Making your own Stamps

I really enjoy creating my own stamps and stencils to use in my art,

I love that it is another layer made from my hand 

and that I have repeating elements used in many ways in my work.

 

I use various different materials to make my stamps,

the owl is carved from a commercial stamp carving block and 

the chevrons above were drawn and carved by my 11 yo son

using a giant eraser from the supermarket bought for $2. 50

These stamps were made using layers of craft foam,

these stamps can be made very simply by drawing directly onto the foam with a heavy hand, I do periodically redraw the designs on my growing collection of these stamps as they get filled with paint but they are also very easy to repair in this way and a pack of 100 sheets of craft foam enables you to make a huge amount of stamps. I love using these for printmaking.

Birds are a perennial theme with me and I have loads of bird stamps

they can really make a journal page pop,

using them just with some ink of paint

or using them as a base (I stamp with white gesso)

then painting your bird as elaborately as you desire.

Art Journaling when you are sick.

I am usually a pretty healthy and busy woman but have recently been sick for a couple of months, once I watched all the documentaries and art videos and music videos on my lap top in my endless days of being in bed I was bored and I needed to journal.

I was limited in what I could do though and lacking inspiration.

I didn't want to have paints and water jars in my bed 

and I didn't want to have to keep getting out of bed to clean things.

But I did want to exercise my little creativity I still had, 

art heals and it always makes me feel better.

So endless hours of worrying about the bush fires ravaging NSW and  looking at facebook turned up some words and quotes I wanted to play with and my waste paint journal has lots of yummy pages prepped and ready for the next step.

With just some paint pens, gel pens and markers I could write on my pages and I had all of these words so I didn't even have to think too much about things. Just play with freedom and it made me happy and distracted me. 

Some of my pages in this journal have had opening pages added and when I found a theme running through the words inspiring me I grouped them all together under post cards and opening pages.

I have so appreciated being able to just play, appreciated my already prepped pages, my lap top connecting me to the world and  the moments when I was up to sitting.

Art really is a healer.

My Waste Paint Art Journal

Layers, lovely layers of colour and pattern, I love them.

While I am playing with my gelli plate I keep a student .visual diary beside my plate, I am using a canson A4.  I have it opened up and use it to clean my tools as I use them on the gelli plate. I also clean my stencils and stamps in this journal and I end up with some really gorgeous prints and so inspiring, I just want to play in this journal all the time now..

All that excess green I rolled of the brayer formed a lovely background for cleaning off the dwarf nandina leaves the day we did botanical printing.

Here I was cleaning off some tools 

I used to stamp into my plate,

they make great starting points for journal pages.

This page has been used for cleaning off the brayer and various stamping tools and then I have cleaned some of my home made stamps off on top of these pages, the white is gesso I was stamping onto a different piece of work.

And this page you might recognise if you are a regular river girl art reader.

It looked like this when I took it out in my car the other day 

and it turned into this.

I am loving this journal so full of inspiration, colour and texture and just ready for me to start playing in it at any time. I still have a few pages blank in the back and some have notes scrawled onto them that may become another layer in a journal page when I get to them or may just stay like that to remind of the day they were written.

Art Journalling on the Road

I am a busy person, 

these days I don't know many people who aren't busy.

  I always have so many things I need to do, and often the things I want to do for me come after the things I need to do as a mother or a house renovator or a working artist and I hate just sitting around waiting so I have been art journalling in my car on the road for years. 

I have a lovely van with a comfy bed in the back because the boys and I love to travel in it but I am equally fond of spreading out my supplies on the passenger seat and using the steering wheel as my "table" to lean my journal on.

All that time I spend hanging out at skate parks or BMX waiting for my boys usually gets put to good use.

I keep a basic kit packed and ready to go at anytime, it is how I store my most used tools anyway and I love the fact it also makes them easy to grab at a moments notice, I also love the way the boys make sure they are in the car when they are loading it up with bikes and skateboards and helmets and drink bottles.

I take a shopping bag with a couple of journals, a magazine to read a water bottle and my pencil case. In my pencil case I keep an assortment of gel pens, markers and paint pens, my favorite black pen for journalling is a uni ball eye micro, and I favor the broad white signo from uni ball as well. For bolder writing I love the posca paint pens or the Faber Castell pitt pens. I also have some 2B pencils for sketching, some paint brushes, some derwent inktense pencils, a water brush, a sharpener and a an eraser. I also take a sturdy plastic box with an assortment of stamps - mostly my own handmade ones, stamp pads, spray inks, water spray, impasto gel, white acrylic paint plus 2 or 3 other colours, glue stick, double sided sticky tape, scissors, a few stencils and any odds and ends I have swept into the box last time I had it out working with it.

I worked on this page at a recent weekend spent at the BMX track while my boys were following their passions, I was recuperating from the flu and following my own.