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!!!

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