Week 46 : DLP2015

Information about the FREE weekly Documented Life project is HERE. 

I love to carve stamps - you can check out all my posts on that topic HERE. I thought it would be fun to take photos of what I've done in the past :

To make good use of the bases the above are one side carved, and below are the backs also carved :

All my supplies and methods can be found in my first post about stamp carving HERE. 
Check out Michelle Ward's guest post this week HERE (with links to her stamp carving tutorials) and two of my favourite inspiring artists who carve masterfully : Julie Fei-Fan Balzer (with free tutorials on her blog HERE and a peek inside her book via Amazon HERE) and Geninne Zlatkis (and her book).
I always wish I made time to carve more stamps - I am too impatient to carve slowly and carefully, but I like the "naive" and imperfect style I end up with because of that. This week's challenge provided the perfect excuse to try again - I've been interested in carving a stamp that creates a pattern when put together and was able to carve a quarter stamp as one of the options :

I was thinking about the challenge of tapestry, and it brought to mind using a variety of patterning and colours. Decided to try my hand at patterning a simple shape :

I started by using my own stamps to pattern the elephant, and decided I'd like a tree as well - I used my new quarter stamp for the circular centre

I needed to add more complex patterning so used a variety of other stamps to fill in more details - I used Stazon ink throughout because I know I am going to add colour over this and don't want the ink to move

I did some outlining for definition (using a black waterproof pitt pen) and added my journal block with stamping. Now I'm ready for adding colour

I decided to use watercolours, and started with my tree

Then it was time to have some fun with the elephant

I added a few different blues in the sky, and just had to add a bit of extra white stamped detail at the end - note the colour of the stamp pad I used :-)

This spread was a fun way to relax and add colour to a cool and showery afternoon

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. You can see all my posts about this project HERE.