Wedding Invitation Stamps

October 28, 2018

I used three different carving blocks while I was making these stamps. This was my first time carving the purple block which is made by Yellow Owl Workshop. I learned that it is my favorite carving block so far! I think these stamps turned out well because I had used images from the internet rather than trying to draw them myself. The plumeria flowers were very difficult to carve because of their shorter, curved lines. If I could not make the petals round enough then it would be very obvious when I printed with them. I think I carved each flower three times before I ended up with ones that would print well. First I tried the pink Speedball block (the material offers more resistance and I could not carve smooth lines), then the gray Moo block (which was maybe too soft and the knife cut through too easily for something so small and detailed), and the final flowers I used were carved from block made by Yellow Owl Workshop. However it is a little tricky to print the flowers because the size of the stamp is small.

I used the stamps on the envelopes for our invitations. The leaf and plumeria flowers were stamped on the front and the leaf with the stem was stamped on the back. Before I mailed these I rolled them up in tissue paper so that the envelopes could not rub against each other. Even after a few days and the ink had dried I noticed that if I rubbed my finger or a piece of paper against the stamp then some of the color would smudge off. I may need to look into using different ink in the future.

The fruit bar stamps from the post office were scratch-and-sniff stamps!

I experimented with making thank you cards using the stamps. I am not sure if the cards I used are too textured to be used with the stamps or if I will need to try using a different type of ink. I stamped “thank you” on the cards after I took this photo and learned that I need to find a darker black ink; the inkpad that came with my alphabet stamps looks gray rather than black.