s t a m p s

I’m sure a zillion of you crafty folks have experienced this before, but this was my first time paying professional stamp makers to make stamps with my designs, and I am feeling really good about it . I often carve my own stamps , and love that process to pieces, but there are certain fine details that are really tricky for me when hand carving, so this felt nice. These have a more finished, true to my design print while the hand carved stamps tend to be quirky, organic, and imperfect. I love imperfection.

I don’t have a fancy pants illustrator program, so I drew the designs with pencil on white paper. Once I was happy with them, I traced over the pencil with dark black ink , scanned them onto the computer, and used Photoshop to clean them up.

I have plans to use white ink on a dark gray background when I stamp with the garlic. Nicole from One Golden Apple once put birdseed near one of her wee birds, which inspired me to do the same with the forlorn little bird on the left. I’m happy with how his wing came out because I wanted him to look vulnerable and sad. I just did.

And, this is my new label. The image below the text will change from time to time, but I think I’ll always make it a little bird.

I went to Rubberstamps.net for this round and was quite happy with the results. I’m sure there are lots of other options. Does anyone have tips or suggestions for this? Do share!

xo e