Its always interesting creating new stamps. I never know what the pattern will look like until the stamp has been finished and I get to play with it.
Category Archives: creating
Stamp 2-7-15
So I started out these sketches with my middle and last initial. L for Linore and S for Schissel. Then I started day dreaming about curves and breaking it down a little further to individual parts of the letters and came up with this leaf pattern.
Stamp 1-3-15
To start out the week I found an old Magnolia leaf on the ground when I was running this morning. I was intrigued by the tip of the leaf and the dip of the end of the stem. Below are the sketches from the leaf with variations on both.
I originally settled on sketch 15 but could not figure out the design for the stamp, ultimately starting over with new sketches and ending up with sketch 21 that is reminiscent of the tip of the leaf but looking at it now looks like fallopian tubes. Weird.
Below are the different stages of the stamp as I am working on it.
Stamp- 1-2-15
So I have been going on regular runs this year and trying to observe small things along the run that will help me stop and slow down a bit. Today I came across these cool memories from childhood. I snapped a couple of pictures so I can make a stamp from them. Below is the process:

As a child, these would fall and we would call them “helicopter wings” laughing and chasing after them.
Refined the edges and removed some clay
Stamp 1-1-15 The Beginning of Noticing
Its the first day of the new year! ( My husband says I am the best at pointing out the obvious)
So I went for a run to bring in the new year with energy. I tried to be mindful of the patterns I was passing. I noticed a vine crawling up the tree, berries on a holly bush, some sort of weird red orange berry with yellowish caps. It must be poisonous because even the birds are not eating it. I got lost in my own mind for a while and then opened my eyes to see a crack in the side walk that made me think of memories and why do we choose to remember events. Its not like I go into a moment saying “I want to remember this for the rest of my life”, but sometimes things just stick with me and they are not all that significant. Like the time I smashed my thumb with a hammer and called my fried Blaine because I knew he would understand just how badly it hurt, because he had just done it a week or so before. Why do I carry that memory with me. Whats so stellar about it? I have smashed my thumb plenty since then but they don’t stand out.
Any way, I digress. When I finished my run I came back and spent some time sketching out patterns I saw or thought of. Sketching is the 1st part of creating a stamp. I started out with an explanation point because hay its the 1st day of the new year!!! Its going to be great! Below are the sketches I came up with and I am particularly drawn to the tear drop shape. I connected it together in several different ways and think that will be one of the 1st stamps I create. I think it will not stand alone and may need an additional stamp to help ground it into a pattern. As this progresses I will try to take more pictures of the little things I notice and tie them into the stamps I make. My hope is that readers will be able to see some small connection between the finished stamp and the inspiration behind it. Cheers on a beautiful sunshiny day in Asheville NC, oh and if I didn’t already mention it…. Its the 1st day of the new year! Happy New Year!