Behind the Scenes at Tree Wings Studio: Stamp Doodling

Hello again! In my last post, two weeks ago, you all found me a little bored and taking a break from my usual bead sculpting routine. I was rooting around in my studio organizing and such, and I had pulled out some of my older polymer clay stamps. I used to make stamps quite often and I remembered how much fun they were to make, so for this weekend I decided to play with them again.

Care to join me?

Daisies are one of my favorites and with flowers really starting to bloom here finally, I couldn't resist. The stamp pictured here is one of my early designs—a fun design, but some of the details are too fine and don't transfer well to polymer. Today's design is a remake of that stamp. Sometimes I go entirely freehand, but more often I start with a (very) simple sketch just to get the idea out of my head and to help me keep my bearings as I work.

And the other reason I like to sketch it out first—pencil transfers to polymer fabulously well! I simply lay my design on the polymer and burnish it with the end of an acrylic roller.

Ta-da!

My tools of the trade—needles!

And the rest is really fun—using the needles I simply doodle away, "drawing" my design into the polymer. I like a rustic, carved look, so I leave the edges a tad messy.

For larger space that I want to be more raised, I'll cut out parts of the polymer…

… and then smooth it out slightly leaving a nice impression.

And there you have it! A new doodled stamp! I think I'll probably do a bit more refining (amazing how much you notice when taking photos!) and then it will be off to the oven… and then the first stamping! I'll show you how it turned out in my next post.

Have a happy creative weekend!