carved rubber stamp art

AH ! I found it ! I thought I had a photo of the original project in here somewhere. These were designed as Valentine gifts for my Sacred Space group. Some are single, some divorced and I wanted to make sure everyone got a Valentine. I created and designed these without spending much cash...the only thing I purchased were the decorative studs holding the ribbon on. The papers were all free in many years worth of "Somerset Studio" magazine. Some issues had as many as four sheets of printed papers. I tore them all out at the beginning of the year so I would use them. There are two designed papers on each heart, front and back. I cut out the hearts, pasted them together with glue stick, then edged them with a gilding pen.

I carved the stamp out of EZ Kut, which is very much like a thick sheet of rubber eraser. it carves very easily and I love working with it. I can carve a pretty intricate stamp in less than an hour and a simple one in minutes. This one is based on an antique paper cut which I adapted by adding the heart balloons and puppy. I used a black "Chalk" ink pad to stamp the image. the ribbons were what I had lying around from other projects as were the rhinestone jewels. The lettering is done with a "Glaze" gel pen in black. It is kind of thick and you can manage some tapered strokes with it.

They were all tucked into a lovely white basket lined with a lovely floral fabric desgined by another artist friend and were delivered to my church group. I actually had quite a few leftovers as I had gotten just a little carried away making them, so I just wandered through the building hanging them on doorknobs, musical instruments, brooms, whatever. It was such a wonderful expreience to be a secret valentine to folks I really didn't even know.

A few months later one of the friends from Sacred Space asked if I would make 30 of them for her special group. She wanted mostly yellow and white as colors and we chose a pink, yellow and white ribbon and plain round studs in various shades of yellow. She is calligraphing them herself , but my little parade gets to march on !!!!

I've cut a few more "shadow" figure stamps and have more planned. My next project is a Halloween Raven Heart. Ooooooh Scary! Maybe he'll get a rhinestone neck chain to sparkle plenty with.