You’ve Got Character(s)! By Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

Get ready to get silly! This project is all about drawing with rubber stamps. The recipe is as easy as pie. Easier, actually. There are only five ingredients: RubberMoon’s Stampstracts 2 stamp set by Kae Pea, cardstock, black ink, markers, and assorted embellishments.

1. Get out the Stampstracts 2 stamp set and assorted acrylic blocks for temporarily mounting them. Using marker-compatible black ink, practice stamping wonky, whimsical animals and characters on cheap, lightweight paper. Don’t worry about masking, don’t aim for perfection. Let the images overlap while you invent ways to create faces, arms, legs, wings, feet, hats, wings and more. In other words, ‘draw’ with the stamps. The photo above shows my six favorites and these samples do include some masking, but you won’t need masking till step 3.

 2. Once you’re pleased with several of the characters, practice adding hand-drawn elements. This step is shown in RED within the samples in the gallery; I drew with a fat marker so the additions are easy to see. When you do this step, however, use a pencil so you can erase and revise. At this point, you’re still practicing.

3. Now it’s time for the ‘real thing’. Stamp directly onto folded note cards or cardstock rectangles, masking as needed. Instead of using a pencil for the additional line work, use a fine nib black marker. (Samples shown are A2 size. Use larger size cards for bigger and taller animals and characters or if you want more than one per card.)

4. Add color with markers or any other coloring media of choice.

5. Embellish with metallic braid, tickets, mini alphabet stickers, mini pencils made from matchsticks or other collage elements.

GALLERY

SUPPLIES

• Stampstracts2 (RubberMoon)
• Black ink
• Acrylic blocks
• Cardstock in white, off-white or ivory
• Pigma Micron 01 in black (Sakura)
• Gelly Roll Medium in white (Sakura)
• Markers in assorted colors
• Metallic braid
• Assorted embellishments