Fran Sherbourne - Rubber Stamp Carving Workshop

The Workshop

It was a lovely little group of ladies today who came to the workshop to learn how to carve rubber stamps.

I drew up a few easy to carve shapes and printed off a few for the ladies to trace and carve.  All of the designs went down really well and some found them great to choose from.  So I'll definitely be using this lesson again.  Here are the sample pictures that I drew and took with me to share, they were all drawn with the idea that repeat printing would be used.  You will see a lot of gift wrap out there with stars used in repeat printing styles.

I started off by doodling with pencil, then when I was happy I made the patterns bold and easy to trace.

Here's some of the ladies work from the workshop today.  Not bad at all for their first attempts at carving.  Just a few practices at a couple of simple techniques and they were off.  I even had someone eager to try the reindeer, and succeeded really well for a first time :)

A simple bobble hat design, so easy to carve for a first time carve 'when you know how'

Workshop Ladies get to take their stamp home, mounted on kiln dried oak

Using the simple rounded abstract triangle to create a colourful forest of multi coloured trees.

Another simple carve to do 'when you know how'. Using cutting tools found lying around the house.

A Christmas Bauble, again using tools, utensils around the house to make these simple patterns.

And a budding future stamper I think, not bad at all for a first attempt.

So there we have it another workshop complete and it went really well.  I absolutely love teaching people how to carve, it's so relaxing and I can't wait to do more.