CarveDecember

An artist whose work I follow with enthusiasm is Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. Her Stamp Carving 101 class and her book Carve Stamp Play really improved my stamp carving ability. She recently held #CarveDecember on instagram where you simply carved a stamp a day (or however often you could get to it). She showed her work each day and so did a ton of other people. Go search for the tag #carvedecember on IG and prepare to be amazed at the wonderful variety of stamps that were carved by folks around the world.

I participated and managed to get 23 stamps carved, plus a few more that are too poor to make the cut. She plans on doing it again next year, so mark your calendar. It was so fun to see everyone's stamps each day. There was some amazing carvers but Julie takes the cake. She's very good.

I know you're holding your breath with anticipation, so here's my efforts. Most are done on dollar store erasers, my carving material of choice.

All these are done on erasers (or peices of) that are 2.5" long by 1" wide.
The one at the bottom is a triangular stamp that makes larger patterns
when stamped next to itself, over and over.

This is 2" sq repeating stamp. These are a mind trip to plan out,
at least for me, so I did this one and the one below closely
patterned after stamps that Julie carved. Think I have the hang of it
now and will plan my own designs from here on out.

Two more repeaters, except the one on the bottom doesn't work,
as you can see from the lower mismatched join between the
first and second imprints. Oops. It was my first one,
so I looked at Julie's stamps as I planned the two above it.