow was so inspired by a stamping class that she took at the FQ Retreat that she set up a hand-carved rubber stamp swap.

Now as you all know I love to try out new things, so this was right up my alley, however, we are going on holiday to France soon so I reluctantly decided to pass up the opportunity. Then Nicky started posting photos of the stamps she had created, and the Flickr group started filling up with mosaics of the sweetest little stamps and my resistance crumbled :)

I ordered a linocutter from Amazon and bought some rubbers and set about carving my first ever rubber stamp.

And here it is, not perfect by any means but at least recognisable! The image was copied from an embroidery pattern and traced on to the rubber, then carved to create a relief stamp for the inked image.

Sadly this stamp proved to be the first and only use for the Amazon linocutter, as the rings holding the blades in place failed to perform after the first few changes, so I am heading off to the local Artist Suppliers to invest in what I should have bought in the first place, a Speedball Lino Cutter!