The Walsh Clan is going down in a ball of fury! First my son, then my husband…now me.
My throat hurts, my body aches and I just want to spend the rest of the week in bed.
I was so proud of myself for staying healthy during the Christmas season. Stress always gets me sick over the holidays and I thought tanking up on vitamin C was going to see me through. However our house has been full and sharing a bed with two sicklings was more than my body could take.
Did that stop me from trudging on with my creative 365? Nooooo.
South County Art Supply had given me this rubber stamp block for carving. It’s super soft as opposed to carving in linoleum which is hard. I thought the size seemed perfect for creating thank you cards. Don’t we all have someone to thank this time of year?
Let’s just say I figured out how to use the material after I was through with it! Meaning, these didn’t come out all too well because I was learning along the way.
This is what I learned:
First, when creating a design, you really must consider the spacing between objects. I didn’t leave enough and lost most of my design, especially the lettering. Second, I started carving with an Exact-o Knife which was not the correct tool for this rubber block. The Exact-o Knife stabbed too deep, did not make uniform marks and made the rubber stamp crumble.
Half way through the process I figured this out and pulled out my Speed Ball linoleum carving tools. THEY WORKED PERFECTLY. Unfortunately I didn’t have any large rubber blocks left to apply what I learned!
I had a smaller block which I only used the carving tools with. See how the lines are a lot cleaner.
It’s really not my favorite activity to try something, mess up and have to post it on the world-wide web, but hey I’m honest, I should at least get points for that!
If I were to try this again, I would spend way more time on a well conceived design and I’d only use carving tools. I could see using this technique for only one large object per block. Maybe a bird, sunflower or I thought of doing a flying pig!
Of course my daughter wants to try this now. So we will be picking her up a rubber block to create what else? None other than a platypus!
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OK. My back is killing me, my glands are soar…I’m crawling into bed now… :(
Two more days…two more days until I take a long winter’s nap! I desperately need one!
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