Yet More Stickers!

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After the last post I kept going, having so much fun making more stickers!

I was low on the red gate logo stickers and topped up those first. I used both the adress label paper and the round kraft circle stickers. These stamps I carved a good decade ago, using either rubber erasers or soft-cut rubber blocks.

I've never put in the time to become much of a carver but small images with even the simplest of designs look good as stickers! 

First I ran an address label sheet through the printer for the text. Then just stamped away! The square "window" design was a bit trickier to carve but all the others were just lines. I skimmed the rubber for the thin ones, and pressed a bit deeper for the thicker lines. Even this one that took two seconds to carve (below) has a nice energy.

Looks like an abstracted marsh to me. I still have a few notecards left from the marshland collage series I did last year and I think these are a perfect go-with for the envelope back.

Even small squares of rubber will make a stamp. I like the look of just a square of colour. Or you can encapsulate text or page numbers with transparent ink (below) if, like me, you've moved onto stamping on old book pages.

You can also do repeats of a small stamp to make a larger design for a more impressive sticker. And even add a bit of collage like the orange moon!

Then cut or punch the shapes you want.

As long as you have glue or a glue stick handy, you don't even need sticker or address label paper. You can makes stickers from any kind of paper - old book pages, gelli plate prints, recycled envelopes, even packaging!

These darling dog stickers (carved from an image a friend drew), were stamped on a red envelope (and then hand-cut).

And also on circles punched from a paper shopping bag.

Although you could certainly use commercial stamps, I prefer working with my own images (however wonkily they are carved!). It was a bit of a nostalgia trip digging through old stamps.

I even came across these numbers (and seem to have only carved four, five and six!).

As these things go, taking time out to play around nudged me onto another happy afternoon in the studio. I'll share the fun project in the next post.