Stamp Carving Process

This is the photo that inspired the stamp I carved recently.  

I took a few pictures as I went through the process of carving, more to document the process for myself than anything else.  The inspiration photo is the first step in the process.

I did a sketch from the photo, traced it onto tracing paper using a soft pencil, turned the tracing over and burnished it onto a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" piece of carving rubber.

I never quite know which pieces are going to get carved away when I have an idea like this, so it helps to stop and think about it a bit before I start carving.  (I can't change my mind once something is cut!)  If it is at all complicated I shade the parts I'm leaving behind, and you can see this in the first photo below, along with the first cut I made around the outside of the "house".  The first cuts are made with the smallest "V" blade (#1):

Next, I cut on the inside of the large blocks on the house I would be carving away.  (Note there is a cut on the inside of the outline of the house but not on the roof and chimney, for example.)  I did the same inside and outside process on the windows:

I then carved away the house with a large "U" blade (#5):

Now we switch our focus to the area around the house.  Using a medium "U" blade (#3), I carve a moat around most of the image.  There is just a small part at the top where this wouldn't work:

I decided to put a border around the whole block rather than just cutting around the outside of the house.  Using the #1 blade I carve outwards from the small areas first (like the area to the right of the chimney).  The rest is done with the #5 blade in a similar fashion.  I just scoop the rubber stopping about 1/16" from the edge to form the border:

Now we're ready for the first printing, which I do with a medium shade of ink so that it doesn't cover up the shading on the rubber that I did at the beginning.

The rest is all clean-up, a process alternating between using the #1 blade to clean up more details and more test prints.  It took another 3 test prints before I got to the finished image I was happy with.  It isn't perfect, by any means, but that is part of the charm of hand carved stamps.

Here's the final stamp: