From the sketchbook

Before I put away the carving tools, a few more rubber stamps:

Doodle-inspired line up

These critters - and the coffee mug - were inspired by some of my sketchbook doodles. 

Doodles... seriously :-)

A while ago I took Diane Culhane's online class, "Doings of A Doodle" which I enjoyed tremendously.

One major benefit of the class is that I now take my doodles more seriously as sources of inspiration.

This dog doodle -

inspired a sketch that I made into this rubber stamp:

Repetitive Variation or 'Just the scarf part, please'.

I carved a rubber stamp for our holiday cards last week. Off and on I have been sampling patterned papers to use for paper-piecing just the scarf part of the image but nothing really worked.
So-o-o, I decided to create my own.

Sharpie red and green colors say "holiday" to me.

I like this kind of thing; it is what I think of as repetitive variation and I don't find it to be boring. I go into a kind of zone and before I know it, voila, done!

A bird in the hand...

which in this case is a bird critter:

Rubber stamps, yummy :-D

He's a pretty big stamp:

As a rookie stamp carver, I'm still experimenting material removal.

With Copic colors - hmmm, guess he has a crown now:

Perhaps he's an extremely tall duck???

I use my Copics more like watercolor - very little blending..

On a roll :-)

This is so much fun - creating rubber stamps using my own images. Something magical happens when a two-dimensional sketch takes on a three-dimensional form; my little sketch that I can hold in my hand. I thought I would be more intrigued with the ability to stamp multiple images, but really I am in love with the stamps themselves :-D
Here's my second rubber stamp:

I was thinking "Romy", dog spirit, when sketching this.

This little guy is about 1-3/4".