S U P P L I E S

We have Speedy Carve blocks in two sizes; 4" x 5.5" and 6.5" x 11"  **  Magic Rub erasers  **  Lino cutter set  **  Cut-n-Dry Foam  **  X-Acto knife  ** X-Acto Replacement blades  **  Scratch Foam  Rollrite foam brayer  ** StazOn inkpads  **  Paint - pretty much any variety we stock will work

The goddess on the bottom is the stamp you saw me begin on the video.  I'd already carved the one on the top as a test.  Remember I said that the Speedy Cut material is soft?  If you look at the goddess on top, you'll see a chip on her right side, nearly halfway down her lower body.  I must have bumped the stamp at some point when I was working on it and chipped that little piece off.  I could probably add design elements to her body and camouflage the chip.  Or leave it as a reminder to be careful!

I use Scratch Foam for simple shapes.  It's super easy to use and you can either ink the piece with paint (which I guess isn't inking, is it?) and a brayer (or brush) or, with smaller pieces, ink it with a regular ink pad.  This one was printed on a piece of cotton velveteen that had previously been painted using Color Wash sprays.

The star at the top is the one I demoed in the video.  One difference is that I cut through the backing and made the entire stamp in the star shape.  Originally I was going to leave the backing as a square and just remove the white foam from around the star, but think it works better this way.

All of these pieces were made from Cut-n-Dry foam.  I did leave the backing foam in the checkerboard piece.  You'll notice that the foam gives a much lighter, more transparent impression than Speedy Cut does.  The circle at the top of this photo is the round piece I cut from the nonskid backside of the foam.  Rather than try to cut little circles, I used a pencil and pushed it into the foam to make the dots.  Much easier that way!  The nonskid foam produces an impression that's more opaque and darker, more like the Speedy Cut.  So using the foam gives you two options as far as what the final impression will look like.

Jess created the group of leaves at the top.  You can create simple designs as I've mostly done or more intricate ones like Jess did. 

Something I neglected to mention in the video is that you can refine your carvings made from Speedy Cut or Magic Rub erasers once you finish using the lino cutter.  Often I'll go back, very carefully, with an X-Acto knife and clean up the edges.  Avoid the temptation to keep at it and at it though, otherwise your carved piece will shrink till there's next to nothing left!

Image all of the possibilities for brayering patterns on paper or fabric.  Is something like an elastic wound onto the brayer can yield an interesting pattern like this, you can achieve all kinds of interesting patterns with other elements.

If you use something like I did with the Venise lace I'd recommend that you use a bit more glue than just a little on the ends, at the join.  I'd apply glue to the back of the lace at various points plus the ends to help hold it in place.  Gluing just the ends allows the lace to move too much and by the time I rolled this piece out the lace had moved too much to roll again.  Of course that's the whole point of experimenting - to learn what works, what doesn't, and what often is the best thing, those serendipitous mistakes that reveal something unexpected but wonderful.