Out with the old, in with the new...

I know Fiddleheads would be disappointed with me if I didn't regularly recarve my signature stamp.  So with the move back to the area of my letterboxing roots comes a new stamp!

Old at the left, new at the right.

Hope you're all out on the trail this beautiful weekend!

Happy trails!

How to annoy local letterboxers *or* Why I'm loving this soft linoleum...

Okay, as a follow up to the last post, an update on a real carve of the new soft grey linoleum I picked up at DeSerres last week.  I've been contemplating the best ways to annoy local letterboxers, and I figure changing up my signature stamp again would be most effective.  I've been contemplating a new carve, which is both an image and letters, and I thought this would be perfect to really test the new material.

It looks shiny because the xylene was still damp.  But you can see the flawless transfer.

First off, my worries about being able to transfers onto this material given its dark colour are completely unfounded and I am more than happy with the results of my standard xylene transfer.

As you can see, the xylene actually produced a flawless creamy transfer onto the medium.  It looks white in the image to the right because it was still a little wet and reflected the light off of it.

Although the image was in black and the material is dark grey, the transfer was so good that it made no difference to me compared to transfers onto white material while carving under my magnifying light.

Here with a different angle to avoid the light glare, you can see that the transfer actually looks like I took a sharpie to it (I did not).  The image is clear and easily carvable.

You can see the lighter grey in the carved out portions here.

Next, the carving itself was really easy.  The material is really quite soft - more so than any other materials I currently use (pink stuff, Firm Cut, MZ, NZ).  As you carve, the carved out hollows actually look slightly lighter grey.  The material actually handles a bit differently - not better or worse, just different - and I think would take some getting used to. Carving the letters with the knife was a breeze, so was carving the image with gouges.

The hard part was physically holding the material because it is so thin (I hold my carvings in my left hand while carving with my right, rather than leaving the material flat on the table while I carve).  My happy solution was to tape it to a piece of acrylic which worked great.

Here are the completed and stamped images from my new signature stamp.  At the top is the impression using traditional dye ink, below is from pigment. 

I'm not sure how well this material would do with a highly detailed image.  Something makes me think that the material would not lend itself to them, particularly over a letterbox's lifespan.  But I'm talking about the REALLY highly detailed images.

Because the material is so soft, carving is a pleasure as the tools zip through the material without any force.  In fact, I could fault this stuff by saying the tools move through it too easily, but I suspect that is more from all the carving I've been doing on Firm Cut lately.

All in all, very, very happy with this material and I will be definitely buying up a whole ton of this stuff next time I'm out Oakville way.

Out with the old, in with the new

I've finally gotten around to carving a new sig stamp - my third since starting with letterboxing last year. (Actually, I started boxing on July 20th last year, so I suppose today marks the end of my first year of letterboxing, tomorrow starts my second...)

First signature stamp 

My first stamp, which was a square with honeycomb in the background and a bee up front was carved on Speedy-cut (hiss! spit!), was literally my first carve and was horribly undercut due to my aforementioned carving education.  You can see it on the first page of my first log book on the right there.  The stamp itself was actually quite large - probably about 10-12 centimetres square. Obviously, that one didn't last very long at all... All the lines started literally falling off of the stamp (there was nothing underneath holding them to the block) and pretty soon it didn't look like anything.

Signature stamp 2

My next stamp, which I used mostly until today, was also made with Speedy-cut - yes, you'd think I'd learn, but it was all I had and all I could find!  I actually drew this one free hand (never again!) and knife carved it, no undercutting this time so from that perspective it was a stable image.  It has not kept well and because I used black ink once, I had to keep with black ink (because the material is terrible - if I had washed it properly to get the ink off, it would have completely disappeared as it crumbles so bad).  I've actually used this one for longer than I expected, but every time I would stamp with it I'd kick myself, wanting to have carved something better already.

Micro signature stamp

I started using, almost exclusively in recent months, my micro stamp (gouge carved on pink stuff - phew) which is simply of a bumblebee...  This little cutie is just the size of a thumbprint and was actually intended for a letterbox, but I liked it so much that I kept it.  Nevertheless, it was never intended to be the signature stamp that I used and I wanted something a little more elaborate.

Finally, after much deliberation, I finally chose and image and got carving.  Not sure the image is all that clear in the end, but I like it anyway.  The new stamp, along with my pretty new Kaleidacolor from Stampeaz and I am all set.  It's about 4-5 cm across and 10-12 down and I mostly gouge-carved it, the exception being some small spots and the lettering.  I think I like it, I'll have to test it out in the field...