Stamp carving

I've been messing around with stamp carving on and off for a while now, but I've never made a stamp I'm really pleased with. Recently I joined an interesting postal letterboxing swap for which I need to carve two stamps and make a couple of little booklets to imprint other people's stamps. The four that I came up with this morning left a lot to be desired: the eye was probably the only useable one, and I think this will become my "signature stamp". The one in the top right hand corner is a megaphone but looks very much like an axe head.


I really liked the idea of the "snail mail" stamp, but the first one I made looked more like a squirrel peeking out after I accidentally cut off some material next to the snail's shell. So I decided to have another go at making a snail on a mailbox, and this one came out a little better.


This evening I made one of the booklets. The cover is made of paint chips - I was going to make the whole booklet out of paint chips, but when I tried stamping onto one of them, it was not only very easy to smudge, but the ink took way too long to dry. I guess they are not absorbent enough. So I just have ordinary paper inside the booklet. Ho-hum, I would have liked something a bit different, but it was not to be.

That's pretty much all I've done today, apart from get a haircut and do some washing. I did sleep in this morning though - my next door neighbours were having a noisy party and I think the last (very drunk) guests left about 3am!