Back in the Studio: Hot Glue Stamp Experiments

January is always 'back in the studio' time for me.  Although I am physically in my studio every day, I am often doing things other than creating my own work.  Because I have a number of shows coming up this spring, and my usual ones in the summer, it's definitely time to get back to it!

While I haven't been creating, I've certainly been considering, exploring, researching, and designing in my head.  Now, it's on to experimentation with new (to me) techniques and ideas.

First up is designing my own stamps with African textile-inspired designs using wood and hot glue:

Using scraps from Stan's various projects, I drew designs directly onto the wood with my hot glue gun.  You can see that the thick and thin areas aren't consistent, due to the differences in pressure and amount of glue used.  I'll have to get better at this, but wanted to see what would happen.

Here's the result when I tried to use the stamps on paper, with chalk ink or pigment ink.  Those thick and thin areas made it difficult (and in some cases impossible) to achieve a clear impression.  Pretty disappointing, but I figured this might happen, so....

I got out my Gelli plate, and began another experiment.  Here, you can see the plate with some impressions of the smallest stamp at right under the layer of black paint.  The resulting print was kind of murky, but the stamps worked much better than on paper, due to the 'give' of the surface of the Gelli plate.

Golden Fluid Acrylics in some of my favorite colors made interesting prints.  And, so that I can see at a glance which way my stamps are oriented when I'm printing, I drew the design on top (good tip!).

Here are some of the final prints. I'm pretty pleased!

Off to do more...stay tuned!