Fun with Foam Stamps

I never expected that I'd be one of those people. You know the type. Stamp lovers. Stamp addicts. They never met a stamp they didn't like. 

I started slowly, lingering in the stamp aisle of my local Michaels. Then I started carving my own stamps (thanks a lot, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer). For Gelli plate printing, I heated up some moldable foam and pressed all kinds of odd things to make abstract stamps.

But I'd never made stamps out of craft foam. Until last week.

Craft foam, in case you don't know, comes in thin sheets and have a sticky back. It's made for kids' crafts, but it's perfect for grown-up stamping. In my mixed media workshop, we made foam stamps to create backgrounds in our art journals. 

Here's my first one, an abstract design. I cut the shapes randomly, no design in mind, and then stuck them to cardboard from a cereal box.

My inspiration for the second stamp came from a glass jar full of large paint brushes. Their handles looked like skinny fish. I used the leftover foam slivers to fill the space between my "fish."

I'm happy with the way the fish turned out. The spread below reminds me of Hawaiian bark fabric. I'm reluctant to cover it. (But wait, isn't that the point?)

Not so with the abstract stamp. Others in my workshop thought the pattern looked a bit like trees with bare branches. That made me think of Adam and Eve which, of course, led to this collage.