Friday, August 9, 2013

Undefined doodles

One of the new products Stampin' Up! introduced at Convention last month was the Undefined Stamp Carving Kit. The kit comes with everything you need to create your own stamp set: a sheet of rubber, foam, four wood blocks, two carving tools and a marker for $19.95 (U.S.).

I love the idea of having custom-made stamps, and I've seen many, many cute Undefined stamps online (including Shannon West's breakfast foods stamp set). But when my kit arrived in my Stampin' Up! order yesterday, I had no idea what kind of stamps I wanted to make. Flowers? I have a lot of flower stamps, so maybe something different. Pets? Sea animals? I love animal stamps, but I didn't know if I could draw and then carve images I really liked. Birthday candles, balloons and cake would be cute, but not really all-occasion. I tried sketching some ideas and looking at online clip art for inspiration, but no luck there, either. Hmm. After much deliberation, I decided that since I am a doodler, a stamp set of "doodle-y" images would be perfect. Here is the result:

What do you think? I was pretty pleased with the way these stamps turned out. The carving part wasn't too bad, although I made a mistake by starting with the image of all the little circles. Uff da. I should have tried the spiral or the large splotch first. You'll notice that I actually have five stamps in my set; the amoeba-looking image, which is sort of a signature doodle for me, was carved with a sample I received at Convention. But everything else you see here comes in the kit. The back of the lid has a pocket with instructions, sample images you can copy and a few postcards to stamp and send. You can also buy a refill kit with just the blocks, foam and rubber for $9.95 (U.S.).

So, do you want to see what I made with my new stamps? Here is the inaugural Undefined doodles card:

Supplies (all Stampin' Up!):
Stamps: Undefined, Four You
Cardstock: Whisper White, Old Olive, Island Indigo
Ink: Old Olive, Island Indigo, Soft Sky, River Rock, Early Espresso
Accessories: Early Espresso stitched grosgrain ribbon, Candy Dots - Subtles, Dimensionals

Nothing too complicated here. I stamped each image in a different color on Whisper White cardstock, overlapping them as needed. I layered that piece on Island Indigo cardstock, added Early Espresso ribbon and adhered it to an Old Olive card base. I stamped the greeting and the dashes on Whisper White cardstock, trimmed it into a flag, added a narrow Island Indigo flag behind it and adhered it to the card with Dimensionals. I added two Candy Dots on the focal image and one in the lower right corner.

I'm looking forward to making more cards with my stamp set. Have you tried the Undefined kit yet? What stamps would you carve? Thanks for stopping by!

1 comment:

JanaT. said...

Really cute! You did an awesome job. :-)