Another thing I am obsessed with now...

So, a while back I saw this post on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog and decided I had to try it for myself! She was carving her own rubber stamps! So fun. I have been wanting a stamp of a girl and a boy -- the kind you find on the bathroom door -- so I decided that was the perfect place to start! Here was my process:

First I bought the materials. You need a carving block and some carving tools. I bought this and this from Dickblick - an online art supply store. The block and the tool(s) only cost me about $12! Pretty awesome.

Here is the block before you carve into it. I got the one that is 6 1/2" x 11". I thought it was a good size.

Next, I found some free clip art online and printed out my image onto a transparency.

Then I rubbed the ink onto the rubber. See how it's kind of mushy? The ink was a little too wet. Not sure that I will do this same process again. Especially if I need it precise. But hey, this was my first time, right?

I printed a boy and a girl and then cut them out with a box cutter.

Then I began to carve. The linoleum cutters that I got came with 6 different sizes of carving heads. I had to kind of experiment to find exactly which ones were best where.

I kept going until I was happy with it (stamping along the way to see where I needed to carve a little bit more.) Here are the final stamps. They are definitely not hard-edged, but I am pretty OK with that. Sometimes I like a grungier more artsy look.

After these two I sorta went crazy. First I carved a cute little circle...

Then some leaves...

And then some clouds, a typewriter (that was a hard one), a chevron, and a lamp post (which I put the little beam poking out on the wrong side. Grr.)...

...and then my favorite - a Polaroid stamp. I have been wanting the one from Studio Calico for a while, but it's usually sold out, so I just made my own. And I kind of love that it's a little shabby.

I carved all that and I still have a block that's a little bigger than 4x6 to do some more! I highly encourage everyone to do this. Love it.

P.S. I also decided that I kinda want to put this wallpaper on my ceiling:

or this:

or my favorite (it is a little metallic), this:

Thoughts? Feelings?