Making Cheapo Stamps

I made my first attempt at stamp carving a couple of years ago. I started with some erasers from The Dollar Store. I figured I'd practice on something cheap before I carved on a SpeedBall block in case I wasn't happy with it. The blue and two dark pinks are erasers and the light pink is one of the first block ones I carved. I don't like it much but I have used the lower left one a lot. It shows up often in my work, so often it's becoming brittle, and dry so I attempted a few more on blocks. Oops. I repeated this. I'm sorry. I meant to show you where I drew designs in to piece of craft foam and pieces of an egg carton to create these. Talk about some instant gratification. So simple. This last weekend at my mixed media class, I gave everyone a piece of craft foam to create their own stamp on the spot. It was fun to watch the different designs appear and how they used them. I had given everyone a big piece of brown paper to work on and most everyone used their craft foam stamp as a border. Oops. I think I repeated this again. This is what happens when google chrome wasn't cooperating this evening and I had trouble keeping my eyes open after waiting for 45 min for me to try and finish this post........ Did I mention that we all tried my hot glue stencils that I shared with you on yesterday's post? So remember to save that egg carton or foam package from the grocery store. Grab a ball point pen and you'll have a stamp in 5 minutes.... Thanks for visiting. P.S I didn't repeat after all. Good night my friends. It's time to go. .................

Glue Gun Stencils

One of the things I played around with in my absence from this blog was to try and make some stencils with a hot glue gun. I'd read about it on Traci Bautista's web site awhile back and had attempted it without much success. I decided to try it again. I figured out with my heat gun you have to lay the glue on pretty thick. It was trial and error. Here's one that doesn't yet have paint on it. This one gets a bit better. Then I grabbed a piece I'd done weeks ago on the gelli plate and added some black stenciling and tried the glue gun stenciling on top with bright red paint. I like it. Did some more playing on a paper towel with two stencils and two colors. Then I tried it on a deli paper gelli print. I like the organic "ness" of them. It takes some patience (for me) and practice to coordinate the squeezing out the glue from the gun and drawing the design at the same time. I understand there are some changeable tips on some glue guns, and mine look somewhat heavy handed but I like them nonetheless. Have you tried to make these? Thanks for stopping in.

Furiously Strong Winds Tonight........The Smash Book Overhaul- part 3

Continuing on. .. On the other side of that small flap page was my home made tree stencil. and a page where I documented that I had done my taxes. Probably was happy knowing I was getting a few dollars back. And why I got so excited about the invisible write on tape from The Dollar Store, I'll never know. And one more. Braving drawing a face.with bits of Citrasolv altered paper, scraps of doodling and lettering in the background. Stay tuned for more. Thanks for visiting...................