Rubber Meets the Road

The first steps down a new path for Ink Circles have been taken.  A lot of you know how much I love ink work, and many of you have heard me explain, "Sorry - this new drawing I did just won't convert well over to cross stitch."  We could go into the basic 17 types of symmetry and which ones would convert nicely and for which order (fold) they would work, but we'll save that for the math blogs.

A friend convinced me that my non-stitchable designs, however, WOULD be pretty cool as rubber stamped images. So, here is a peek at a few prototypes. I wanted to have a few in hand to play with before ordering up the etched metal plates and investing lots of moolah. I found a company that would make up a one off using a LASER to etch the design into real rubber.  Simon Stamp seems to have done a nice job, with the design printed on the back of the wood block - nice professional touch.  This won't be the same company the final ones will be from, as I'll be switching over to a company that's business model is to economically make bulk quantities. 

 

The designs are 4" across. It's my thought that it should give a big enough motif to be the main design on a card or something.  Anything smaller and it might be too hard to color or layer.  I'm hoping to offer both wood-mounted and cling-style.

Below is my original painted version of the right-hand stamp.  I hope that crafters will find these fun to make and color. Tomorrow they are going to be sent off to my friend Diane in Virginia. I can't wait to see what she does with them. She makes amazingly awesome layered and embellished things and has promised to make up some samples to show them off and explore some different ways to use them.  She'll also be able to confirm whether image size and level of detail is optimal.

Initially, I'll be focusing on mandalas, but might dabble in Celtic or ...

I'll be sure to share more with you as I move along the path and definitely a heads up when they are available for sale.

I'm anxious to hear from you what you think regarding anything from mount types to images to sizes.  And, if any of you have any experience making/selling stamps I would love to hear any input you have from that angle.