Another Stamp Making Session.

 After a very busy week doing a lot of other things, I have at last found time to get back to the stamp carving.

Here I have an old photo that I took of some reeds in a pre-digital camera era.  Lucky I did, as my old Photoshop Album software has died and I can't find any photos that I need prior to 2012.

Time to do a test print I think. I'm not sure what final medium I will actually use.  Maybe a gelatin print, or a combination of things. More tomorrow I hope.

Frosty Fern.

A Winter's Day.

Happy Birthday Kirri!

                         This is a peacock cake for Kirri's first birthday. Cake made by her clever Mummy.

                     I think that the birthday girl approves of her delicious carrot and fig cake,

Frost Coloured Leaf.

After the heavy frost, the Passion-fruit vine looks wonderful with its multi-coloured leaves. I have picked several to press, but I don't suppose the lovely colours will stay.

More Rain.

                                Everything is dripping wet and soaked through.....................lovely!

Dripping Wet Tree Bark.

               No frost this morning, just a steady drizzling rain. This Eucalypt bark just glows red when wet.

Still Very Cold!

                This leaf is beginning to thaw out, but the patterns of the frost are I think quite lovely.

Amazing Frozen Fungus

With an over night temperature below freezing, this odd shaped fungus was completely frozen solid this morning.

Waiting to be Stitched.

     Well, here it is in its entirety, just the background artwork however, as I still intend to stitch on it.

Just Finished in Time.

With just a couple of hours to go, I have managed to finish this little jumper in time for the first birthday celebration. Using all left over yarns it was quite a juggle to make them last the distance, hence all the stripes and mixture of shades. I had to buy the dark purple in the end, so that's why there is a bit more of it left.

Stamp Carving Workshop.

Can't you just see the concentration here? These are participants in a stamp carving workshop that I ran this morning. Judging by the lovely stamps that most of the women produced, it won't be long before artwork featuring hand carved stamps is on display.

The Fossil Dinosaur!

Well, after much excavating, the dinosaur fossil is now out of it's plaster cast and all glued together. What a great activity for a budding palaeontologist!

New Stamp, New Artwork.

Final Version.

As the actual butterfly that this piece is based on is actually a very gorgeous blue, I have decided to be authentic with the colour. After all, the ants don't have much meaning unless associated with the butterfly.

New Colour Version.

  This again is only part of a whole piece. It looks rather oriental I think. I'm not sure which I prefer though.

Ants on the March!

                  This is part of a piece that I'm working on at the moment, using the butterfly, ant and leaf stamps.

Fiddling with Photoshop.

 

  This picture is the result of playing with one of the shell composite pictures in Photoshop. Lots of fun!

Stamp Carving Addiction!

 I needed an ant for a piece of work that I'm designing, so of course I had to carve a stamp. Those legs are tricky!

              Since the ant will only be tiny, I'm not too worried by the imperfections, though it isn't too bad.

Fabric for ATCs.

                                    Shell compilation on fabric, all ready to be chopped up for ATCs.

These are a combination of gelatine prints, my own hand carved stamps, some foam shapes and also some commercial marine stamps.

Rainy Day Activity.

 As I mentioned some weeks ago, the next ATC challenge is based on some shells that one of the group brought along. Here I'm testing out some new stamps that I carved last night. It's quite difficult to get a really good clear print.

                                                          I really like the shape of this one.

This one is deceptively simple to carve, and of course they are all negatives of the original shells. A bit of Photoshopping will fix that!  Actually I'll probably just use them as they are.

This is the butterfly stamp from a few days ago, again trying to get a good clear print. It looks like a tray in a museum doesn't it?

Fossil Find!

                                   A lot of careful excavating and the stegosaurus begins to appear.

Learning to Dig for Fossils.

This block of coloured plaster has pieces of a plastic stegosaurus buried in it ready for the budding palaeontologist to dig out. A very clever idea, this kept master 4 busy for several hours. Here he has just started his first trench! Note the tea towel cover to keep that pink plaster dust off his clothes.

A Garden Full of Citrus Trees!

                 The grapefruit are almost ready for picking, then we'll have juice and marmalade.

                                                             The lemons are almost ripe too.

 Lime marmalade under way, but unfortunately we didn't grow the limes, our tree succumb to some sort of gall wasp and I had to buy these limes from a market.

  The mandarins have a long way to go and unfortunately in our climate they don't seem to get very big.

                        The oranges are very unripe too, but they will make great juice in a few weeks.

              The tamarillos are doing well and with all the recent rain will be even juicier than ever.

Interesting Shapes.

             I'm not sure what this plant is called, but the flower spikes are fascinating, as are the colours.

Chomped Leaves.

Perhaps I should be making more bite marks in my leaf stamps! These are Eucalypt leaves that I picked up, and obviously they have been very tasty to some insect or other.

On a Roll!

 I wanted to cut some leaf stamps for a class that I will be running soon, so here are the stamps that I made today.

 I also wanted to use the stamps with a butterfly for my own work, so I traced the outline of  very special butterfly to make my stamp. The butterfly lives in a very close relationship with ants, who feed the caterpillar and look after it in return for some food secretions.  The first stamp didn't have enough ink, but the second one will do for a test piece. I'm pretty pleased with my afternoon's work.

More Stamping Fun.

Something New at Last.

I thought that I might try my hand at carving stamp tiles, that when 4 are put together make they make one large tile with the repeating blocks. It is harder than it would seem to make them match up properly! The first one was all right, but I decided to make another and really measure everything properly to make the match-up work. Still not quite right, but better.