I'm Undefined

I bought a stamp carving kit a while ago from Stampin' Up! thinking it would be fun to carve and make some of my own stamps at some point.  It reminded me of when I took art in middle school and we would carve our own printing blocks from a picture we drew.  Here's the trouble- you have to know what you want to carve!  SU has a ton of ideas they have been posting online and I've been watching and collecting thoughts and suggestions.  This weekend (or rather very early this morning when I couldn't sleep), I decided to go for it!  Here are some pictures of my late-night escapades with carving.

Here is the first one.  The term YOLO for "You only live once" is all over the place right now, so I thought having a stamp of it would be fun.  If you are curious how this works, you draw the image first on paper with pencil, then rub the image on the rubber.  The kit provides you with carving tools to cut the image out, then adhesive and wood blocks to back the stamp.  I used some scraps of extra paper in coastal cabana and strawberry slush to finish this up.  I love utilizing extra bits of paper, and rarely throw things like that away.

Now for my second set of stamps carved.  I liked the idea of a folk-art type bird and have a local artist I love here named Moni Hill.  She uses a bird similar to this and the saying "Be Tweet" on some of her work.  I thought this would make a cute card!  The bird was super simple since I decided to keep the body solid so I could draw in designs, color him in, or use a "kissing" technique to add a texture to the body.  I drew in the little legs with a stamp n' write marker as well.  As for the leaf, well, I just wanted one and thought it would fit well with the nature theme here.

I had a blas making some things that I was interested in and wouldn't have been able to find otherwise!  Plus, I take a little more pride in my cards shown here because I actually make the stamps too!  Let me know if you are interested in getting a stamp carving kit or want to make a stamp with me- I'd love to play around with carving and creating something with you!