Craft Stamper Take It, Make It Challenge - Potato Stamps

It's a new month and a new challenge at Craft Stamper Take It, Make It Challenge Blog.  And this one will take you back to primary school days.  We want you to carve your own stamp - from a potato!  Remember cutting primitive shapes from half a potato and inking it up with that horrible smelly poster paint?  Well that's exactly what we want you to do for this challenge.  With nicer paint.

I drew around the half potato on scratch paper then drew my design within the shape.  I couldn't get a good transfer image so I cut the shape away in bits then placed the pattern on the potato so that I could carve some of the lines.  I used a Speedball lino cutter but you could use a craft knife (carefully!).

It's probably easiest to use acrylic paints but I wanted to try Distress Inks.  I pressed some Distress Inks onto an acetate block (Peacock Feathers, Peeled Paint, Gathered Twigs) and painted the colours onto the potato with a paintbrush.  You can see the practice images where I was getting the colour placement and saturation right.

Surprisingly, the Distress Inks worked ok - but don't try applying the ink pad directly to the potato, the starch will soak into the pad.  You need to get the ink onto an acetate block or a ceramic tile - anything non-porous.  When the image dried, I could feel a layer of starch on on the card, so I just brushed it off.

The leaves are rubber stamps from Paper Artsy - I thought they go so well with my stamp!
Words from Winnie & Walter - The Big, The Bold and The Happy

Next Friday I'll show you what I did with the other half of the potato...