Carving repeating stamps -- it's all in the details

I finally finished working my way through Julie Balzer's new book Carve, Stamp, Play. In earlier posts, I described learning the basics, making my own alphabet, and mastering (ha) curves. In the last part of the book, Julie demonstrates an advanced technique -- making stamps that repeat to produce patterns.

I was eager to try carving these fancy stamps. Julie makes it look so easy. But for me, not so much.


The first stamp seemed simple -- a mirror image of an abstract flower. Here's my version next to Julie's sample.

It took me quite a few tries to get the lines to match in the middle. This is the last of many many test prints.

The next stamp is a quarter repeat -- meaning the stamp itself is one-fourth of the final design. Two edges must align. Following Julie's example, I drew a grid on my square blank, the lines 1/4" apart.

Then I traced the pattern from her book. Carefully.

I was doing fine -- great, even. But then I started carving.

Oops. I carved the wrong part of the design. I cut out the parts that I should have left intact. And vice versa. The resulting stamp works, but it doesn't look much like Julie's sample.

Also, there's the little problem of alignment. Julie explains how to register images to keep the parts of a repeating stamp aligned. But her instructions clearly didn't "register" with me. Ha.

Next I tried to make my own quarter repeating stamp, this one traced from a book of Chinese designs. 

My first test stamps were blurry, but I could still see that I needed to edit out parts of the design. It was too busy.

I lopped off the bars on the two edges of the curve to make the image was more circular. And I removed the rest of the rubber in the small corner circle.

Better, but still not great. I'm just learning, right? It's not easy to know what kind of design will make a good repeating design. Also, the whole alignment thing is a challenge for me. I'm just not that exact.

I did have one success. I mounted my stamps on wooden dominos from my stash. Before gluing down the rubber, I stamped the top of the domino with permanent ink.

So to repeat -- I'm not thrilled with how my repeating stamps turned out, but I remain undaunted! You can expect to see more stamps from me. I need the practice!