Printing on stones

I´ve been really impressed with the stone printing on the blog Maya made. I love the geese prints. I thought I´d give stone printing a try, although all I have in the house is fabric paint (must buy block printing ink!). The only stamp I have carved that was small enough for these pebbles was my little lighthouse, which I didn´t end up using in my checkers game.

I think I´d like to do more of these, and print some more stamps on larger pebbles. It´s hard to admire something so much on the Maya Made blog, and want to do something similar, but not copy the original design (because although it´s so nice, that would be wrong). I really like the bird theme though, and as we have a lot of seagulls around our area, I might try carving some stamps of seagulls.

Printing on stone was bit different to printing on fabric or paper. The stamp needed to be loaded with a middle amount of ink (more than paper, less than fabric). It had to be pressed hard on the stone, without slipping; suprisingly this wasn´t hard because the stones seemed to grip the stamp. I haven´t mounted the stamps - they are still just pieces of linocut - so pressing them to the stone was easy. The stamp only needed to applied for a second or so - perhaps on stone there is no need for the ink to ¨soak¨ in. Much harder though was not getting ink from my fingers (which accidentally gets there while picking the inked stamp up) onto the stone. That will take practice.

Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island, New Zealand