Another fun class at the library...

Tonight our public library had a class on rubber stamp carving.  I was so excited!  I've used hundreds, maybe thousands, of rubber stamps in my day, but never one that I carved myself.  Oh, I take that back, I did carve a teeny-tiny flame for a birthday candle out of a pencil eraser once, but this one far surpasses that.  

The website listed the size of the rubber blank, and suggested bringing our own image that we wanted to carve.  I wanted to make a stamp of Rudy!

The finished, carved stamp is on the right (above).  It wasn't easy...pretty simple...but not too easy.  My test print is on the left (above).  When I saw the black splotches in the background, I did a little more carving to clean up the image a bit.

I had to come straight home and make a card with it.  I was impatient, so I just used a black pen to outline the ear, eye, and nose...I should have used a dark brown pen or watercolor pencil...but I think it's okay.  I'm sending it to a friend and her husband.  We used to live near them, and got to spend a lot of time with them.  She's a stamper as well, so I think she will think my self-carved stamp is as cool as I do.  And her husband will love the little Eddie Bauer dog on it.  When we had our first Jack Russell terrier, her husband knew the breed had two names in it, but he could never remember what they were.  So he always called it my Eddie Bauer dog.  :)