Faux Bois Valentines-A DIY Rubber Stamp Carving Tutorial

I thought it was about time that I posted a rubber stamp tutorial. This design might look like a tricky stamp to carve, but it's actually super easy. The beautiful thing about wood grain, is that there are no "rules"- So if you go off track, no one will ever know!

Aside from some blank rubber block (which I've just realized that

I've forgotten in my list-durrr), you'll need a few tools.

1. Ink pad. (any ink pad will do!)

2.Scissors. This is just for cutting your heart out in the end. (ok, I just re-read that. Not YOUR heart. You will cut out a PAPER heart.) I'll bet you never thought valenetines could be so violent;)

3.A bone folder. If you don't have one, the back of a spoon or the

handle of a butter knife will do.

4. A 4b (or softer) pencil. I didn't use a 4b, I used a 2b, and see

how light my lines are? They should be darker! Seeing as I've done this a few times, I didn't bother using my 4b.(My 4B may or may not have been holding up my hair at the time...)

5. Xacto knife, or utility knife. Xacto does have a lot more precision though, so anything long that comes to a fine tip will be okay.

6. A small V tip Carver-I use a speedball size 1. You can use larger, but keep in mind, the smaller the tip, the smaller the lines will be.

7. Clip Art. (which will be at the bottom of this post.)

8.Chip board or card stock-your call! (or any other surface you feel

like printing;)

Step 1. Print off clip art to your preferred size. Mine is

about 2.5"x3" .

Go over the lines with your freshly sharpened 4b pencil.

2. Once all the lines are covered in pencil, turn the artwork

over, face down onto your carving block. You can position it however

you like, just make sure that the artwork isn't hanging over the edge.

Gently rub the back of your artwork with the edge of the bone folder, until you've rubbed the entire heart onto the block. (This will feel a lot like putting on a temporary tattoo;)

You can lift the edges slightly now and then to see if it's transferred completely. If it has, remove the paper. If it hasn't, continue to rub the back until it's completely transferred. Be careful to hold it down with one hand while transferring, as it can slide around and cause double lines.

3. Now that your design is transferred, use your xacto and cut your design from your carving block. Not exactly on the outside line, just roughly, to remove it from the rest of your block.

4. Now that the heart is separated from the rest of the block and easier to handle, you can carefully cut around the shape of the heart. If you really want to, you could do this at the very end-I always do it before hand though, because I find it easier to maneuver while carving this way.

5. This is the fun part! Now you get to take your carver and carefully cut each pencilled line. Gently push the blade away from you, keeping the tip of the blade almost parallel with the surface of the carving block. Keep in mind, the deeper you cut, the wider your lines will be.

If you wanted to, you could make a reverse image, and remove all the empty space for a completely different look. (That would be a bit trickier.) But If you're up for a challenge, have at it!

6. This step is optional. I chose to remove the middle square from my heart, and leave the space empty. If you don't want to do this, that's a-ok. It will just mean that in the end, this part will be inked, rather than blank.

You could use a larger tip for this too, and cut deeper, if you want fewer lines to show up in the end. I rather like the added texture though, it adds an extra "hand carved" feel to the print in the end, so I continued to use my small tip for this.

7. Now you get to use your stamp! I find that with stamps this large, it's easier to do things a little backwards.

Rather than pressing the stamp onto the pad, press the stamp pad on to the stamp. This way you can see if it's thoroughly inked, if the ink is even, and you don't get near as much ink on your fingers;)

8. Stamp your hearts out onto your card stock. As you stamp, be sure to press all over the back of your stamp, to get a completely transferred image.

That's one of the beauties of hand carved stamps; you can selectively press different areas of the stamp at a time.

If you didn't want the middle hollowed out square to show up at all, you wouldn't have to press there.

Last but not least, cut your hearts out and voila! I punched a hole in mine and strung some sweet bakers twine through them and used them as tags. You could play cupid though, if you wanted to, and hand them out to your truly best-est buddies.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me through my stamp shop, where I'll soon be carrying stamp carving supplies!

Enjoy!

xo

Snowy Watercolours- A Simple Tutorial and a Memoir

It's getting awfully chilly around here, and although I haven't seen it myself yet, there are reports of the four letter word. SNOW!

I woke up to a thick layer of frost across our garden and felt that dreaded confirmation that winter is indeed on it's way. Autumn is my favorite season, and unfortunately it always feels so short, especially here in Ontario. If I had my way, I'd still be raking and rolling in leaves in December.

I remember back in southern Illinois when I was little, we went Christmas carolling just the night after we filled our ditches with freshly raked leaves and set them ablaze. Of course, we rolled around in them all afternoon before they were lit. (oh how i love that smell!) And being small, of course, It was easy to bury myself from head to toe.

And then we moved to Canada, to a townhouse with one pathetic freshly planted little maple tree.

My sister and I would wait anxiously for those spindly little leaves to finally drop. We'd make a little pile and attempt to jump in them, but who were we kidding?

If we had actually allowed ourselves to fall freely into this poor excuse of a pile, we would have broken our necks!

And to make matters worse, we usually didn't get a chance to make the pile before the condo maintenance men would come around with leaf blowers and blow what little hope we had right out into the street. (I hate leaf blowers, by the way. They're loud, and pointless! A vacuum would make more sense!)

It wasn't all bad though. We were opening a church that had a lot of property, and a lot of trees. We'd spend many weekends there while my parents were fixing up the building, and we had a lot of opportunity to make use of the leaves there.

 A bit later, we'd move into a house with a massive yard that had a huge maple, and plant even more. Autumn was never boring!

And one thing that Ontario did have that we'd never seen before was more snow than we knew what to do with. We would spend entire afternoons hollowing out the piles that the snow plows had left in our front yard, making forts, caves and tunnels.

For the record, (in case you were wondering,)  I recently walked by the old town house, around this time last year. That itty bitty maple now towers over the house, and then some, and has more than it's fair share of leaves. I hope there are children living there and loving that tree.

********************************************************************************

 I was just going to post a fun little beginner watercolor tutorial in theme with today's snow, but it turned into a story. So we'll call this part 2!

This is a fun little beginner lesson with masking fluid. It's pretty fast, and doesn't require a lot of skill-making it fun to do with children too!

 

 LE COURS D'INSTRUCTION

(the tutorial. I think?)

You will need:

I promise that i didn't steal this tray from Ikea. My friend Pleuntje gave it to me as a gift because she knows I'm obsessed with the place.

I can't guarantee though that she didn't steal it. (However, I'm fairly certain that she bought it, as ikea was selling them for a little while;)

A pencil

An Eraser

Paper

something thick weighted, preferably watercolor paper. I have done this with Bristol board though a couple of times back in an art class. It ends up looking a little different because it doesn't hold the paint the same, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if that's all you had;)

Paint brushes

some that you like, and some that are junky, that you don't mind possibly ruining. Dollar store ones will do! Even a Popsicle stick could work, with some determination and a bit of patience.

Masking Fluid

This is available at most art stores, and I've even seen it at Michael's, Joannes, and hobby lobby. So it isn't super hard to come by. Look for it with the watercolor paints.

Watercolor paints

even the cheap stuff will do for this project-of course quality watercolor paints are more rewarding. If you're doing this with kids, use the cheap stuff.

An old Toothbrush for "splattering" (optional.)

The first step is to draw out your large snowflakes. (There's no rule that you have to do snowflakes. If you want, do something else that's white. Like sheep, or stars!!)

I don't have a picture of my snowflakes at this point because I'm a bad teacher.

But basically, I drew out 4 snowflakes across the paper.

 If you wanted you could make paper snowflakes with scissors, and then trace those-and the little detailed cut outs in the centre as well!

Next, take the masking fluid. It smells like dead fish, I know. But it's worth it.

This is where you want to use brushes that you DO NOT CARE ABOUT. Masking fluid is weird stuff, it's a liquid rubber. It is possible to get the brushes clean later by using warm water and soap, but I wouldn't go using any kolinsky sable brushes with this stuff.

Fill in every space that you want to remain white (so, all the "snow") Be sure to leave small detail in your snow flakes blank if you want the watercolor background to show through later. Don't worry about the blue of the masking fluid, we'll remove it eventually.

Make sure that everything is covered with the masking fluid. You may have to look over it and spot touch anything that didn't get coated. It won't be perfectly even, some spots will be thicker. It doesn't really matter, so long as it's covered.

Now, if you like, you can use an old stiff bristled tooth brush to make some extra tiny white sprays around the snowflakes. Just dip the bristles into the masking fluid, and run you thumb quickly over the bristles, over the paper. Of course, you could do this manually with a tiny brush, if you're really bored.

Now for the fun part!

Completely coat your paper in whatever colours you like. (Yes, you can use your nice brushes now.) 

Experiment with different shades,  and blend away. You can make it as dark as you like, or light if you prefer. You don't have to be careful at all to "color in the lines" as the masking fluid is doing all the work for you. You can paint right over it if you like.

Once you're finished, do whatever touch ups you like, a second coat, some different colors, anything. But then let it dry completely. I know, it's hard to be patient, but you really don't want to do the next step until it's fully dry, or it will ruin your work, and your life.

(no, not really, Just your work. AND it will make you sad. I don't want you to be sad!)

l e t      i t      d r y !

Ok, now that it's dry, this is the really really fun part. Remember when you were little and your great aunt had peely wall paper that you were just dying to pick at? Now you have the opportunity to make up for lost time.

With your finger (not your fingernail, but your actual finger) start rubbing the edges of the masking fluid. (you can use an eraser too, if you like.)

It will start to roll back and ball up into stringy little rolls of rubbery fun.

Once you have a decent little edge pulled back, you can start to peel it off.

Peel off the rubber from all your snowflakes.

Next, get out an eraser, and begin to erase the little spray dots that you made with the tooth brush. You could do these all with your finger if you're a real glutton for punishment.

Also, now you can erase any pencil lines that might have been hiding under the masking fluid.

If there are any white spots that you didn't intend to be left white, you could touch them up now with a bit more paint.

And now you're finished! This would make a cute Christmas card, don't you think?

Chandelier Tutorial

I'm in the process (if I can call it that, it's been a long while) of re-organizing my studio space.

When we moved in to this house last autumn, I was so relieved to finally  have some space dedicated to storing supplies and office space that I just sort of shoved everything in my approximate 12x9 room and closed the door.

It has a door.

This means that my work is no longer invading our living space, which is a huge welcome. I still smile about my door on a daily basis.

I realised though, I need a different sort of storage system. I need to take advantage of the ceiling height and free up more floor space. Currently, I'm using a myriad of vintage dining room furniture, a retro high back hutch, an old dining room table etc. *kinda-sorta* my style, sure, but not at all practical at all for storing art supplies.

I've been looking online at all sorts of beautifully decorated studios that seem to have all the storage and organization answers, but they often cost a fortune to actually build.

Beyond the antique style "built in" shelves with bead board trim that I dream about daily (usually as I'm grumbling about tripping over something that doesn't NEED to be stored in a box on the floor), I think about the decor of my future space.

While a chandelier wouldn't really be contributing to the general function of the room, I've wanted one for a while. Where else, after all, am I going to hang something this feminine in my male-infested home?

And, I have pretty decent lighting already. I'm a fan of my Ikea halogen track lights. They're practical, energy efficient, and they don't give me a headache.

But a Chandelier...

I found this tutorial today while perusing one of my favorite sites, Brassy Apple, and thought I would share. I thought this was a fantastic way to glam up a reading corner, or hang over my printing table!

It puts off no light, which is fantastic. I don't really need it too! And last but not least, no wiring for the Mister!

 I'm going to see if I can find the supplies to make this. I'll post a pic when I'm finished:) Now I just have to decide which color I want!

Pretty Maids All in a Row... a Flower Tutorial

We used these watercolor flowers for our wedding, just to have some extras to decorate our tables and the window sills in the old barn where we held our reception.

Not only are they super easy, they're also really cheap to make! We only had to buy real flowers for bouquets. ( but you could use these for bouquets, really, if you wanted to!)

In bunches, they look like they were taken right out of one of Monet's paintings!

Grab your bridesmaids, and have a flower making party!

Materials:

Circular Coffee filters (3-6 per flower, the more filters, the fuller the flower)

Scissors

Staples/Stapler

Florist Tape

Florist Wire/Stems

Tubed watercolor paints or Food coloring

Spray Bottle

Clothes Line and Clothes Pins

Fold the filters in half and flatten out the "waves".

Cut Petals out of the wavy part, down to the flat bottom. You can cut a little deeper down if you like

but just be sure that you leave some form of a base.

If you cut the petals sort of long and skinny with pointy ends, they end up looking more like peonies.

If you cut them more curvy with a slight point, they end up looking more like a tea-cup rose!

Play around with it, there really isn't a right or wrong way. It just depends on the look you are going for.

You can cut a stack of 3 at a time no problem. I've done 6 which was a little tricky, but doable.

Separate the layers, and pull the centres down into a point, and gently fold the petals up.

 You can use the end of a pencil or a chopstick to do this if you want but it's really pretty simple. You don't need it to be a perfect uniform shape.

Take the first bunched up layer, and place it into the centre of the second layer. Again, fold up the petals of the second layer. Make sure that you're pinching both layers from the bottom.

Repeat, until you have as many layers as you like and the flowers are as full as you want them to be.

I sort of take the layers apart several times, turn them around etc to get the shape I want. (If I have time to be choosy!)

This step is one that I added after making a lot of these flowers and having a hard time relying florist's tape alone to hold them together. After adding the staple, they hold together so much better, both while coloring them and while using them to decorate.

Holding the bottom of the flower and pinching all layers, staple the layers together. Make sure the staple is vertical, in the direction that a natural stem would be. If it's horizontal you'll run into some problems later when we go to put them on the stems. Also be sure that you get the staple through each layer.

You can either color your flowers now (before putting the stems on) or after. I've done it both ways, and both ways work. If you want to color them first, the directions are below.

To add the stems, take the bottom of the flower and line up the staple with the stem. You'll want about an inch of stem in the flower itself.

Pinch the base of the flower around the stem. You will need to *ever-so-slightly* fold the entire flower around the wire as you do this. Once it's taped it will fall back to it's original shape.

Tape the flower by folding it around so that it just overlaps itself. Go around several times before moving down the stem. Make sure to go down the stem about an inch to be sure it's secure.

To colour your flowers, you'll need the spray bottle, and liquid watercolour paints.

This is doable with food coloring, although the color isn't quite as rich, unless you're

doing a darker color like red.

For the pink ones, I used a mixture of permanent rose and cadmium Red. For the yellow flowers I used yellow ochre and cadmium yellow, with a touch of burnt umber.

If you want, play around with colors first on paper (scraps of the coffee filters would work!) and see what you get.

Once you get your colors mixed the way you like them, add them to the bottom of your spray bottle, and dilute them with water. (You'll need about 1 cup of water for 60 flowers...so easy does it. No need to go overboard.)

Test your spray paint on some scraps and see if you need to add more paint to the water. If you like, add a touch of scent or essential oil to the paint if you want scented flowers.

Put on an old t-shirt for this part. You're bound to get a little bit of paint on yourself with this part.

Take your flowers and your spray paint outside. (make sure it's not going to rain, as you'll need some time for these to dry. They dry really quickly in the sun.)

Hold your flower an arms length away and spray the flower from the centre, working your way out. Some of the paint will cause the petals to stick together a bit. Just separate them with your fingers and be sure to get the paint right down to the centre of the flower.

If you've already put on the stems, just fold the stems over the clothesline and let them hang upside down.

If you haven't put the stems on, Just pin them by the base (on the staple) so that they're facing down.

The reason you want them facing down, is because the paint will run to the edges of the paper, making them look all that more real once they're dried. It's really noticeable in the darker colors like pink and red. (see the pink flower below?)

They only take about an hour to dry on a sunny day. Make sure they're completely dry before putting the stems on, if you haven't already.

Voila! Pretty, Affordable, and they never wilt! Either save them for later use, or send them home with you guests:)