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| Crimson's Carving Information |
| I first heard about soft block carving (or rubber or eraser carving, if you will) from a book I checked out of my local library titled "The Rubber Stamp Album". (find it here) There were only a few pages dedicated to the art of carving stamps yourself, but I was quite intrigued. |
| Subsequently, I hopped onto the internet and began a search that led me to such wonderful places as: The Carving Consortium , Tabloid Trash , and RuthAnn's Soft-Block Carving |
| I learned that with a regular x-acto knife (#11 blade), an image to carve, and a way to transfer the image to the carving material, you, too, can begin to make your own rubber stamps! Armed with my new-found knowledge, I took a trip to the local office supply store and purchased a 4-pack of Mars-Staedtler erasers (the ones with the raised logos all over them). After spending several minutes carefully sanding the logos off, I then proceeded to do my very first carving, shown below: |
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| I was quite happy with the consistency and carveability of those erasers, but the limitations due to the small size of the eraser led me to seek out other options. The next thing I picked up was Staedtler's "Mastercarve" block, which truly did cut "like butter", but was a bit too soft for my liking. |
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| Back to the internet searching, where I read information about "Pink Pearl" erasers, and how they were firmer and better for fine-line details. Off I went to purchase a pack of those. Upon carving them, however, I found them to be fairly crumbly and too hard a consistency for ease of carving, not to mention the limitation due to the size. |
| Recently I took a trip to the craft store near me and found "Speedycut", #4346. BLECH! I'd read previously on carving sites and message boards about how crumbly this medium was, but I really had to see for myself. THEY WEREN'T KIDDING! Horrifically crumbly and super-soft. What a dissapointment. Good thing I didn't pay much for it. All over the carving world, people have been singing praises to PZ Cut, which can be found here. Recently the two sheets which my husband purchased for me arrived in the mail, and I wasted no time in transfering a design and setting about to carving. It took me a minute to get used to the firmness of PZ Cut, but overall it's the best material I've used so far, quite firm, holds fine lines very well, easy to carve and (yay!) no crumbling! So until next time, I hope you've found some good information to get you started on the road to carving! |
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| See more of Crimson's Carvings |