3D Stamps

In ceramics, or any other types of clay work, stamps and moulds are always a bit of a grey area. Can you use the design commercially? Do you have to give credit to the designer? Are you limited by a certain number of reproductions? It’s a minefield. So to keep things simple, I try to make my own wherever possible. 

Design Ideas

I have made moulds and stamps from all sorts of materials, clay, plaster, polymer, foam, lino, resin… they are all great ways to make your own mark and be able to reproduce it accurately.

Today, I’d like to share what I’ve been trying out to create a different kind of stamp using craft foam and fabric paint.

Craft Foam

The foam is from a craft store, sold as ready to decorate door hangers, 3 for £1 and they’re nice and thick (about 5mm)

Dimensional Fabric Paint

The paint is 3D fabric paint, this one was Tulip brand. It’s likely that other brands will give the same effect, but make sure whatever you choose has a narrow nozzle tip.

Tracing the design

For ease, I chose a design from one of my (copyright free) books and traced it in pencil on to baking parchment.

Transferring the image

The design was then transferred on to the foam by flipping the parchment and drawing over the design again

The design ready to paint

Here you can see the pencil lines transferred really well.

Painting the outline

Next, take your fabric paint and slowly and carefully draw over the pencil lines. It's tricky to get them neat, but you can tidy up any mistakes once you've covered the design.

Filling in the details

Use a paintbrush to pull out the paint for fine details. You may need to add an extra dot of paint to build up the design again. You want to try and keep the height level for a good image when you come to stamp it.

Tidying up the drips

If you accidentally splodge a bit, use a craft knife to neaten up the edge by scraping the paint back to where it should be. 

Once you’re happy with your design, leave it to dry. This paint takes 4 hours, but I left it overnight.

Using the stamp

Once they’re dry, that’s your stamp complete and ready to use. I found with the foam, I had to roll over the stamp with a rolling pin to get a deep impression, I’m going to try this on some stiff plastic for my next ones and see if that makes it a little easier to transfer the design. 

Drying out

These just need a bit of tidying up once they've firmed up a bit and I think they'll look great with a translucent glaze pooling in the design. 

The possibilities of what you can create are endless. It’s a quick and easy way to build up a good selection of unique designs!

Carve Your Own Style

Using commercial stamps is great for certain jobs, but they’re limiting and you don’t get much opportunity to express your own style of art through them. It’s also quite boring to just stamp and cut the same designs over and over, and as they’re readily available, it’s common to see the designs used in different artists work. If you want to create something that is entirely your own, lino cutting is a great technique.

I got myself a lino cutting kit a while ago and wrote about making tiny signature stamps to mark your work here. It’s taken a while to get around to it, but I’ve finally had a proper go at making some larger designs and trying them out in porcelain. 

I’m exploring more illustrative styles on my beads at the moment and making stamps from lino is a great way to get a line drawn style with the option of consistent reproductions.

The tools needed are minimal. A piece of lino, I’ve used the soft cut type which is really easy to use (with less chance of stabbing yourself with the tool) and a lino cutting tool. 

I got this really neat tool and baren set. The baren is the base of the tool and is used for burnishing paper on to the lino cut during printing. The handle unscrews and with a collet, turns in to the cutting tool.  Although I don't print with paper, I love the way all of the tools are stored inside the handle, and for five pounds, it’s a bargain!

Start by sketching your image on to the lino. I’ve drawn a stylised tree.

Then put together the cutting tool and carve out the pencil lines. It's easier to keep the sheet of lino whole while you carve, then trim the stamp out afterwards. A larger area means you have more to hold on to and lets you keep your hands well away from the blade. Keep an even pressure. Tilting the blade of the cutter alters the cutting depth so if you keep it nice and even through your cut, you will end up with a level line when you come to stamp. 

I decided while cutting not to go around the edge so that when I trimmed the shape, I wouldn’t have to worry about the outside line.

When you’ve finished, lay the stamp face down on your clay and roll over it with an even pressure.

This imprint looks really neat, but you can always rework the stamp if you’re not happy with it!

Here I’ve trimmed out some different shapes and designs from other stamps.

And some tiny ones for headpins.

Everything was glazed…

And fired…

I really like how these turned out, and I love how the glaze breaks over the lines of the image. The only down side is now I need more glaze colours!!!

A few loose coins...

Happy New Year! My first AJE post of 2015 - and I have a few more thoughts on coins. Spare change so to speak, from my Boxing Day post. (And a shout out to the Canadian readers I may have neglected on the 26th...). 

Greco- Roman coins, Medieval coins... 

I wanted to take the coin idea into the studio - and show you a few pictures, a few ways that your local art jewelry designers have integrated coins... 

Lindsay sent me this - WOW! Tooled leather cab by her spouse, her beadwork, and coins! As fringe, as elements incorporated into the chain...

Lindsay again - she claims this is the limits of her metal skills. Coins drilled and domed as buttons. 

Earrings from Sue  - she is addicted to these beaded beads and I love them! What better way to use coins than as a personal, inexpensive, yet meaningful souvenir?! 

Barbara Bechtel of Second Surf makes these cheeky Penny charms. I love that Gandhi's quote ("Be the change you wish to see in the world.") meets Lincoln's visage. And I am a fan of word play as well. She recently posted a great video documenting her process - you can find it here. 

This one is mine - a relic from another life, its at least 20 years old. I enameled a British penny (unadulterated penny shown at right). It was a reminder of my college time spend living in London, and yes, it includes a sixpence as well. The myth/symbolist in me loves the sixpence: it bears the 4 plants representing the 4 nations in the UK. ( Tudor rose - England. Leek - Wales. Thistle - Scotland. Shamrock - N. Ireland) 

Since Boxing day - I have amassed a pile of coins on my work table. One made it into a finished piece - seen below. Its a franc, stamped for my friend Betsy. She lived in France, and had chosen "Balance" as her word for 2015! ( She hasn't seen it yet, so please don't tell her...LOL)

Do YOU have any spare change on your work table? How are you planning on incorporating coins into your work? Inquiring minds... 

Making your mark

I've finally got back to making, I'm still waiting for power and water in there, but I'm not going to let that stop me. Not getting my hands dirty for over a month has been testing!

The studio is looking a bit more lived in now, especially as the kids have claimed half the table as their own. We hadn't even got the roof on and there was lego in it!

I've started off with making lots of my usual beads... birds, urchins, houses etc. I have a show coming up, so wanted to get those out of the way before the fun started and I get completely sidetracked!

It was while I was making some house charms that I got thinking about speeding up production. I like to put my initials on the bottom of some of my unique designs, but writing each one on takes time and they all end up different. I decided I needed a little stamp! There are lots of places you can send off for custom stamps, but being impatient I decided to make my own. I've taken pics as I went along to show how you can make one for yourself.

The tools you need are some soft cut lino, lino cutters (I got this nifty little kit where everything is contained within a stamp) tracing paper, (I use baking paper), a scalpel, scissors, a pencil and a biro.

Start by drawing around the end of your pencil on to the lino.

Take your tracing paper and trace the circle.

Draw your initials on to the tracing paper inside the circle.

Scribble over the initials with pencil, and place the tracing paper scribble side down on to the circle you drew previously on the lino. You need to trace your initials in reverse so that when you stamp they mark the clay the right way round.

Trace over the initials so that the image is transferred on to the lino.

Remove the surrounding lino with your cutting tools. Looking back at this, I think I would have got a sharper design if I'd cut around the edge of the image first with my scalpel, I will do that next time!

With scissors cut around the circle to remove the design from the sheet.

Glue the stamp on to the end of your pencil and leave to dry.

Test :) If the design isn't as sharp as you'd like, carefully trim it with the scalpel. Here's a picture of the final stamp with my scruffy finger for scale.

Now it's ready to use to make your mark and identify your work!

Caroline

http://www.blueberribeads.co.uk

Carving, printing, and an encore...

Good Morning! Here in Delaware its a cool, perfectly lovely day, and I am headed out to the PA Renaissance Faire for a day of rest and relaxation. ( ie NOT glazing) My teammate Karen Totten asked me to help her out this morning as her post on glazing and firing was delayed. Sometimes the kiln IS the boss. So I thought I would share with you a post from my blog - that was part of a conversation I was having with teammate Diana Ptaszynski about carving. Enjoy!

My friend, fellow clay artist and AJE member Diana P. wrote a post (last week) regarding her foray into carving stamps. She is working with EZ carve - similar in consistency to white erasers. Its great to carve, but a little springy. Too soft for what she wanted to do in clay, but great fun nontheless. 

So I decided to share some linoleum I had carved, and stamped into clay. This is the economy "battleship" linoleum that I used to use when I taught art/printmaking as a public school teacher. Its shallow but very firm and worked well for my new dseries of icons. 

Yin Yang and Om signs in clay - awaiting finishing.  

Here's my carving area, complete with bench pin, and a few other "icons" in progress. This series I designed to keep simple and have the symbol itself be very clear and legible. I like the texture the carving leaves - as contrasted to the smooth background surface. These are going to be glazed in an array of colors... 

And one more example of linoleum and clay in tandem: this is a clay tile/print from a linoleum block I carved in San Diego. When I lived there I had an amazing artist/mentor in Sibyl Rubottom. This was from a printmaking and letterpress workshop I took at her studio, Bay Park Press. It was carved to print  and accompany text set in letterpress. And so I tested it in clay - was thrilled the depth was sufficient to give me a print to glaze. This was the test piece; I plan to do more for my fall shows. 

I am excited to be able to draw on the creative energy of that fruitful time - although I work in such different materials. I am glad the block carved 10 years ago and across the US can be reborn here, now. In many ways my series of "Mythic Nature" tiles and pendants are similar to a run of prints... but that philosophical musing will wait for another day. I have more to glaze...

Jenny www.jdaviesreazor.com