Stamp carving or another way to make my own fabric

In my ongoing search for ways to create my art without stressing my bionic knee or my herniated disc, I am playing with carving my own stamps to use in dyeing and batiking fabric, or adding images to already dyed fabric. I already have a lot of different dyes, fabric paints and silkscreening paint, so my new supplies list is pretty simple: carving tools and stamp material. Stampeaz has a nice sampler pack of stamp material so I started with that. And I got the 2.5 inch carveable brayer because the idea of the rolling image seemed fun. It's definitely something I can't do with a silkscreen. My local art supply store had a sale on the carving tools so after about $30, I was set to go.

I got my first image from Art Stamping Workshop by Gloria Page. I also watched her video which gave me really great tips on using the tools and how to make carving easier. Here's the stamp. I've used commercial batik fabric with spirals on it so I was very interested in doing something similar but with my own feel to it. This one started with a 4x6 block of stamp material.



Here's two images from this stamp. The one in purple ink was the first one. That's when I discovered that my eye was used to the lines I use in my silkscreen work and for stamping the lines needed to be thicker and stronger. I also didn't like the straight edges with all those curves so I shaped the edges as much as I could with the material left on the edge of the stamp. The black print is after the modifications. It came out much closer to what I was looking for.



I found this material pretty easy to carve. It's the Speedball beige stuff. Stampeaz mentions in the description they have for it that it can be crumblier over time. I'll try the other 2 materials I have from the sampler pack and see what I think. More about that later, as I get more carving time in.

Then I moved on to the brayer. I got the smallest one, which made it harder to hold onto it while carving. I didn't slice myself up, but I did slip and prick my finger a couple of times. Obviously some work to do here with the technique - probably both the holding and being more aware of my finger being in front of the carving tool's leading edge. Here's the brayer and how it did on paper in one picture. I missed inking all of it, so I filled the blanks in with blue ink so I could see where the gaps were easier. It was harder to ink the brayer evenly. The print pictured here was done with silkscreen ink spread lightly onto a paper plate.


I liked how this one worked to give me the continuous line of image, but the surface doesn't hold much ink so it fades fairly quickly. I will have to experiment to see how to improve this.

Next up, doing stamping with these stamps on fabric. Fun times ahead!