playing with Soft Cut

A while ago I bought a carving material new to me, called Soft Cut, which I bought from the brilliant printmaking suppliers T N Lawrence. I didn’t get on well with it at the time, as it didn’t suit my style of carving, but I decided to have another play with it this week, and now can report that I really enjoy it.

I’m working on a series of lino cut symbols at the moment, and the bold style works well with the Soft Cut. If I was doing anything more intricate, I would definitely use my usual eraser-based materials.

So far I’ve carved up two symbols, om and peace.

And I recorded a video whilst I carved out the peace symbol, so you can see how the Soft Cut carves and prints up here:

And here are the final finished pieces, which have digitally enhanced watercolour backgrounds – using the pieces of watercoloured card I painted during the play day with Jill.

Abstract Om

Abstract Peace

These are both available to buy as prints, iPhone cases and skins, laptop and iPad skins and T-shirts at my Society 6 store.

There are a couple more symbols I want to carve in this series, so I’ll be back with those in the next week or so

a play day

The other week Jill and I had an art play day, which was a really lovely day, and so great just to play around and not worry about making anything specific.

Saying that though, Jill decorated a fantastic T-shirt using Derwent Inktense pencils. This came about after I watched the Derwent pencils video on using Inktense on fabric. I had a little experiment with an old T-shirt and was pleased with the result, and the Inktense survived a 40 degree wash and a spin in the tumble dryer, so as long as you follow the instructions on the video, it does work! Jill also made a start on decorating a canvas bag using my screenprinting inks and Thermofax screens, which I think she will finish on our next play day.

As I’ve been busy with work recently, I decided just to relax and play. As I’m generally too busy to make hand made cards for people’s birthdays at the moment, I thought I would try a quick and easy technique that I use for making cards when I don’t have much time. I take watercolour paper and draw random patterns and swirls on the paper with masking fluid, and leave it to dry. Once dry, I watercolour in all the empty spaces. I played with all my different watercolour pencils this time around – Derwent Inktense, Derwent Graphitint, Derwent Watercolour pencils, Neocolour Water Soluble Wax Pastels, as well as playing with Jill’s Derwent Inktense Blocks.

Once the page has been fully coloured in and is dry, I rub off the masking fluid and then cut the paper up into random pieces.

These can then be added to card, and a quick and easy, yet effective card is ready to send out. These cards always remind me of abstract landscapes.

And just to prove just how much fun we had – here’s a photo of Jill’s hands and my arm – any day that results in getting this much paint all over you has got to be good

And now please pop over and read Jill’s blog post on what she got up to on our play day

A new addition to the studio

Many, many years ago, we’re talking in the 80s here, my parents bought themselves two printers trays. One mum filled with bits and bobs from days out and souvenirs, and the other she filled with printer’s type. I have coveted these two printers trays ever since, especially the one filled with printer’s type, and now, finally, after my parents had a clear out, these two trays have come to live with me.

The one with the souvenirs in has gone up in my bedroom, and the one with the printer’s type has gone up over the mantelpiece in my studio. After all those years of not being used, I asked mum if she was happy for me to actually use the type, and she said “of course!”. Cue one very happy printmaking bunny

I decided to have a go at printing with the type yesterday, and had a great time. I don’t have a printing press, so I used the type just like rubber stamps, and the print didn’t come out too badly. I used chalk pigment inks to print with this time just for speed, but next time I will definitely get the blockprinting inks out, as I think they will look great.

The type itself is amazing – just look at the workmanship that has gone into carving these beauties out:

And finally, the little practice piece I printed up yesterday. The original quote is “the harder I work, the luckier I get” and is attributed to Samuel Goldwyn. When my good friend Maxine kindly took me down to the Theo Paphitis SBS Event at the end of March, this was a phrase that Theo Paphitis used, and it really struck a chord with us both. So this quote is going above my desk

There isn’t quite a full alphabet in the printer’s type, but that’s OK, as I can use alphabets I’ve already carved, or even carve some new ones, and I really like the jumbled effect the different typefaces give.

I had a great day with Jill last week, where we had a good play day. I shall save that for another post later in the week

old book printable download

Hello everyone

I’ve been working on designing some website banners for a client today, and as part of one of the banners I had to photograph and then Photoshop an old and tattered book of mine. I thought it was a neat little image, so I’ve popped it into a pdf, and you can download it for free to use in your art and craft projects. Just click on the picture below, and the pdf should download.

old open book printable

Old open book printable by Carrie Dennison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Have fun with it – if you make anything with it, please pop back and leave a link in the comments box so I can come and see

And, I’ve finally got round to signing up to Facebook, so feel free to friend me or like my page. Or you can always come and tweet me

I’ll be back soon with some photos of the lovely new acquisition I got from my parents’ house – they are having a clear out and I finally got hold of something I’ve coveted for 25 years! More to come…

carving out QR codes

If you’re not familiar with the term QR code, you will have seen them around. They are square barcodes and are appearing often in adverts and on posters nowadays. The barcodes can be scanned in using an app on a mobile phone and this will trigger an action on your phone – it could be taking you to a web page, a video, generate a text, add details into your phone’s contacts, etc., there are lots of different uses.

I’ve been using QR codes for quite a long while now, on my own business cards and also on those that I design for other people. But so far all I’ve done is use the graphics that have been generated by the various websites out there to place into my design work. But then I had an idea – why don’t I carve one to stamp on stuff?

So I did

If you scan this one in, it will bring you right back to this blog. I’ve also carved another one for my Press for Design business, which takes you to a contact page where the user has a choice to call, email or visit my webpage direct from the contact page.

This one is 4cm square in size – I could probably go a bit smaller, but I don’t want to make my eyes go too squiffy

If you’re looking for QR codes I’ve come across a couple of good sites, ZXing is a simple, straightforward site and has lots of options for the action your QR code can do. I have recently come across UQRme which just generates one QR code, but you can change the information it points to at any time by updating your details on the site, a nice little touch and especially useful if you’ve gone to the time and trouble to carve a QR code out! As for QR scanner software, I use UpCode on my Nokia phone, but I think most smartphones tend to have the software already loaded now.

And as Celia mentioned on Twitter the other day – think of other things that can be created with QR codes… mosaics, multi-coloured prints, quilts… Fun

P.S. I can carve out a custom QR code rubber stamp for you for £30 including p&p. Just drop me a line at blog@erasercarver.co.uk to order

Five fun ways to get creative

Hello! Well, for this blog post you will have to go and visit my good friend, Maxine, as she has asked me to write a guest blog post! It’s over on her blog, Life’s a Celebration, and is about 5 fun ways to get creative. Maxine and I met through the local enterprise club last year whilst we were both setting up our businesses, and we have since become good friends. She has been there every step of the way for me, so please do go over to enjoy the blog post and give her your support – thanks

Lots of fun things happening here – I’ll be back with a blog about them sooooooon!

Cheers!

eraser carving article in Woodcarving Illustrated

Hello everyone! Last week I received a fantastic parcel full of copies of the Spring issue of American magazine Woodcarving Illustrated (issue 58) in which my tutorial on eraser carving appeared.

I was approached by Woodcarving Illustrated to submit this article last year – May, I think – so that just shows how far in advance magazines have to work! The article is four pages long and I’m really pleased with how it turned out, thanks to everyone at Woodcarving Illustrated for the fabulous feature! The two blocks shown in the picture are the ones I created for the article, and they can be recreated with the template included.

I’d also like to say hello to the folks who read the magazine and are dropping by here, I have already received some lovely notes from readers, it’s great to have you here! Take a peek at my eraser carving gallery, eraser carving class and my eraser carving video tutorials for more information and inspiration.

Cheers!