So I love to carve lino (and shoddy eye sight as a consequential price to pay for spending hours squinting over a lino sheet meticulously carving fine detail whilst muttering about the pains of being an artist..) Hence my burning need to create finer detail and more elaborate ornate pattern on it - so Ive started to carve my paisley, which looking at the scale of detail will take a good couple of weeks to finish - Im such an impatient Ive even started carving the tail detail before Ive finished drawing the head - but I often work like this - the buring need to carve often outstrips the patient requirement of finalising the drawing.
Then I realised I could also carve rubber stamps - Ive seen such pretty ones on etsy Im dying to try it - I bought a piece of rubber from a etsy seller in singapore and was in raptures as I opened the package..she had wrapped it exquisitely ( a simple blank rubber stamp purchase) and enclosed a beautiful little hand written note on the most adorable kawaii memo pad sheet featuring the gorgeous San-X Boots Kutusita Nyanko and included a couple of pattern sheets etc to start me off. I was smitten, in love... I promptly bought a similar San-X boots memo pad to scribble on that evening.
The rubber sheet proved to be a soft version of lino - Im hooked! I started off by trying a basic little totoro pattern I already created for use on printing my tea towels alongside some of my other kawaii characters. Its turned out fine. Im going to mould a polymer clay handle for it so I can grip it easily whilst stamping or printing with it...Im a hand printer so I know all the little things you need for ease of use in a tool.
Then I really got inspired.. I had bought this rubber sheet to create some of my own rubber stamps of kawaii creatures.
Im going to create a range of larger sized kawaii stamps ranging from the simple shape like my tester totoro to far more detailed pieces like my maneki neko delivery kitty... I LOVE this (my creativity has bubbled all of a sudden and my mind is racing as to the potential patterns I can create). Though goodness knows how Im going to fit this into my already packed shedule, I have tons of fabric to print, custom orders to get out and some orders for my textured plaster panel work...all done whilst the baby and 6 year old sleep at night ( or not as it turns out...who has the formula for children to sleep through the night without getting up at least 4 times...6 years on and I havent seen an unbroken nights sleep..ho hum)
