hand carved stamps

Two New Mandalas and a Stamp

doodles, Mandala, Stamp Carving

I have been lazy again. Days are shorter and shorter and to-do-list longer and longer. Each day I am catching up with something and it makes me nervous. By four pm I am exhausted and need to rest. Am I getting older and more easily tired or is it just an impression, maybe I am just trying to do more and more and I am not managing. Anyway… I have finished the mandala that I showed you in the last post. I am quite pleased with it, even though there are some new paints for making dots that I bought last week and tried out and they did not impress me…

The other mandala I finished is this one:


I used my stamps to create the shapes and colored it with markers. I also bought some new Liquid Pearls this week (they are the best!), so I used them too. I am rather ok with this one, even though it is not properly centered on paper, so it is not usable for framing, as a bit of stamp went over the edge of paper. Ah, well…

Today I carved another stamp to use in mandalas. I’ve been planning to do that for quite some time, and finally got to it this morning. I chose a simple flower design, which was easy to carve and gives unlimited possibilities in designing mandalas.

#carveDecember: Days 25-31

Stamp Carving

I promised the other day I would show the rest of the stamps. There are seven left. The first one is a double-sided garbage stamp:

Then there is the only one of the large ones which is not a snowflake but a flower:

And then this one that I particularly like, also a garbage one, but very nice I think because it can be a flower or a butterfly 🙂

The next one is a snowflake which was quite successful and I like it a lot.

Then, there is this garbage one that I didn’t find very successful when I first stamped it, but then I realized that the leaf shape is very nice on its own and it can be used as a leaf or as a flower:

Another very simple garbage stamp, but if used with imagination, can produce interesting pattern:

And finally the one that you have already seen and maybe wathed the video, the last snowflake for this December:

I downloaded a new program for blogging, because I was extremely annoyed with WP interface and lack of responsivenes. The program is called Blogo, it’s available for Mac and I-devices only (which is a pitty, because I have an android phone, so I will have to post from computer if I want to avoid frustration of WP app) and it works well, I am still getting used to it so I cannot say if it will make me completely satisfied, but for the time being (two days) it looks good.

That’s it for the second day of this year. I am on my usual month-off, so no frustration about work and lack of time for art. Ah, the freedom…

#carveDecember Flip Through

Stamp Carving, video

And here are all 31 stamps that I carved during the 31 days of December:

I am very happy I did not miss a single day and I did not run out of ideas 🙂
It seems that actually it is not possible to run out of ideas when you are drawing snowflakes, they are such an amazing subject, so many combinations, go with simple chapes and you cannot go wrong.

Here is also the video showing all the stamps and prints I made:

#carveDecember: Days 21-24

Stamp Carving

It’s got really busy with preparation for Christmas and doing art. I am bravely keeping up with #carveDecember. Until now I haven’t missed a single day and I plan to keep it that way until the end of the year. Here are the stamps 21-24; the light is bad again – these days we don’t see the sun at all, so even during the day it’s not possible to make a decent photo. Besides, I carve the stamps usually early in the morning or in late afternoon, so it’s the lamp light for photos. I will make a video once the month is complete, so I hope to capture them all in better light.

Anyway… The first one is a garbage stamp, double-sided, of course:

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The second one is the same:

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And then I decided I need another snowflake. It was a bit difficult to carve those thin bits, but I am rather happy how it turned out. I am still on that same defective piece of rubber, you can see that it does not stamp perfectly.

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And the fourth one I carved today. This is the last piece of that same rubber and here it looks fine, probably I carved out all the bad parts. This was quite time-consuming to carve, but I am really happy with it.

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That’s it for today’s post. We will be preparing a nice dinner (Mother is just putting the meat to roast). I made a carrot cake yesterday. Christmas is one of rare occasions for baking cakes (the other two being New Year and two birthdays). When the meat is done, we will put our dinner in front of the TV and watch Netflix until we can’t keep our eyes open. And yes, we will also drink a bottle of champagne and get a bit tipsy. That’s the big plan for tonight!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

#carveDecember: Day 20/31

Stamp Carving

And yet another snowflake. I finished this  one tonight, hence the low quality photo. It was impossible to get it done earlier because I was in the office and there was anyway almost no light today.

The weather is just awful and temperature under zero. I went this morning to pick up my driving licence. Tomorrow I take Mother to the doctor and that’s all errands done for 2016 I hope.

#carveDecember: Day 19/31

Stamp Carving

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Another little double-sided garbage stamp. It will make for a nice background.

I am back half-way. Was supposed to drive to Hungary, but it was too long, so I decided to stop in Slovenia and continue today. My cold worsened yesterday, and now I am starting to cough. The weather is bad: cloudy and cold and I saw a few snowflakes fly by. I hope it will not worsen, because driving in the snow is not fun.

#carveDecember: Day 18

Stamp Carving

This is another double-sided garbage stamp. And this is my last morning in Munich for this year. I will definitely come back in summer because there are so many things left to see.

Last night we went to this Brazilian grill place and I must say I was not all that thrilled. It was ok but nothing special, too much meat too much salt and very expensive. I am not sure if I would like to go again…

Now, packing awaits me. We will drop by to my friend’s place for breakfast and then leave. It’s a five hours drive back home…

#carveDecember: Day 17

Stamp Carving

I love this one! It’s another garbage stamp, really small but I  made it double-sided. One side is square frame and the other little flower. It makes really happy pattern with these inks, I think.

Our third day in Munich. Last night we met a friend of mine and went for a dinner in a classical German tavern where they brew their own beer and serve great local food.

This morning I woke up with sore throat again at 5 am. I managed to go back to sleep and when I finally woke at 7 I was ok. So we went out to have a breakfast and cake and coffee in the center and then met my friend and went to visit the Olympic complex from 1972 Olympic Games. The weather was good, even sunny and it was a pleasant walk. 

We are now back to  the hotel gathering energy to go out for dinner. We will digress from the local food a bit and go visit a Brazilian  restaurant. I have never been to a Brazilian restaurant before and I thought it might be fun. Let’s see.

#carveDecember: 16/31

Stamp Carving


This piece of rubber is defective – see the white lines on the print!? It got creases from the packaging foil which is really bad because these blocks are not cheap and if someone is looking to make a perfect print they may be disappointed. I am not though this is good enough for art journaling.

We are in Munich and it’s very cold. We spent most of the day in the city, looking around and entering shops to warm up a bit. It was exhausting but the city is nice. Look: