Well, I’ve picked up my carving tools again after a year away from it all. This time instead of focusing on carving finished pieces, I’ve spent the last three days YouTubing block printing and stamp carving. Initially I was thinking about creating stamps I could make for handmade greeting cards but now I’m also thinking about doing carved pieces for mini prints done on art cards. I’m sticking with my overall theme of keeping things small and manageable, hence mini prints.
In the process of all this I stumbled down a rabbit hole into DIY eraser carving and discovered carving with an x-acto knife. I tried this out for myself and I have to say this was pretty challenging at first and had almost chucked my x-acto knife but something said don’t give up, plus I was a bit jealous at the relative ease others were having with it and I wanted the same. After four hours of YouTubing someone finally mentioned keeping the blade at a 45 degree angle and everything completely changed. That little tidbit opened the door to much smoother, cleaner and faster carving with an x-acto knife compared to using just my lino cutter.
Another handy little thing I’ve been introduced to is ink pads. Typically these are used for rubber stamping in scrapbooking and card making but since I’ll be making mini carvings no larger than the size of a baseball card, ink pads would work great for inking art card prints instead having to deal with tubes of ink, a brayer and finding something to spread the ink on. I’m all for keeping things convenient and neat if it’s something that gets the job done. Plus the ink pad I’m using by Ranger is acid free, permanent and waterproof which is very close to ideal for me since I want my mini prints to last.
In the meanwhile I’m still inking away on “See You”. I’m halfway done and it’s coming along nicely but I’m also taking my time. I want this to be a really good piece. 😊
Carve & Draw 