Welcome to the inaugural post of Sonnet & Mayhem!
This whole endeavour began a few months ago when I picked up a tiny rubber alphabet stamp set with the intention of conducting a few concrete poetry experiments. Each letter in the set was less than half a centimetre high and organizing a single sentence into the holding panel required endless focus, precision, and a trusty pair or tweezers (no joke!). The process as was ridiculously tedious, but produced the most satisfyingly imperfect impression a crafty girl could ask for. I immediately stamped my way through fifty small cards and half a pad of art paper.
However, the tiny alphabet stamping process had its limitations. There were only seven stamps of each letter, and between my infamous clumsiness, the tweezers, and the tendency of rubber to bounce erratically when dropped, this number quickly dwindled to six or five. (I still come across wayward letters while sweeping the floor of our apartment). My mind had also started dreaming of bigger, better things. Ornate images! Intricate imprints! More colour! More freedom! (Less tweezers!) So, I decided to move on to hand-carved stamps.
One small piece of lino-block and an eleven dollar carving set later, I had produced my first hand-carved stamp.
I coated it with ink, pressed it into my notebook, and a new passion was born.
I have now carved approximately ten stamps to varying degrees of success (don’t even ask about the peacock feather!), and produced an increasingly more refined line of simple, hand-stamped cards. It is a small, bizarre operation, but one that I’ve come to love more and more. And now, with a stack of lovely experiments and a notebook full of ideas, I’m trying to find a way to get my little creations out into the world.
My goals are simple:
1. Produce a small, unified line of well printed cards
2. Find ways to connect with the handmade craft world that I’ve been lurking in for so long
3. Open an etsy shop and join in some craft shows to see if the rest of the world (or at least a tiny, crafty portion of it) loves my prints as much as I do.
And so begins Sonnet & Mayhem
For me, the name represents everything I love about stamping and printing: the detail and precision of cutting the stamp (bound up in a lovely literary metaphor because, well, I was an English major) and the chaos of the print, which is beautiful because each impression is different.
This whole endeavour began a few months ago when I picked up a tiny rubber alphabet stamp set with the intention of conducting a few concrete poetry experiments. Each letter in the set was less than half a centimetre high and organizing a single sentence into the holding panel required endless focus, precision, and a trusty pair or tweezers (no joke!). The process as was ridiculously tedious, but produced the most satisfyingly imperfect impression a crafty girl could ask for. I immediately stamped my way through fifty small cards and half a pad of art paper.
However, the tiny alphabet stamping process had its limitations. There were only seven stamps of each letter, and between my infamous clumsiness, the tweezers, and the tendency of rubber to bounce erratically when dropped, this number quickly dwindled to six or five. (I still come across wayward letters while sweeping the floor of our apartment). My mind had also started dreaming of bigger, better things. Ornate images! Intricate imprints! More colour! More freedom! (Less tweezers!) So, I decided to move on to hand-carved stamps.
One small piece of lino-block and an eleven dollar carving set later, I had produced my first hand-carved stamp.
I coated it with ink, pressed it into my notebook, and a new passion was born.
I have now carved approximately ten stamps to varying degrees of success (don’t even ask about the peacock feather!), and produced an increasingly more refined line of simple, hand-stamped cards. It is a small, bizarre operation, but one that I’ve come to love more and more. And now, with a stack of lovely experiments and a notebook full of ideas, I’m trying to find a way to get my little creations out into the world.
My goals are simple:
1. Produce a small, unified line of well printed cards
2. Find ways to connect with the handmade craft world that I’ve been lurking in for so long
3. Open an etsy shop and join in some craft shows to see if the rest of the world (or at least a tiny, crafty portion of it) loves my prints as much as I do.
And so begins Sonnet & Mayhem
For me, the name represents everything I love about stamping and printing: the detail and precision of cutting the stamp (bound up in a lovely literary metaphor because, well, I was an English major) and the chaos of the print, which is beautiful because each impression is different.
I hope you enjoy my tales!
I love love love the building print! I might commission a few from you for my new apartment this fall!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you like it! I've been really surprised at how many people love the Chrysler building print. I guess there's more love out there for art deco architecture than I thought!
ReplyDelete